Minecraft has jumped from game consoles to movie screens, and theaters across the country are shaking with perhaps the most vocal fan participation this side of an Avengers finale. As the film broke box office records, reports (and phone-shot videos) have been pouring in across the internet of the game-based fantasy-comedy inciting near-riots of applause, cheersand popcorn-chucking as the youthful target audience expresses their gratitude for references to the source material’s characters, memes and attendant lore – particularly the Chicken Jockey, a visual reference to a relatively rare but well-known phenomenon within the game. If you don’t know any more than this, there’s no real need to investigate further; the answer doesn’t matter. Even for someone actively watching A Minecraft Movie, it has absolutely no bearing on the actual story or characters at hand.
The reactions have become a TikTok trend unto themselves, with viewers making sure to record the screen in readiness for the audience bedlam that ensues (curiously, it happens when Jack Black says “Chicken Jockey”, not when the character actually first appears). Essentially, the kids are watching themselves watch the movie, not unlike how they might watch a stream of someone else playing the game and screaming along in real time. Some adults are amused by the chaos; others have attempted to decode how much of it is genuine enthusiasm and how much is half-ironic insta-nostalgia (yes, Minecraft has been around long enough to inspire nostalgia). Still others have simply panicked and called the cops; as seen in the video that helped establish the trend, officers apparently escorted the rowdiest kids out of one showing.
But even some adults who have not gone that far are nonetheless horrified that kids are watching movies primarily like amped-up YouTubers or TikTok influencers, in noisy search of content. This in turn has inspired a broader debate, especially in the more film-focused corners of social media, about whether it makes sense to criticize A Minecraft Movie at all.
Here are the two opposing schools of thought: one says that any disgust or disdain expressed towards A Minecraft Movie is wasted breath, the sour rantings of adults who simply are not the target audience and, as such, have forgotten the value of kids enjoying junky movies aimed straight at their still-forming brains and no one else’s. The other rejoins that kids are not, in fact, mindless YouTube receptacles, and deserve entertainment, maybe even art, that reflects this, whether or not they yet have the tools to evaluate movies critically.
The thing is, both of these ideas are essentially correct.
First, in the short run, A Minecraft Movie is undoubtedly good for the film exhibition industry, which is probably in more immediate danger than the film production industry. Movies will continue to be made for the foreseeable future, whether for big studios, Netflix, other tech companies, or specialty companies such as A24 and Neon. Theaters, though, require individual paid-ticket hits in a way that, say, the self-dealing Netflix absolutely does not. Anything that draws tweens and teens – a demographic that seems increasingly likely to scroll endlessly through their algorithm-driven virtual worlds – into a communal viewing experience will be a net good for everyone (except the poor workers who have to clean the popcorn-strewn, pubescent-sweat-soaked auditoriums).
And frankly, the mania greeting A Minecraft Movie is not especially less sophisticated than the howls of delight that greeted the big portal sequence from Avengers: Endgame, even if some would undoubtedly quibble with the, ah, craft that has gone into these respective fantasy worlds. Ironically, some of the hardcore fans who get most amped about one brand of mass-appeal spectacle are most likely to turn up their noses at another group’s equivalent of the same thing, whether Twilight (because it is for teen girls) or Minecraft (because it is not their preferred childhood game). Some of these movies are quite bad. But grownups seething over a children’s movie is pretty undignified; just think of the adult men who were never actually interested in a Snow White movie, pretending to care about some supposed woke desecration by the live-action remake. Movies should be judged at least in part by their aims, and A Minecraft Movie aims to entertain giddy 10-year-olds, just as Snow White is a fairytale for even younger kids.
On the other hand: it is also the critic’s imperative to point out when they find a movie lazy, uninspired, mercenary, or just plain hideous to look at, all things that a children’s film can be, even if some children enjoy it. Personally, I kind of like A Minecraft Movie; the first half of it reminded me enough of director Jared Hess’s Napoleon Dynamite that I was more amused than irritated. But it’s more than fair to argue that kids deserve better than regurgitations of their favorite characters, games or memes.
That’s not exclusive to kids, though. No single piece of junk can annihilate anyone’s cultural diet, and no single type of media can expand it. Many superhero movies are pretty good, but viewers who subsist primarily on them will eventually see their cultural taste buds dulled. YA novels aren’t less real than other books, but it is not unreasonable to wonder whether adults who read them near-exclusively might challenge themselves more often. (I know this well as a frequent comics reader.) It’s hard to keep a tween away from internet videos where people play video games and scream (or, sometimes worse, try to do comedy sketches without any training in or observation of sketch comedy); probably the best you can do is to also have them watch movies and shows that are written, directed and/or acted with some genuine care or sensitivity. True cultural curiosity doesn’t have to leave out Minecraft or Sonic the Hedgehog or endless Minions sequels with dance-party endings. It just needs alternatives.
The problem with A Minecraft Movie hitting so big isn’t this movie in particular so much as the vast gulf between its massive grosses and whatever types of movies could be left in the dust in the rush to make cinema into game-adjacent content. So let kids have their popcorn riots over the Chicken Jockey, by all means – and then see if you can work in some Looney Tunes, or Studio Ghibli, or King Kong (or, for that matter, Napoleon Dynamite) before they turn into little fandom tribalists.
