Thousands of young adults across America flocked to theaters hoping to witness the spectacle, yet their presence was dwarfed by the outset of actual kids excited to see their childhood staple become realized in film.
The long awaited release of A Minecraft Movie, based on the iconic Minecraft game, presents an opportunity for Gen Z and Gen Alpha to come together in shared spaces to experience longform media. Drawn in by the sheer symbolic weight of the single most successful video game ever created, hundreds of thousands of children, teenagers, and young adults shook the world in riotous applause at Minecraft made cinematic.
Technology has paradoxically connected humanity together in a manner never before experienced in written history while simultaneously isolating us from one another. The generations raised entirely on internet culture have advanced beyond their predecessors while missing out on the most integral social experiences that have defined communities and shaped monoculture. A Minecraft Movie has offered that mode of connection.
I experienced A Minecraft Movie in two viewings. The first was a late sunday showing, deep into the night where I was the sole theater occupant. The second was nestled into the front row between two coworkers, each of us wearing business suits and surrounded by a mixture of college students, teenagers, and kids.
The sincere celebration of children excited to see their retinue of long collected gamelore actualized by a full feature length movie synchronized with the ironic imitation of bacchanalian cheer at the hands of older crowds who sought to participate in the film’s release as a historic hallmark, this generation’s Rocky Horror Picture show.
The zoomer generation has long processed media in bite-sized portions of singular autonomy, ripping away chunks from whole works and remixing them into a collage of ongoing eternal content consumption. While clips, memes, and references are shared amongst thousands, there is very little coherent alignment between today’s young. Occasionally, events occur which gather children and adolescents to experience shared moments in ways their parents may have taken for granted.
Each viewing presented starkly polaric experiences, the first allowed me to analyze A Minecraft Movie on its sole merits, the second enveloped us in a visceral shared experience of reckless cacophony and wanton expression.
Clips online have surfaced of audience members deliberately bringing buckets and trash bags filled with popcorn solely to spray the entire theater, fires being set in trash cans, and one person brought a live chicken into the movie to accent the rapidly viral “Chicken Jockey” meme which is quoted in the film.
Watching a child scream at the top of his lungs when witnessing some iconic minutiae of his favorite video game come to life on screen, only to be joined in concurrent cheer from the crowd at large is a cerebral experience. It harkens back to cinema’s infancy, a participant infusion of the film into reality itself through occurrences such as a man firing his gun at the screen to “assist” an in-film character in distress during a showing of DW Griffith’s Birth of a Nation in 1915.
Choosing to watch a film in a theater goes beyond simply enjoying the screen and sound, it is an inherently social experience. Enjoying media itself has a social connotation, one often affirmed by knowing your emotional sentiment towards a particular work is shared with others. The theater induces this notion by converting the audience into a layer transposed upon the screen.
The zoomer generation, and likely the emergent traits of the alpha generation following, is defined by an inherent starvation for in-person socialization. Technology, pandemic, and the rigors of modernity have sequestered our youngest cohorts from the outside world and thus they crave such communal experiences. The liminality of ritualistic participation defies the usual stagnant accessibility of media, it presents an experience which cannot be summoned at a whim like any other usual piece of content online.
Minecraft is one of the most important games ever created, a block survival creative building sandbox which spawned numerous imitators, revolutionized the concept of open world gaming, and established itself as a core element of the western childhood.
Minecraft was developed by Markus Persson, a Swedish indie developer, as a personal project. Known online as Notch, Persson would iteratively develop the game while posting his progress on 4chan’s video game board, /v/, and subsequently Reddit.
What began as an independent tinkering project became a multibillion dollar franchise. Notch’s studio Mojang and the rights to Minecraft were purchased by Microsoft in 2014 for $2.5 billion. This acquisition pivoted the game from an intriguing revolutionary computer game played by adolescents and young adults into an all-consuming colorful cartoon brand targeted towards young children.
The shift of Minecraft’s core audience is historically significant. Its memetic arc and the implications of its effect on human psychology have only barely begun to be analyzed. Minecraft’s impact on humanity will experience further serious analysis, inevitably immortalized in textbooks and papers such as the Miladycraft Whitepaper developed in tandem with Minecraft’s capacity to be a foundation for a primitive metaverse concept.
Minecraft’s evolution from being simply a computer game to being playable on phones and iPads cemented it as a cultural staple of childhood itself, akin to the Nerf gun or a pile of Lego bricks scattered across a bedroom floor. The momentum of this cultural shift suggests that A Minecraft Movie was an element of destiny, an inevitability of its constant expansion into cultural zeitgeist.
A Minecraft Movie was fated to become a cult classic from the outset of its trailer, joining the ranks of “so bad it’s good” schlock films such as Rocky Horror Picture Show and Tommy Wiseau’s The Room. Thousands of young adults across America flocked to theaters hoping to witness the spectacle, yet their presence was dwarfed by the outset of actual kids excited to see their childhood staple become realized in film.
During the weekend of release, dozens of clips surfaced online of children shaking entire movie theaters with coordinated screams and floods of popcorn being thrown about as their favorite characters and well recognized game tropes were mentioned with distinction. Despite the film’s mixed setting, combining muted aspects of the original game with aesthetically jarring elements of its spinoff Minecraft Dungeons, various faithful callbacks and expressions of fan service would distinguish themselves as cues for raucous applauding cheers.
