I went to see the Minecraft movie last Thursday, here are my thoughts (Spoilers, duh).
I think I have to start with the theater experience. I don’t condone the trashing of theaters just because of your excitement, there’s no justification for making a mess of a public area.
My theater was less chaotic, although I wouldn’t call it calm. Hatsune Miku walked in during the previews, there were 3 full rows of college-aged guys behind me, and I only saw 1 family with children in the whole theater.
The previews gave just a taste of what was to come. With every trailer came “boos” and expression of dissatisfation at the movie not starting. The sole exception was the McDonald’s advertisement of the Minecraft kid’s meal, which was met with cheers and jubilation.
For the most part, the usual respectful silence found in theaters was observed. But each time Jack Black said one of his memed lines or there was a particularly strange moment, the rows behind me would explode with sound. Sometimes it was yelling the line as it was said, other times just incoherent sound.
I was leaning over to my friends to express my bewilderment and shock with some regularity. As lines and sequences that should never have been written, let alone published in the final theatrical release were uttered and acted by the cast, I slowly lost my mind.
So, here we go. My thoughts (it would be too high of a compliment to call it an analysis) of A Minecraft Movie.
First, the acting. I don’t really have much of a complaint here. Jack Black and Jason Mamoa seem to have been cast to be themselves in a Minecraft themed movie, to which they fulfilled those roles excellently. Sebastian Hansen didn’t seem to be given much latitude to work with in his character, but I found him a likeable enough “main character.” (I’ll explain the quotation marks in a later point.) Emma Myers did the best job of becoming a compelling character through her acting in my opinion. I think she was also limited in her character expression, but she did an amazing job with what she was given. Danielle Brook’s character was so forgettable I didn’t have anything to say a week later. I really wanted to not talk about this, but I guess technically Jennifer Coolidge did a good job acting her part, assuming her goal was to make me as uuncomfortable as possible.
Second, the story. Was there one? I know that there were vaguely bad things that would happen if the Tesseract got in the wrong hands, but it felt like such a low level threat and the little conflicts between characters seemed more prevelant. The set up for the beginning of the film was also done weirdly? They immediately introduced us to “The Overworld” (The movie’s name for the Minecraft world). But then they spent the next 20 minutes giving us stereotypical backgrounds for the main cast. The whole time I was just wondering when we would get back to the Overworld where I had come to see. The ending was also similarly disinteresting. I hadn’t cared about the set up for the characters, so I didn’t care about the resolution.
Third, the CGI. This one I don’t have much to say on. It was good. I don’t have any complaints about it. I could tell at certain times that the actors were definitely on a set or in a big green room, but that happens in most movies.
Fourth, who was the main character? I can remember 3 in universe character names (General Chungus, Steve, and Garrett) because the story progressed so weirdly that I either didn’t catch or care about the character’s names. There were times were it seemed like Steve was the lead and the rest of the cast were going to have to follow his lead to succeed. Then Jason Mamoa seemed to be the main character from the real world, there’s even a lot of scenes where Jack Black and Jason Mamoa are arguing about who’s in charge. Sebastian Hansen also seemed to be the lead at times, but he never seemed to stick out quite as much. There’s a place for strife from characters trying to figure out who should lead, but this felt like the movie and writers didn’t know either.
Fifth and lastly, the pacing. I probably could have included this in the story, but I have enough to say that I think it should be its own paragraph. If I went into this movie blind, I am almost entirely sure I would hate it. It felt like I was constantly being slammed with information, sound or visuals. Jack Black was calling out Minecraft terms like an auctioneer, the main cast was being snarky to each other with every other line, and the enemies were…there I guess (they’ll never make me hate you General Chungus). I kept expecting the memed lines, so I was trying to figure out how those would be set up. I think the movie tried to make those moments happen as frequently as possible, which meant that it was disjointed and stilted.
Like my article title suggests, this movie felt like a “brainrot movie.” It would have felt normal for there to be Subway Surfers or Family Guy Funny Moments playing alongside the silver screen. The film was full of clips and snippets of funny moments that were just asking to be made into a compilation. Overall I would give this film a generous 3/10.
Cianan’s Content 