Sean Mandell, a writer for the New York Post, said in his review of “A Minecraft Movie” that it is “Gen Z, Alpha’s ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show.’” This line caused me to lose sleep.
I read this before I had seen the movie. “Rocky Horror Picture Show” is a time honored cult classic with genuine and impactful themes about sexuality. Sure, people are going to see it for the lively theater experience and goofy, over-the-top scenes, but there’s no way people are going to be hosting midnight screenings of “A Minecraft Movie” in 50 years, right?
After having seen the film, I still stand by my initial skepticism and disagree with Mandell’s framing, but not in the way that I was expecting. I don’t think that “A Minecraft Movie” is this generation’s “Rocky Horror,” I think it’s this generation’s “SpongeBob SquarePants Movie,” or at least it should have been.
“The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie” is a genuinely touching and earnest film about how it’s OK to be a kid and how it’s important to retain a level of childlike wonder in the face of growing responsibility. “A Minecraft Movie” has a similar theme about how it’s good to be creative and curious and how adults should embrace their creative side. Maybe that characterization is a bit of a stretch, but if there is any theme the movie has, it’s to be creative.
The movie has the perfect intellectual property and premise to do this. Steve, played by Jack Black, had a passion, got bored with the mundanity of modern life, pursued his childhood goal and then fell into the “Overworld.” Then along the way, a bunch of people down on their luck found themselves there too, and needed to find their way out using creativity and wit. Where the film primarily loses the thread is in its character development, or lack thereof.
Just about every character in the movie introduces themselves and their main quirk through blatant exposition and then nothing is ever built upon after that. I was joking with my brother after the movie about how the main kid in the film, Henry, has zero character arch. He builds a jetpack in the beginning of the movie and then he builds a jetpack at the end. Henry is a wiz kid but he is hardly ever challenged or grows to appreciate that aspect of himself. The only level of “development” that he has is that he’s bullied for all of 30 seconds in the beginning of the movie – and that’s it. He doesn’t have doubts about his creations and isn’t concerned about how people might find his ideas weird. He doesn’t change at all. What does that tell the target audience of presumably children? If you’re born with the right brain and good genes, you too could one day build a jetpack?
In “The SpongeBob Movie,” Spongebob is the surrogate for the children in the audience. We see him struggle with wanting to be an adult but then finds out that being a “goofball and a wingnut” is OK sometimes and you should hold on to that. “A Minecraft Movie” tries to do this in a way, but the story is centered around adults. There’s a sense they wanted to encourage kids to get in touch with their creative side but they relied too much on Jack Black being himself and Jason Momoa being a “Johnny Bravo” type loser.
This is all to say that I think it’s a shame how this movie turned out because a lot of people, including myself, owe so much to the game “Minecraft.” It might be weird to wax philosophical about a game that’s old enough to drink in some countries, but there really is something special about it that the movie tried, but ultimately failed to capture.
I remember playing online with my friends, building castles and towns in survival mode, building giant roller coasters in creative mode and feeling that the only limit to what I could make is my own imagination. The game genuinely helped foster some important skills that I still value to this day. That could have been used in the movie to both remind the older audience of what that felt like and to hold onto it and inspire the younger audience to value their own creativity.
I know it might seem like I’m grafting my own narrative onto the story and that “it’s just a kids movie,” but like I said, “Minecraft” is genuinely something special and I think the writers at least understood that to an extent. There are very brief moments where important themes and feelings are touched on, and it seems like they knew how to set up the characters but just didn’t know what to do after.
That’s not to say the movie is bad. I found myself smiling and laughing throughout a suprising portion of the film. Jason Momoa’s character is the right mix of overconfident and incompetent, which feels very reminiscent of early “Tenacious D” humor, which I appreciate. The line “My dad said they debunked math” absolutely murdered my brother in the theater, and I really liked the line, “Are you finished? ‘No I think he’s Swedish.’”
There is a surprisingly good time to be had, it just feels shallow overall. Like I said earlier, I don’t think people are going to be too fond of this movie 50 years from now. I also don’t think I’m holding this movie to too high of a standard, even if it is a kids film. Some of the most iconic kids films of all time are still enjoyable, no matter your age. I still think “The SpongeBob Movie” holds up very well, even as a cynical adult.
The production quality, break neck pacing and memes will all feel outdated in a year, and in another week or two, no one is going to find “CHICKEN JOCKEY” funny. “A Minecraft Movie” could have been genuinely something special, but it just ended up as a vapid, yet ultimately fun piece of popcorn schlock. With that being said, I give “A Minecraft Movie” a 5/10.