A Minecraft Movie has been in development for more than a decade, talks of production began as early as 2014. After going through many directorial options, the project eventually landed in the hands of Jared Hess, acclaimed director of Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre.
Despite any criticism one may have of the film’s incongruity with the original game, distinction must be placed upon the deliberate choice in titling it A Minecraft Movie, rather than “The” Minecraft Movie. This choice suggests a humble withdrawal from canonization, fully acknowledging it as interpretive and allowing for the creative flexibility exhibited in the film.
Hess’ aesthetic influence is imprinted firmly throughout A Minecraft Movie. His particular brand of late 70’s wood paneled retro cassette Idahoan schoolyard drawing idylism is littered throughout the “overworld” in the film. Motifs of Hess’ earlier works are periodically highlighted as callbacks, signifying some connection to a Tater Tot Cinematic Universe of quirky small town characters and awkward VHS wrestling tape rewinds.
The entire film is aesthetically incongruent. The plot sees four mismatched outsiders forced to collaborate as they’re teleported into an otherworldly Minecraft dimension where everything is fantastic and nonsensical. The film adheres to the classic kids movie trope of teleporting normal people into an absurd play-world, a veritable Never-Neverland isekai adventure which frees writers from any significant burden in construing the adaptation to a real world premise.
The Peter Pan native in this scenario would be Jack Black playing Steve, the sole protagonist and human character of the Minecraft game who would normally act as a silent avatar for the player’s identity in a completely plotless sandbox where the only goal is to survive, craft, and create things as the player sees fit. In the film however, Steve is a boisterous doorknob salesman who leaves his Idaho small town to live in the Minecraft dimension for decades, his personality singularly defined by Jack Black’s signature slapstick bravado.
This casting choice was a particular note of derision when the film’s trailer was first released. Jack Black’s typical School of Rock tubular stoner “SKIDOOSH”-word babble and bug-eyed air guitar solos struck a dissonance against the classic calming introspective solitary nature of Minecraft’s atmosphere.
Jason Momoa’s character acts as a competitive foil to Jack Black’s Steve, portraying a washed up arcade machine child champion turned doofus Macho Man Randy Savage. He acts as a punching bag for smug fat black woman smirks and feminine disbelief statements delivered in the style and quality of a GEICO commercial.
The entire cast seemed mismatched, incoherently placed into a poorly portrayed imitation of the Minecraft setting, with characters, creatures, and objects incongruently coated in an abrasive flavor of CGI which oscillates between simplistic simple colors and grotesque pseudo realism textures.
Various objects such as sheep or or zombies betray their pixelated simplicity with hyperrealistic faces contorting in detailed expression. This incongruity, paired with the film’s habit of zooming into the grimaces and screams of its live-action characters invokes a discomforting uncanny valley. If you want to induce psychosis into someone, simply dose them on LSD and force them to watch A Minecraft Movie.
All of these elements combined to induce a massive virality upon the film’s announcement. Long before release, A Minecraft Movie was anticipating huge turnout, heralded by themed merchandise and special collaborations. Absurd action figures of “Steve” depicting Jack Black’s stout obese bearded visage would stock store shelves while McDonald’s sold special “Minecraft Meals” in themed boxes with highly sought after collectibles.
The elements of A Minecraft Movie’s aesthetic obscenity are crucial to its role as a communal unifier. The film’s execution garnered a significant amount of attention through the controversial choices made by its creators. This form of shock marketing has been scrutinized as possibly intentional, in the same vein as the Sonic the Hedgehog film releasing horrific uncanny depictions of its titular character to great disapproval.
There were a variety of references to extensions of Minecraft’s existence, such as a tribute to Technoblade, a Minecraft YouTube streamer whose passing was mourned by the community at large. Various other notable streamers or game developers had cameos as background characters, iconic songs from the game served as brief soundtrack bites in the movie, and even the evil villain’s mystical staff was a distant reference to a popular YouTube stick figure animation series centered around Minecraft.
Theater workers across the world lamented in despair when they quickly realized each viewing of A Minecraft Movie would see thousands of calories of popcorn kernels strewn about the theater floor amidst sticky dried puddles of spilled soda. Sincere appreciation blends seamlessly with performative imitation throughout the weekend, each iterative showing a roulette wheel spinning between the possibility of muted subsequence or full blown chaos depending on the sensibilities of the local community.
A Minecraft Movie isn’t worth seeing, it’s worth experiencing. Regardless of any criticism aimed at its form, the film is a sincere attempt at reconciling generational rift and attempting to connect with the younger generation. This sincerity shines through even the firmest shackles of corporate slop imposed by multiple executives across several dozen IPs.
If you have missed out experiencing the film as it should be, amongst the raucous cheers of children subconsciously imitating a hockey riot, take solace in knowing there will likely be communities of obsessed cult movie geeks ready to chant out quotes in small viewings for years to go.
Chicken Jockey.
Michael Dragovic is Chief of Staff at Remilia Corporation and goes by Scorched Earth Policy on Twitter (@scearpo). When he’s not working, you can find him hovering above the Pacific Ocean as a 750-mile wide metal cube rotating and oscillating at Mach 5.
This Story originally came from humanevents.com