a minecraft movie [launch]
Holy shit, this film is bad.
I grew up with both Napoleon Dynamite, and Minecraft. Napoleon Dynamite is one of the funniest movies I've ever seen, and it has a unique style of humor that's stuck with me to this day. Minecraft was my sister and I’s game, creating dozens of wacky creations over the years together on the Xbox 360 version- it was one of the ways we bonded. And hey, I also like both bacon cheeseburgers and mice separately- it doesn't mean putting them together is gonna work perfectly.
A Minecraft Movie is one of the most incohesive and puzzlingly assembled movies I've seen in a while. Everything about it is so random, from characters to settings to movie-original creations to needle drops. There is a strange fixation on retro video games and arcades, which does not tie into the plot nor the source material at all. The half-baked and underdeveloped characters are a grabbag mismatch of origin, personality and clothing choice as if snatched from five different (probably better) movies. In spite of source material chock full of dozens of creatures, monsters and items, the movie creates some of its own, like a tater tot launcher, the bucket nunchucks and an Iron Golem variant wearing the spinoff only “Boots of Swiftness”. There is a clear lack of synergy and cohesion in this movie, making it a jumbled mess of abstractness.
The characters are awful, and the lazy subplots attempting to tie them together are even worse. The mom is dead at the beginning despite not affecting the film’s emotion or outcome. Jason Momoa’s Garrett The Garbage Man’s subplot about stealing the diamonds to pay for his failing video game store results in kid protagonist Henry being mad at him briefly without any nuance or payoff. His sister also says something that offends him halfway through before the team splits up, which she apologizes for later, and it's so disingenuous that I actually forgot the premise of that subplot and why they should be mad at eachother. Even the joke subplot, about Jennifer Coolige falling in love with a Minecraft villager, which isn’t supposed to be taken seriously at all, is incredibly generic and unfunny. In a word, A Minecraft Movie’s character moments are forced. Forced, and not the least bit natural or interesting.
I have similar negativity saved up for the music, which is abysmal. I really liked the orchestrated rendition of the main theme, but it’s pretty much the only major Minecraft song used. There are incredibly out of place and immersion-breaking pop songs chosen for the film’s big moments, just like the Mario movie. What’s worse, though, is Jack Black’s original songs, so short and grating that it makes me wonder why they’re here at all. He’ll stop dead in his tracks to sing (but not dance, he just stays in place) with minimal or no backing music for fifteen seconds and then be done. It’s not only as arbitrary as the rest of the movie’s aspects, but incredibly annoying as well.
This thing is filled to the brim with overdone and archaic cliches. A beam of light shooting into the sky, armies of henchmen all shutting down or dying at once due to a main tower/building being destroyed at the climax, protagonists with dead-mom-itis, two main characters randomly arguing for no reason and splitting up at the ¾ mark; any new ideas that were introduced in this movie I missed during my bathroom break, except probably not, since the plot was just as sensible when I got back as when I left. But worst of all, this film’s premise itself is flawed, being a recycled isekai fish-out-of-water “strange new world” plot for seemingly no reason, despite “characters get sucked into a video game world” being without a doubt the laziest possible way to do a video game movie.
Audience surrogate dialogue, more commonly referred to these days as “Marvel movie dialogue”, infects this movie’s every corner. An audience surrogate is defined as a character whose purpose is to be a representative for the audience, allowing them to experience the story's events through that character's perspective to help the audience understand the world and its rules. I am absolutely sick to death of seeing this in big blockbuster movies- everything explained or joked about in this movie is something an audience member would gather if they had seen just three other movies in their life, and this type of dialogue (“Did that feel quick to anyone else?” “This place makes no sense!”, etc.) detracts from the experience and talks down to the viewer. There’s a reason Marvel is revisiting and taking a new approach to their dialgue. Also, Jack Black, who’s far too enthusiastic and loud in this movie, has the sole purpose of pointing out and loudly saying Minecraft terms in a funny voice for the entire duration, making me feel that they could have just shown an hour and a half slideshow of Minecraft memes on othe big screen and the audience would have had the same, if not better, reaction to this.
The irony of releasing a movie based on a game about creativity that has none of its own seems to be lost on the filmmakers. A Minecraft Movie is a dismal advertisement for a better experience. When you combine the infamy and boundary-free corporate evil of Warner Bros. and Microsoft, it's a match made in hell, and anything is possible. It's a randomly assorted, cash grabby, creatively bankrupt, seemingly AI-generated shareholder-pleasing schlockfest that jovially (yet simultaneously soullessly) insulted my time and money.
But it is pretty funny.
Okay, I have to admit something. I actually did enjoy going out to see this movie. I went with a friend who’s a bigger Minecraft fan than I am, and we giggled quite a decent amount. I know I was a negative Nancy for this whole review, but that was mostly to set up this next part where I admit that despite it being possibly the worst thing ever constructed by human hands, A Minecraft Movie can be enjoyable for anyone of any age under the right circumstances. I firmly believe that in addition to being a kids movie, this is meant for adults to be a “high” movie, where you get together with a bunch of stupid friends, get high, and enjoy this movie on streaming at home where you can laugh at it ironically together. Watching this movie by yourself in the dark like a stuck-up critic, completely sober, will not work. In that sense, this movie is “critic-proof”: offensive and uninspired, but unable to be criticized unless the watching environment meets specific conditions.
There were some okay jokes, albeit only a handful. My favorites, though, were the ones that directly addressed and made fun of common movie cliches. It’s impossible to know for sure, but I believe those cliches from earlier were put in place ironically to call them out, evidenced by lines such as “Garrett- Are you going to be mad at me forever? Henry- I just got mad at you!” and the main villain pointing out the infamous Skybeam. It's a long shot, but it is possible that this film is subtly making commentary on blockbuster film tropes and the nature of recycling content instead of pushing for creativity. Why this movie would be smart enough to do that but not be smart enough to implement good characters, character moments, visuals, songs or premise is beyond me.
A Minecraft Movie is stupid in every sense of the word. It’s highly enjoyable, and maybe or maybe not for the reasons intended. It’s a ridiculous, uninspired, lazy, hilarious and infinitely memed corporate product that has to be seen to be believed. If you’re over the age of twelve, don’t have any knowledge of Minecraft, and don’t have any friends to laugh at this with, it will make you want to pull your hair out. Otherwise, wait for this to come to streaming to check it out, or at the very least, don’t act like an idiot and ruin a cinema employee’s day by trashing a movie theater “for the memes”.
Flint and steel.
