What is There to Make of "A Minecraft Movie?"

It's been a long wait, but this week one of the most anticipated films of 2025 finally arrived to American theaters. Back in September, the first trailer for A Minecraft Movie was released on the internet and immediately went viral. Millions across the globe watched and gave their thoughts on the upcoming film and let's just say people were...opinionated. Over half a year later, A Minecraft Movie is finally in theaters for fans to see, but does it live up to the insurmountable hype? Does it even matter? Let's discuss in this spoiler-free review...

Minecraft is the best selling video game of all time, as of 2024 the game still has over 170 million players over a decade after its initial release. The game is a generational cultural phenomenon and it's quite shocking that it took this long for some kind of film adaptation to come out. I am someone who has been an avid player since 2011 and have so many fond memories playing the game with my friends and my brother, Cillian. Needless to say I was morbidly curious about A Minecraft Movie as soon as the trailer came out. Like millions of others, I was not initially a fan of the visuals, I thought it would make much more sense to make this a straight forward animated film rather than a live-action hybrid. Soon, various fan-made trailers started popping up, reimagining the trailer with a more traditional animation style, these were much more well received than the $150 million dollar blockbuster. Needless to say, the film was not off to a great start. Similar confusion followed when it was revealed that the director of the film was none other than Jared Hess, who you might remember as the director of Napoleon Dynamite, seriously.

The marketing budget for this movie was gigantic, similar to Wicked, it's been downright impossible to avoid tie-in products for the past few weeks. Mojang Studios partnered up with the likes of Nyx Cosmetics. McDonald's, Adidas, Target, and even the meal subscription box, Home Chef. But most of the film's marketing happened accidentally via the internet's currency: memes. If you're on TikTok or Instagram, there's no doubt you've seen compilation videos of Jack Black saying "Chicken Jockey!" or "Flint and Steel!" It was better publicity than the studio could've paid for, and theaters this weekend have been packed with audiences eager to see the memes on a big screen. Unfortunately, the enjoyment that people have been getting from this movie has been solely for ironic purposes.

I find it extremely difficult to review a film as unique as A Minecraft Movie. How does one approach a movie that takes so much joy in being a blatant cash grab? It's clearly not a film that's meant to be approached the same way as Citizen Kane or any other classic, I went into this film as if I was going to watch a Marvel movie, which I believe will result in maximum enjoyment.

One of the most glaring issues with A Minecraft Movie isn't the visuals like everyone was expecting. The humans look very out of place but they blend into the scenery surprisingly well and the purely animated visuals are pretty decent if not, a little ugly at times. The visuals are fine, it's the plot that really struggles, it has no real connection to the game, and just doesn't make a lot of sense. Most of the time the story takes a backseat to banter and jokes between Jack Black and Jason Momoa, who also worked as a producer. The more trailers of the film that got released, the more fans worried that the majority of the dialogue would just be Jack Black's Steve reciting random words from the game verbatim, and unfortunately they were correct. It's extremely hard to gauge if audience responses to this film are genuine or smothered in a hundred layers of irony, similar to what happened with past films like Minions: Rise of Gru and Morbius.

I really struggle to see how this film would work without Jack Black. Practically the entire script, plot, and marketing solely relies on his charisma. He's basically playing a human version of Po from Kung Fu Panda. Jason Momoa's character, Garrett also gets away with a lot because his lines are mostly comedic and Momoa has the charisma to pull them off. The same however cannot be said for the rest of the cast, whose characters feel like afterthoughts. It's easy to forget that Danielle Brooks' and Emma Myers characters exist. Far too much screen time is dedicated to Henry, played by Sebastian Hansen who gives a pretty poor performance. Child actors are often able to get away with bad performances, but when Owen Cooper's work in Netflix's Adolescence has been the talk of the town this past month, it's hard not to compare, and there's no competition.

As a huge fan of Jennifer Coolidge, I was excited to see her in this movie, but her character has no bearing on the plot whatsoever and the film would be exactly the same without her. It just feels like Jared Hess really wanted to work with Jennifer Coolidge, which I can understand.

It's clear that Jack Black and the rest of the cast had a lot of fun making this movie, which should count for something. Although it's only been out for a few days, critics are already panning A Minecraft Movie, but fans seem to love it, which was the film's intention. This is not a movie that caters to critics, it's a movie that's meant to pay homage to a cultural phenomenon. While it has been extremely frustrating and difficult to accurately review this film, it's safe to say that fans will get something out of it and have a great time at the movies.