So, I’ve seen “A Minecraft Movie” and after analysing my experience for a couple of days, I would like to give my review of the good, the bad, and the ugly of this film. I shall start from the worst part and continue with better things until we reach the Technoblade reference. I may be based to put the legend as the best part of the film but I don’t mind being subjective in a personal review. The review is spoiler free, by the way. I’ve got nothing to say about the story since it’s simple and generic.
To begin with, I would like to say that overall I enjoyed the film and even laughed a few times. The most expected part for me was that the Minecraft part of the film was much better than the “human” part. It was a bit crammed, so I don’t really mind that we were not shown many things. The time of the film is rather limited after all, it’s just there are places where the film could have been cut to make space for some meaningful moments. On this note I shall begin my review which I shall fragment into certain elements in the film that I found worth being mentioned for one reason or another.
The Characters
Before we start, though, I would like to give some intorductory words about the characters in order not to interrupt narration later.
- Steve (played by Jack Black) – He is the “child who earned for the mines”. His charcter is meant to represent the Minecraft Steve character, the first to enter the world of Minecraft and discover how it functions. Jack Black plays his role pretty well, he is just not how I would have imagined the game Steve to look in human form.
- Garrett Garrison (played by Jason Momoa) – A gamer of the year in the 80s, now a loser who cannot accept that his moment of fame has gone and if he wants to be in the spotlight again he needs to do something. His character got a nickname The Garbage Man because of the game he was good at, but in reality he looks like a person who gave up on life and lives in garbage, so it’s rather fitting. He is, by the way, the main character of the story. The film may say that it’s Steve or Henry, but it’s Garrett’s problem that is given most time and it’s his character who is given the most development, which I find to be a strange choice for a Minecraft film targeted towards children.
- Henry (played by Sebastian Eugene Hansen) – a genius child who likes to draw and apparently invent things. He is bullied for his intellect at first but later praised for it.
- Natalie (played by Emma Myers) – Looks to young to be a legal guardian to Henry (she is his older sister in the film), but Internet says that the actress herself is 23, so what do I know. She had to become the head of the family after their mother’s death and is quite lost as to what to do. She disapproves of her brother’s drawings at first as she believes his talents may repel people from him (and she is right) but by the end she accepts his intellect.
- Dawn (played by Danielle Brooks) – a real estate agent, who runs a petting zoo on wheels in order to earn money. She introduces the children to their new home and that’s all I can say about her character. She is strong-willed and pragmatic, but that’s something I shall discuss in detail later.
Now i shall introduce several moments in the film that I either found problematic, decided to mark as an interesting find or simply liked about the film.
№1 One person per elytra
There is a chase sequence in the film where Steve is forced to fly literally on Garrett. In order to get away from piglins they need to a position way to closely resembling the infamous 69 pose… I won’t commentate of the fact that there are two grown men hugging each other too closely for a cinema screen, but, please, I don’t want to see sex references in my children film. I say children film here because I know that the majority of Minecraft players are children and they are the ones who would want to see the film.
I mean, it literally shocked me when I was in the cinema. The main reason I complain here is that the scene is rather provocative in its imagery and unnecessary for the plot. It could have been cut out easily.
№2 Video Games are for boys
The trailers have shown us that there are five people who get into the Minecraft world: Steve, Garrett, Henry, Natalie, and Dawn. What can I say, the girls are basically nonexistent in the plot, they show up in the beginning of the story and in the end. To make matters more peculiar, the film chose a grown man loser to be the main character rather than the boy. I mean, if they didn’t want the boy to take up time, then they could have given the leading role to Steve. He introduced the world of Minecraft in the beginning of the film, but in the end he was more of a guide than the hero. I’m sorry for the comparison, but, please, think about Genshin Impact: you play as the Traveller, the protagonist of your story, and Paimon acts as your guide. Here, Steve is Paimon, an integral part of the world around you but Garrett is the protagonist.
