the minecraft movie broke me

Originally a YouTube video script, but now I have mixed feelings, in all honesty. I'm not sure whether I'm right in my thinking or not. Movies are supposed to be entertaining experiences. If people have fun in a theatre watching a movie, the movie's quality shouldn't really matter.

Take The Room (2003) for example. That is an objectively bad movie, yet it consistently gets reshows in theatres because people have fun going to the cinema and watching this bad movie! And quite obviously, a lot of people enjoyed going to A Minecraft Movie and saying "Chicken Jockey!".

There are a lot of bad-quality movies out there that a lot of people watch and enjoy, despite the errors. Not every movie has to try and be a masterpiece, they just need to be fun and enjoyable, which I believe A Minecraft Movie achieves.

Anyway, I've already written the script, but I don't quite want to make the video anymore out of my own feelings. So I'll just post it here for the users of Spacehey to enjoy.

Furthermore, if you're active on this site and are over 18 (if a minor, PLEASE DNI), please consider adding me as a friend! I want to be more active but I need to find more active users to interact with, so yeah.

____________________________________________________________________________

The Minecraft Movie broke me

–INTRO-

There are a few movies that have fully changed my perception of cinema and cinematic art. In ways like narrative, culture & human understanding, artistry, industry, and creativity. These films are: Scott Pilgrim, Pulp Fiction, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and John Carpenter’s Halloween. I now think ‘A Minecraft Movie’ is on that list, but not in a good way.

I recently went to watch “A Minecraft Movie” with a few of my friends, because after watching the trailer, I was intrigued.

I have been playing Minecraft since 2012, back when the world was going to end. I was 6 or 7 years old back then, and I am nearly 20 years old now. I have been playing this game for over half of my entire life, so it holds a special place in my heart.

The Minecraft movie has been in the works since 2014, so there’s been talks about the idea, screenplay, casting, everything for over a decade. And this is what came to existence after all of that. So why is it so bad?

All of the other movies I have listed before changed the industry in some way. Whether it be pushing the boundaries of visual storytelling, literally creating conventions for other films to follow and parody, or just making something so beautiful, the movies I adore have all shown their worth to be titled art, and they’ve all been thought up, made, and released to the world in less time than A Minecraft Movie did. What excuse does Mojang, Universal, and Warner Bros. have for A Minecraft Movie to be this shockingly… bland?

–MY OPINIONS ON “A MINECRAFT MOVIE”-

I’m going to be quite brief about the actual review  for the film because I would rather like to focus on everything surrounding it instead. But here is my review, I guess.

I ironically gave it 5 stars on letterboxd, but in all honesty, I would give it maybe 1 star or 1 and a half stars, because there are SOME decent bits in the movie.

I will not be talking about the actors, because they all did very well, surprisingly well with the hot garbage that is the script they had to read from. So let’s talk about the script.

‘A Minecraft Movie’ is ‘Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle’ but in Minecraft, that’s it.

‘Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle’ is a 2017 sequel to the 1995 film ‘Jumanji’ starring Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Bla- fucking he- and Karen Gillan. The story follows high school teen Spencer Gilpin and 3 other misfit teens who all get detention for various reasons, and somehow end up getting sucked into the board game-turned-Atari 2600 game Jumanji. The 4 must work together to complete various quests in order to escape the video game and return to the real world alongside a person who has also gotten trapped in the game years before them. Along the way, they learn various lessons about teamwork and overcoming weaknesses, both literal and figurative.

‘A Minecraft Movie’ is a 2025 fantasy adventure comedy film starring Jason Momoa, Danielle Brooks, Jack Black, Emma Myers (she is so beautiful btw) and Sebastian Hansen. The story follows high-school teen Henry and 3 other misfits of various ages who all get stuck in the Overworld, an alternate dimension(? (it’s never really explained)) where everything is made out of blocks- you know Minecraft! The 4 must work together to complete 1 quest in order to escape the Overworld and return to the real world alongside someone who has also gotten trapped in the world years before them. Along the way, they learn various lessons about teamwork and overcoming weaknesses.

There are really only a couple of thematic and narrative differences between the two films, and Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle does everything Minecraft is trying to do, but it just does it all better. Apart from any Jack Black x Jason Momoa shipping, if you want that, then boy do I have the movie for you!-

In A Minecraft Movie, character’s plots are so rushed... The only character’s journey I feel that was even slightly fulfilled was Garret’s, and I think that’s still a stretch to say. I don’t feel these characters have evolved at all.

For instance, Henry was already very creative: He got bullied for making a jetpack, which by the way that sentence is fucking ridiculous. Henry made the jetpack, if the bullies didn’t cut the wire it would’ve worked. He didn’t learn anything, he just embraced the quality of building being awesome a bit more than he did.

Natalie learned... PvP? I guess? That really doesn’t have anything to do with her original character, because all she had before the main plot was that she was trying to get a job at a chip factory? I think?

Dawn gets to open her petting zoo, because she wasn’t doing that already prior to everything. Like seriously, I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried!

Garret has the most amount of development, and in my opinion is the main protagonist. Garret owns a failing game store and is terribly down on his luck, holding onto his past as the 1980-something video arcade game champion. Throughout the movie, he learns there’s more to life than his past, and fuses both his past and new experiences to create an arcade game alongside Steve (I’ll get to him in a bit) which becomes a big hit within the town and now he’s super rich I guess idk.

Steve, fucking Steve. He legit learns nothing. Just like Henry he learns nothing. Why does he want to leave The Overworld at the end? I don’t know. I could not fucking tell you. The first 5 minutes of the film is Steve glazing the Minecraft world, yet he LEAVES TO GO TO THE REAL WORLD FOR NO FUCKING REASON!

