A while ago, I expressed my thoughts with the first trailer for a Minecraft Movie, and how I believed it fundamentally misunderstood Minecraft’s design philosophy, citing the very generic another world story template used in many other previous adaptations of popular media (Mario, Barbie, Harold and the Purple Crayon (still haven’t seen it btw, don’t hate myself that much)). The movie wasn’t yet released back then however, so I didn’t completely write it off as a lost cause, but since the movie is out, I thought i’d watch the movie too see if the trailer was as indicative of the movies ireciton as I though. So, was I right about my assessment? Is the Minecraft movie as generic as I predicted?
The short answer is, yes, but it’s not completely devoid of qualities that reflect Minecraft’s game design
Overall I like the movie, but I don’t think it’s breaking new ground in the world of video game movies. It definitely feels like a movie that was conceptualized because someone saw Minecraft was popular, and wanted an excuse to use Jack Black while his performance in the Super Mario Bros movie was fresh on everybodies minds. I know this because Jack Black in this movie is just playing Jack Black, rather than Minecraft Steve
However, there is one element of the film that’s almost its saving grace, and that’s its main cast and what they represent. The four main characters (Henry, Natalie, Dawn, and Garrett the Garbageman Garrison) all have personal qualities that intentionally correspond to a certain way a player can choose to play Minecraft. Henry is the most blatant, with the film consistently showing that he’s creative, and doesn’t follow conventional methods. He’s the first to figure out Minecraft’s mechanics, and the only character to craft objects that aren’t in vanilla minecraft. Henry represents the modder, someone who adds, and modifies the code of Minecraft to expand new possibilities
Natalie is Henry’s older sister and only living guardian, and someone who feels responsible for Henry’s safety. As such, she’s the one who specializes in combat, immediately having a knack for it relatively early in the film, and her combat ability was even being able to match Henry and his modded creations in the war against the piglins and she did so with vanilla Minecraft items. Dawn is the siblings' landlord, as well as an avid animal lover, and this is reflected in the world of minecraft by her intuitively taming wolves how one would in the game without any prior guidance, allowing her to tame Minecraft Steve’s wolf Dennis, which gave her and Natalie a way to locate Minecraft Steve and the woodland mansion, despite their lack of a map
Garrett the Garbageman Garrison is a retro video game store owner who was once a popular arcade game player, who has some baseline understanding of how video games work, but is unable to fully grasp the world of Minecraft and is constantly in competition with Minecraft Steve. Due to his familiarity with retro games as opposed to modern games, he represents players that are still learning the basics of Minecraft, who are typically known in the playerbase as “noobs”
Essentially the four main characters representing these four types of players do represent jeb’s outline of Minecraft’s game design, that Minecraft is a game with unlimited possibilities, and the four main characters uniquely adapting (or in the case of Garrett the Garbageman Garrison, clumsily struggling through) to the world of Minecraft, is loyal to the game’s core design and the idea does deserve praise.
Even my earlier statement of Jack Black playing himself plays into this. Since Steve is essentially a player insert, a medium through which the player can interact with the world of Minecraft, why shouldn’t Jack Black portray Minecraft Steve as a representation of himself? Even Jack’s character in the film, a 9 to 5 office worker who literally escapes his reality through the world of Minecraft, is pretty representative of Minecraft’s modern playerbase.
Granted, while this element of the film does have plenty of merits, it’s by no means perfectly executed. Natalie and Dawn don’t have as much screen time as Henry, Garrett the Garbageman Garrison or Minecraft Steve, making moments where they adapt to the world of Minecraft rare, and Henry, while undeniably creative with the most unique creations in the film, doesn’t get to show off his creativity as often as I would’ve liked. There’s a segment of the film where Henry is in the storage area of a woodland mansion that I thought he’d craft his way out of, but he doesn’t and I thought this was a huge missed opportunity.
At the end of the day, a Minecraft movie definitely feels like an excuse to capitalize on current trends with Jack Black saying the names of Minecraft items in a very funny Jack Black way (which is undeniably very funny, but please don’t ruin theatres over it please), but like a two hour mining session during a Minecraft playthrough, there may be a diamond if you look hard enough
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