A Minecraft Movie, an adaptation of the worldwide video game phenomenon Minecraft, released to negative reviews from critics and unusually high praise from audiences, and an opening weekend revenue of 157 million.
As a movie, A Minecraft Movie is chicken jockey, flint and steel and an ender pearl. To translate my brainrot speak, it’s one of the most abysmal video game movies I’ve seen, it’s an embarrassing and cliche adaptation of this popular franchise I adored since I was a kid… That somehow provided me with the most enjoyable movie watching experience I ever experienced since Avengers Endgame in 2019. If you’ve been online during the build-up to the release of this movie, first of all, I’d like to apologize for the amount of damage your brain cells have taken, secondly, you’re probably aware of the countless amount of “brain rot” memes that have been circulating surrounding Jack Black’s character “Steve”.
The memes consisted of clips of Jack Black, who is well loved online for his eccentric and bombastic personality he became well known for, saying the names of items or enemies that can be found within the Minecraft game in his legendary candescence. Particularly the items “flint and steel”, “ender pearl” and of course, the infamous “chicken jockey”. These jokes have circulated the internet in the form of these “brain rot” memes, which are referred to under that category due to their overall absurd nature which can only be described as mentally deteriorating. The memes mainly became popular because of that absurdity, not just with the videos themselves, but also with the absurdity of Jack black’s casting as the character “Steve”. Recently, Jack black has become well known for starring in multiple video game film adaptations. The very well received Super Mario movie, the poorly received adaptation of the roleplaying game “Borderlands” and now for the negatively received adaptation of minecraft. Not only was the repeated casting of him in these films absurd, the fact they chose him over any other actor that looked more like the character, such as Jason Momoa who was rumoured to be playing Steve when he was announced as a cast member, was without a doubt absurd. That’s the word I would use to describe A Minecraft Movie, absurd. Everything that occurs in this movie is cliche, corny and has horribly written dialogue that is nearly impossible to tolerate but is just barely saved by the charm of Jack Black’s delivery of them. All of the characters except for Steve are bland, generic and overall just annoying, the perfect character archetypes that you need for a generic family movie based on a popular property.
But despite everything, I could say that the Minecraft movie provided me with the most unique movie watching experience I could have ever imagined, it was truly absurd to clap and cheer with an audience of both adults and children over the most bizarre things imaginable, mainly Jack Black yelling the words describing a baby zombie riding a chicken as a “chicken jockey”. Despite how many flaws there were in the film, the theatre experience elevated my enjoyment of it much higher than I expected. It is something I would only rewatch again if I were to experience the crazy crowd participation in the theatre once more.
Overall, the Minecraft movie is a masterpiece… but not really. It’s cliche, bland, poorly written and has nothing to do with the true experience of playing Minecraft. But the ironic audience participation is truly remarkable. What the future holds for any movie adaptations of popular video games is unclear, but if it is anything like the Minecraft movie, purely terrible just to illicit ticket sales for people going to unironically watch it, Steve Minecraft help us all.