Actually, he does meet Alex in the real world. If I were in his shoes, I would leave one of the greatest worlds of all time for a redheaded baddie like Alex. Okay, nevermind, it’s justified.

So to conclude. The character development is dumb, the main plot is borderline plagiarised, and even when the plot is copy-pasted from an actually pretty decent family adventure movie, it’s still so bland!

While writing the script for this video, one of my friends told me something that I didn’t realize until it was pointed out to me, something that I really should’ve picked up on while watching the movie. The female characters are written worse than the male characters.

The thing is, all of the characters are awfully written, so it’s kinda hard to gauge. However, all of the male characters have their little quirks: Henry likes crafting and building, Steve knows everything, and Garret is an actual character.

Natalie has absolutely nothing, genuinely nothing, she becomes a self-defence or MMA instructor? How old is she? Dawn has her petting zoo? I didn’t really feel she liked animals in the movie apart from her relationship with Dennis, which I mean yeah everybody loves dennis he’s a fucking dog.

It seems the writers really didn’t care about anybody apart from Steve and Garret, and pushed everybody else, especially the female characters, to the side. So make of that what you will.

–WHY WAS THIS MOVIE MADE?-

It was made to make money, that part is obvious. A movie based on the IP of the best-selling videogame of all time, that is still getting sales to this day: Of course that’s gonna give film executives dollar signs for eyes! But why was it made like this, with all these flaws?

Because why wouldn’t they? The film's budget was $150m USD, and it made $160m USD in the US alone! On its opening weekend... This is how much the film has grossed now.

If you knew you could get away with making something with the least amount of effort possible and still be perfectly fine, why would you put in any more effort than the specific amount you need?

This is what I believe happened here with A Minecraft Movie, everybody involved knew that since this is a film based on the best-selling videogame of all time, no matter how boring and bland the final product becomes, it will be a money printer. Because all of the kids who play the game will beg their parents to take them, and all of the teenagers who are bored will wanna see what they know is a dogshit film so they can laugh at it, and all the adults who remember playing the game will go see it out of nostalgia, and also because they wanna see what they know is gonna be a dogshit film.

Isn’t that a little sad?

You’re probably yelling at the screen saying ‘yeah man, this happens all the time, so what?’ It really shouldn’t, though. Movies are meant to be made with love and passion for the medium. Films aren’t meant to be hashed out for a quick buck, but like anything I guess, it’s come to that. And you’re right, it’s been like this for a while, but we shouldn’t be so quick to accept it.

If we as a collective agree with the idea of big studios flooding the film industry with bad movies that everyone will go see instead of good ones that deserve more attention being bad, then we can enact the exact change we want by doing something about it.

This kinda goes into my next point:

–KIDS MOVIES SHOULD BE GOOD-

While going back home from the theatre that night, my friend said to me ‘Going in, I thought I was going to absolutely hate it, but I was wrong. It wasn’t good, but it was just a silly little kids movie.’ And I have a couple gripes with this.

How did this guy find enjoyment out of this movie?


Since when did ‘kids movie’ become a synonymous term for ‘bad’?

Personally, I think kids movies should still be made with the same level of craftsmanship that a more mature film would have!

This isn’t to say that ‘most kids movies that have come out now are terrible’, because absolutely the fuck not! Just scrolling through the new family film releases we got Dog Man, Looney Tunes, an animated film about the resurrection of Jesus that at first glance looks A.I. generated but when watching the trailer it’s actually really well made, Paddington, Wallace & Gromit.

However, when a BAD kids flick, like A Minecraft Movie or Harold and the Purple Crayon comes along, people give it a pass because it’s for a younger audience that they believe can’t distinguish between good and bad storytelling. Newsflash dumbass, they can! And they deserve to have good movies!

It’s not like they don’t anymore, like I stated earlier, but there are some outliers, such as A Minecraft Movie that have shown themselves to be incredibly popular while being incredibly unpolished. This can lead to some believing more into this view that kids movies don’t need to be good, when ALL movies should be good in some way! If there’s no passion in the filmmakers hearts for the artform, then it’s going to show in their work. I’m glad the production designers and cast had a great time working on this film, because those are the ONLY points of the film I actively enjoyed and wanted to see more of.

–THE TRENDS-

What doesn’t really help is the trends surrounding it. I’m glad that people are having fun and going to the cinemas again to enjoy time out, but this ain’t it chief.

Not only are you all making a mess you definitely aren’t gonna clean up and leave that to the poor employees who have to now sweep up all this buttered popcorn and spilled soda, but you’re also disrupting other people’s viewing experience. Screaming out when Jack Black says the thing is more than enough.

These trends for making fun of films by watching them? Like anything, started with the 2022 superhero film, Morbius. It was such a flop that people were dressing up in order to go hate-watch the film, and ironically praising the film for making ‘a morbillion dollars’ at the box office.

The next film to get this treatment was the 2022 family animated film ‘Minions: THe Rise of Gru’ where teens were seen dressing up in tailored suits to watch the masterpiece, calling themselves gentleminions.

It’s nice that people are having fun with bad movies but you can see where this is going, analysts are looking at this with marketing to think of a way to artificially create this moment, and it happened here with A Minecraft Movie.

–OUTRO-

I believe I stated my points clearly enough, and I hope you understand and respect my opinions. Filmmaking and cinema is incredibly subjective, so my point is not the right one, because there is no right opinion. If you have a differing opinion to mine. Leave a comment or make a video explaining your thoughts, I love to hear other opinions.