There’s no doubting that Minecraft is one of the most influential franchises in modern pop culture. The original, released in November of 2011, has sold well over 150 million copies and enjoys legions of fans in every possible demographic. It’s odd, blocky aesthetic and dedication to creativity was something gamers never knew they needed, and it still stands as an inspiration to millions today.
But with that in mind, the reveal of a film adaptation was all but inevitable. Pioneers like Sonic the Hedgehog and The Super Mario Bros. Movie proved there is a large and hungry market for the stories of video games, and a monolith like Minecraft was the safest bet you could possibly make. There was never a scenario in which this project didn’t do well. It was quite literally too big to fail.
Unfortunately, it seems the final product took full advantage of that fact. A Minecraft Movie is somehow too safe and too wild at the same time. It feels bent to the specific whims of the people making it, but never in a way that results in a better adaptation or more interesting story. When watching, you get the sense that nobody on set really knew what the game was all about, or cared enough to fight for something better. Minecraft was born out of passion and unbridled creativity. A Minecraft Movie was born out of laziness and blatant self-interest.
The story begins from three different perspectives. The first is Steve, the protagonist of the original game, who explores a strange mineshaft after growing tired of his boring and monotonous daily life. The second is Garret, a washed-up pro gamer who’s nearly bankrupted himself through bad business decisions and his own overblown ego. The third is Henry and Natalie, a pair of kids who move to a desolate small town following their parent’s death. After coming into contact with a strange “orb-like cube,” all three are sucked through a portal into the world of Minecraft. However, the cube’s incredible power draws the attention of Malgosha, ruler of the lava-filled Nether and an army of gold-loving Piglins. Filled with greed and a lust for power, she hunts the humans across the Minecraft overworld, and they must work together to protect the orb and find a way to return home.
Already, this presents several large narrative problems. With three different points of view, it’s unclear who’s story this is really meant to be. Steve has been in the Minecraft world the longest and has a more personal connection to Malgosha, but Henry and Garret are given just as much screentime if not more. It’s clear they were trying to create an ensemble cast, but that doesn’t work when the script is juggling plotlines that have little to do with each other or the main story.
The first section of the film is a slog as a result, with almost an hour spent in the real world establishing a bad Jumanji rip-off instead of anything having to do with Minecraft. It’s as if they wanted Jack Black’s Steve to be the main hero, but because he didn’t cover a wide enough audience, Jason Momoa’s Garret and Sebastion Hansen’s Henry were jammed in as alternatives to broaden the film’s appeal.
Even beyond the sloppiness of it, there are many notable plot holes that come about with this premise. As an example, Steve doesn’t really care about leaving the overworld, but desires the orb anyway because Malgosha is threatening his beloved dog Dennis. However, this doesn’t make any sense when you consider that Dennis escapes the Nether very early in the film. If he’s repeatedly shown wandering the overworld, why is Malgosha able to use him as leverage? This type of obvious, sloppy writing is prevalent throughout the movie.
Then there’s the characters themselves. Jack Black is about as far as you can get from the original games’ protagonist, loud and boisterous in a setting known for its quiet and contemplative nature. Garret and Dawn (another supporting character) are similar, with abrasive personalities and outlandish backstories. Only Henry and Natalie bring any sort of normalcy, but even that is only when compared to the rest. It’s a chaotic mishmash that struggles to establish cohesion or solid character relationships, especially for its female characters.
The setting and set design also bring some questions. The real-world segments are confusing, with fashion and style mimicking the 1980s despite the fact that Minecraft released in 2011. As an aesthetic choice, this feels very out-of-touch. The in-game segments, while generally better, also fail to replicate the iconic style of the original. The creatures especially aren’t appealing to look at, combining blocky shapes with hyper-realistic textures in a way that does neither justice. In both cases, there is zero attempt to properly replicate the game. They took the basic ideas of “video games” and “blocks” and went in a completely different direction.
To be clear, I’m not asking for a movie that’s 100% faithful to the source material. Minecraft: Story Mode also strays pretty far from the original in its later seasons, but considering this is a series all about creativity, I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. However, the film takes things way too far. Aside from physical elements and basic game mechanics, there’s no indication that the film’s creators really understand the game. The tone is completely different, the art style is butchered, and the themes so poorly handled that the few mentions of “freedom” and “creativity” come off as afterthoughts.