The fact that a looser who doesn’t want to grow from his past moment of fame and reach for a new horizon is the main character is rather disappointing on its own. But, you see, here a little “coming out”: I’m a woman. When I saw the way the female characters were treated by the film, I want to say only one thing: No representation is better than bad representation. By that I mean that the way the story introduced the female characters and later disposed of them for the main adventure to return them as an afterthought and spare hand at the finale it felt like they were not allowed to go on an adventure in the first place. Or, maybe, because their adventure is not worth being focused on, only the boys one matters. I say it in this sexist manner because the film introduces short clips of a villager in the human world when it want to cut the boring walking parts, but it doesn’t allow us to see how Natalie and Dawn explore the Minecraft world and make their own discoveries. They only appeared by the end when it was convenient for the plot. I mean, why not change the villager scenes for their adventure? I wouldn’t have been critiquing this at all had they not appeared in the trailer with the other characters. But for now their roles are – a function character who disapproves of creativity and an obligatory Black character. Either cut them out completely or give them some space.
№3 Creativity VS Logic & Pragmatism
We are getting close to the grey zone here. In this part I shall voice my take on the moral of the film: creativity is good, you shouldn’t be ashamed of being creative. It’s a good moral to a story even without nuance which is important. The only thing I don’t like about it is how the film opposes pragmatism.
The reason why there was tension between Natalie and Henry in the beginning of the film was because how he would always draw and invent things. She didn’t seem to opposed to the activity itself but rather concerned that Henry won’t be able to fit in by not knowing how to be normal. She was right in that, there is time for creativity and there is time for the mundane, the film doesn’t develop the topic in a deep enough way for me to judge it well, but from how the idea was presented, it definitely sounded like: “real life is boring and creativity is bullied and ostracized in society”.
I mean, if this is truly the reality these days, than I’ve been living in Apocrypha by Hermaeus Mora’s side the entire time because it seems rather comical to me. All in all, this moral of the story could use some fine tuning because in order to invent like Henry did drawing well is not enough, you need logic which is treated as a polar opposite of creativity here.
№4 American Culture Hit Puberty
What I mean by this part is that the film is very evidently American. It’s not bad, so we have finally hit the grey zone. It’s just that American culture got very pronounced and very different from what I am used to seeing in Europe and in anime. What I mean by being pronounced mostly concerns the lifestyle of people and the stereotypical behaviour displayed by some characters. The classical school bullying of a smart kid, the food they cook, and so on. I’m used to seing it in cartoons, but I really hope that it’s not the reality there. Because if it is I can only sympathize with America like my mother did after watching this film.
I will repeat it again, though, this pronounced American identity is not bad, it’s just very different from what I am used to, and sometimes it’s hard to adapt to some things especially if your own habits are completely different.
№5 Time to Mine, Time To Craft
The Minecraft part of the film was the best part. Yes, I liked every part of the film that was Minecraft. I loved the pink wool house, the creeper farm, the water bucket trick, the mushroom house and the woodland mansion.
Oh, by the way, i saw an image of an impossible Minecraft roof from the trailer. Here is a TikTok on this topic because I couldn’t find the original photo, but its shown there:
Don’t panic it’s a very possible build. Those blocks are slabs. They are just not the size of the in-game slabs because in that case two block should be the height of a standard human like Steve… It would be hard to make a decent film with such proportions. This leniency from cannon had to be there.
In other words, when the film shows you Minecraft, it delivers well, when it shows humans it fumbles. Yet, i came there to see Minecraft, I was not disappointed by that aspect. It’s like the Oblivion Remaster, all the important parts of the broken AI were left intact.
№6 Technoblade never dies
Just like I have said in the beginning, the best part is the Technoblade reference. He truly holds special place in the Minecraft world. So long, legend.
As a closing remark I want to say that the film felt great when my mother and I watched it. We laughed at a number of moments, it was a nice experience. There were some noticeable mistakes in the film, like Garrett using tools before they were even introduced to the workbench crafting table and the creeper farm being openly put on rails. Those mistakes didn’t smear the experience, though. In any case, it’s a fun film for the fans and a good introduction to those who has never played Minecraft. Regardless, this film should we viewed only as fan service, not a film that can teach something good because it’s not trying to teach anything, so even though the characters openly talk about the moral of the film, it lacks so much nuance and even proper setup, it’s best not to try to see it there at all.
Geeky Nerd 
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