Image courtesy of Minecraft.wiki.
“A Minecraft Movie,” despite all the star power it had behind it and the time and resources allotted to it, failed to impress me.
Originally teased by the original game’s creator, Markus “Notch” Persson, on his Twitter account in 2014, a film based on “Minecraft” was quietly anticipated by fans of the game for nearly a decade before any actual details of the movie ended up being set in stone.
Eleven years and a troubled development cycle later, this April’s release of the film culminated all of that anticipation, time, money and a star-studded cast in an almost impressively generic and uninspiring product.
The film’s story is not interesting or pioneering for a video game movie in the slightest. It’s a very predictable copy-and-paste “we’ve been trapped in a video game!” plot similar to that of “Jumanji” or “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” (both of which Jack Black also starred in).
It’s honestly somewhat depressing that the story was as generic as it was. “Minecraft” is a game about forging your own creative stories. That’s why “let’s play” YouTube videos of the game are so popular. There are an unlimited number of potential stories for those inclined to tell because of how open and limitless the game is. I’m not advocating for a feature-length “Minecraft” let’s play, but the utter lack of innovation on display is upsetting.
The characters follow a similar trend. Headstrong and wise Steve knows everything about the Overworld, and will proudly announce the name of everything on-screen, all the time, in nearly every scene of the film. Garrett, a used game store owner in financial jeopardy, takes every opportunity to present himself as the most capable person despite constantly embarrassing himself and having no appealing traits besides his own patheticness. Henry, who just moved to a new town with his sister, devises creative solutions to his and his friends’ problems, but was not given much personality otherwise. Henry’s sister Natalie and mobile petting zoo owner Dawn allow the film to narrowly pass the Bechdel test, but have drastically less meaningful screen time than their male counterparts when split up from Steve, who progresses the plot and is funny.
Black’s Steve was designed as the star of “A Minecraft Movie,” and it shows. He was given the most screen time of any character in the film, was one of only three characters to be given any sort of backstory, narrated the opening scenes, sang several songs throughout the film, and of course, was far and away its most memeable part. Black read his lines with a comedic intensity that no other actor on the planet possesses, but the frequency at which he shouted the name of some item from “Minecraft” simply came off as excessive and annoying.
It’s like the filmmakers were banking on kids sharing these moments online as their primary marketing strategy. Viral videos of teenagers trashing theaters as Steve exclaims “chicken jockey” are proof that this strategy paid off.
I don’t think it’s unfair to critique a movie obviously aimed towards kids, either. Mojang Studios, the company that makes the “Minecraft” series, is owned by Microsoft and had a $150 million budget. This film had every opportunity to be one of the most creative productions of all time. The producers settled on a copy-and-paste story with very simple characters and an unappealing visual style taken straight from a “Minecraft in real life” YouTube montage made by some teenager in 2013. Frankly, it all just comes across as lazy.
If there is one part of the movie I did really like, it was the scenes of Jennifer Coolidge’s character with Nitwit the villager. Villagers, surreal humanoid creatures that only manage to communicate through body language and grunts in the film, contrast very humorously with the human characters, and Nitwit’s scenes in the “real world” showed a brief spark of creative passion that much of the film sorely lacks. It’s a shame the spark was so brief though, with only a few of these short scenes being present.
Despite all its glaring flaws, “A Minecraft Movie” is already well on its way to grossing a billion dollars. It had the biggest opening week of any video game film adaptation. But after a decade of production, direction from the prolific Jared Hess, having been based on the best-selling video game of all time, a game with unlimited creative potential I really expected more from it.