northNothing makes you feel older than watching someone two generations younger than you play Minecraft, except maybe watching someone two generations younger than you. looking at someone else Playing Minecraft on YouTube. (What are they doing? Why are they always so excited?) This may all feel a bit 2011: Gen A has generally moved on to watching YouTubers play Fortnite, Roblox, and Elden Ring with their minds. But there are still millions of people, most of them kids, who play the game every month, and there’s a powerful nostalgia for this virtual Lego brick game among the young Gen Z adults who grew up with it. A Minecraft movie was inevitable.
This movie has been in the works since 2012, originally with Ryan Reynolds’ Wrexham FC teammate Rob McElhenney attached to direct and Steve Carell attached to star. Several failed attempts, Covid and the pesky actors’ strike meant filming didn’t start (in Auckland, New Zealand) until early 2024. A Minecraft Movie, due for release in April 2025, is directed by Napoleon Dynamite director Jared Hess and stars Jason Momoa, Jack Black, Emma Myers, Jennifer Coolidge, Jermaine Clement and Matt Berry. Judging by the trailer released this week, it’s even crazier than you might imagine.
Video games and franchise films can play out in a variety of ways. Game characters can escape into our world, such as Sonic (an alien hedgehog) being sent to Earth, or Barbie and Ken escaping from Barbieland. Real people can be trapped in a video game, such as in Tron, and have to complete some sort of magical quest to escape. Video game characters can become human, as in Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, Prince of Persia, Doom, and The Last of Us. Tetris focuses on the real-life race to obtain the game license, and Grand Turismo is the story of a gamer making it as a real driver.
In A Minecraft Movie, a group of humans are sucked into the Overworld, the dimension where Minecraft is real. A bewildered Momoa has just returned from getting his highlights and bangs done at the hair salon, having accidentally picked out the wrong pink coat. Orange Is the New Black’s Danielle Brooks is there with some “guys” (including Wednesday’s 22-year-old Emma Myers). There they meet Steve, one of Minecraft’s default characters, who wears a light blue T-shirt and jeans and is played by Jack Black, who after his turn as Bowser in last year’s Super Mario movie is surely regarded by Warner Bros as some sort of talisman for success. “This guy is a mess,” complains Myers.
“Anything you can dream of, you can do here,” Black explains to our bewildered heroes, as cuboid pigs fly by and pink, square sheep go “baa.” To get back home, “they’ll have to take over this world (and protect it from evil things like piglins and zombies, too) as they embark on a magical quest.” Told you so.
Reactions to the trailer have ranged from “horrifying”, “devastating” and “expensive and poor quality” to “painful for the parents who will be dragged to see it” and “The worst thing that can happen to cinema in 2024”. But, like many video game spin-offs, it’s not aimed at adult film critics. The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw, who knows his way around film, was so critical in his two-star review of 2023’s The Super Mario Bros Movie (as was The Observer’s Wendy Ide in her one-star review) that Guardian games editor Keza MacDonald was moved to defend it as a decent translation of the games, even if it’s not that great a film.
So what does a real connoisseur think? “I think it looks like crap,” says 10-year-old Arlo, who I rudely interrupt as he plays Roblox on the iPad after school. “Minecraft is no longer at its peak of popularity. Why are they making a movie about it now? I don’t think it will be successful.” (He’s right.) Does he like that it features real people set in the world of Minecraft?
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“No. They should have made it like The Lego Movie or Super Mario Bros. That was fine because there were no real actors. Steve is not Steve.” Sorry, Minecraft. Sorry, Jack Black. The pundit has spoken. We’ll see in April if the full movie can salvage things.
