A Minecraft Movie(2025) Written Review

 

 

A Minecraft Movie

Cast: Jack Black, Jason Momoa, Danielle Brooks

Writers: Way Too Many to List Here

Director: Jared Hess

*** out of Five Stars

 

There is a television ad that has McDonald's mascots in the world of Minecraft to promote both the fast food chain and the movie.  This is nothing new as countless other companies have done cross promotion for other features as well.  What makes this interesting is that the ads seem to push more for the video game than they do the movie.  Even though it does show clips from A Minecraft Movie.  Seeing these characters in the syle of the game is going to make people think of that more than the film itself. But maybe fans do not mind.  This is a decent fast food feature film.  Fans will find a lot to love about it and be full while others will be fed just enough to tide them over until they get home to eat. 

Based on the popular P. oint O.f V.iew video game where you build and create things.  Minecraft doesnt really have any story to it.  Even it's lead character Steve doesnt have a back story in the game because he is suppouse to be you while playing.  Sonic The Hedgehog and Super Mario Bros are both famous video game characters but they didn’t start off with their own movie.  They each started off small with comic books,half hour tv shows and cameos on other games. The makers of Minecraft however though this approach wasn’t good enough so they went big for their first adaptation so here we have, A Minecraft Movie.

 

The plot is simple enough.  There is this guy named Steve(Jack Black) who discovers a portal into another world where you can create anything your imagination tells you but doesn’t explain why you can't create in the real world but never mind that.  Anyways while in this new world, Jack discovers another portal which leads him to a darker world where creativity is frowned upon and only treasure and gold matter there.  He has to hide a certain device from the bad guys so they won’t be able to go into the good Minecraft world and make it dark like theirs.  Meanwhile we get introduced to our other characters including; A once famous video game player past his prime(Jason Momoa) A young highly strung social media worker(Emma Myers) and her very creative but very awkward younger brother(Sebastian Hansen) and we get their real estate agent(Danielle Brooks) for no other reason except to have more women in this story .  When the little creative but awkward little brother discovers how to enter Minecraft.  They will join Steve to help defeat the bad guy and save both of their worlds forever.

For fans of this video game, there is going to be a lot for them to highly enjoy.  It has references to settings, items and characters of the popular series.  Seeing the world of this game being projected on a huge theater screen especially IMAX is going to be a very wonderful thing for them to see.  For others not familiar with the source material its going to be a movie that you can enjoy like eating at McDonalds or Burger King but not something you want to devour every day.

 While it does have good actors and some great action sequences, none of the characters except for Jason Momoa’s have any major changes to their persona.  None of them grow as people really(not even Steve).  Who they were at the start is basically who they are at the end.  That’s not a bad thing that they don’t change but the movie wants you to believe they do. There is also no one for the audience to side with when watching it.  A great one would have been the real estate character.  But without a personality she could have been removed and it wouldn’t make any difference at all. For a movie written by eight people, you would think there would have been a better story here but that is not what we want in our fast food cinema.

This is Mojang Studios first big screen feature and they are not going to take chances with their brand name like Mattel did with Barbie.  Director Jared Hess may have had an indie hit with Napoleon Dynamite but he doesn’t have the awards track record Greta Gerwig had before she took on the iconic doll. There is not going to be any singular vision or strong statements to be said.  Except for your basic be good to each other and stand up for yourselves. It's lessons are ones kids should have learned way before watching this but it's nice in a non offensive way.     

Watching A Minecraft Movie will feel a lot like eating a value meal at fast food. The ones you get for $6 that come with something extra like ice cream or extra nuggets.  It’s filling and will do it’s job but next time you may want to spend a little extra and get a better meal.   The studio is hoping people will like this that they tacked on two post credit sequences to set up a sequel but it's not clear how many fans of the game will come to suppourt this or not.

I'm a proud member of the Minnesota Film Critics Association.  Read my bio below

https://mnfilmcriticsassociation.com/2024/09/25/jasonhemming/