This is the greatest sin that any adaptation can make: complete separation from the franchise its representing. It genuinely feels like Minecraft is a secondary piece of a film literally titled A Minecraft Movie. No, center stage is reserved for the creators themselves, most notably Jared Hess and Jack Black. Do you think that the 80s aesthetic and zany characters were added to create a better film? No, they were an outlet for the comedy Hess wanted to write, more jokes to fall short of Napoleon Dynamite. Do you think the multiple musical numbers were added because they were beneficial to the narrative? No, they were another way for Jack Black to sneak his music career into his films. By themselves, neither of these things are necessarily bad, but they have no place in a Minecraft movie. This is sloppy, self-centered filmmaking, and when combined with other similar examples, I’d argue it ruins this adaptation.
Of course, if the film were fun or interesting on its own terms, I might be singing a different tune. Despite its huge departure, there are fans of the 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie, and I can respect that even if I don’t agree. However, this doesn’t use its massive creative freedom to do anything good. Even leaving out Minecraft altogether, this is still a bad film.
Beyond the structure and character issues I mentioned previously, it suffers from a lack of interesting story elements. All the standard cliches are here: a journey to find a treasure that can end the world, an MCU-style final showdown with a massive sky beam, and a few others I won’t spoil. There’s also some pervasive “new-gen” humor that tries to pander with memes and buzzwords. One of Malgosha’s minions is full of these, and while they fit in with the rest of the movie, that’s only because the project is already so absurd. When the first line of the film is “As a child, I yearned for the mines,” you know it’s a problem.
Topping it all off, there are some very noticeable greenscreen and CGI issues. Placing real humans in the world of Minecraft was never going to be easy, but this is some of the most noticeable “film jank” I’ve ever seen, especially for a project of this type. With an estimated budget of over $150 million dollars, there is no excuse for obvious issues like color spilling and mismatched lighting.
Despite everything I’ve said so far, I won’t claim that the film is completely abysmal. All these elements, while terrible individually, do come together to create a truly unique experience. The absurdist comedy, bizarre art, off-beat characters, and nonsense story combine with the open-ended potential of Minecraft to create something so bad it almost becomes good. As much as I absolutely hate to admit it, “Steve’s Lava Chicken” has been stuck in my head since I watched the film, and Jack Black’s line delivery successfully launched “chicken jockey” into meme stardom.
The tone here is truly wild and arguably “creative” in its own weird way. I wholeheartedly believe it was an accident, but somehow, this does have a hint of that freedom Minecraft is known for. If nothing else, this is the ultimate film for the younger members of the audience; those who desire chaos and meme-ability above all else. Anyone who enjoys this film will likely cite this as the reason, as sad as that sounds from a critic’s perspective.
The action scenes, while generic, also do a decent job keeping your attention with fun references to the games. There’s a minecart ride, a village raid, and a flying chase, all using elements straight from the original. These were the one area where the film does a good job with the source material, even if the aforementioned visual issues take it down a peg.
Now, while I have an obligation to be fair, don’t get the message confused: none of these elements are even close to redeeming this movie. The good that it does only works because of its ties to the Minecraft IP, a literal sandbox that can make pretty much any premise work. As I said in the opening, this movie abuses its status as a beacon of culture and influence. Without Minecraft, it would’ve been nothing more than a weird, forgettable timewaster.
Verdict
To be fully transparent, I rank Minecraft among the greatest video games ever created. I’ve been playing it on and off for over a decade, and fully witnessed both its success and its impact over time. The joy its inspired and the community its created have given me more enjoyment than almost anything else I’ve seen. This should be a movie that’s made for me; for the hundreds of millions of people who’ve been exposed to the uplifting creativity this franchise embodies. Instead, we were left with a quirky, unpolished mess.
A Minecraft Movie stomps on the legacy of its source in favor of easy, thoughtless entertainment, and it can’t even do that properly. With bizarre visuals, poorly written plot, messy characters, iffy humor, and zero regard for it’s own IP, this is exactly the reason video game movies used to fail. They had no idea what they were doing, and no respect for the medium of video games.
When the first announcement came that a Minecraft movie was in production, I was hopeful, but my gut told me to be wary of an oncoming disaster. In the end, they proved it all correct. A Minecraft Movie is everything I feared it would be and more.
