★★☆☆☆
Most would approach A Minecraft Movie with the wide-eyed hope of stepping into a blocky wonderland—a big screen reimagination of the pixelated sandbox game that defined an entire generation. Naturally, one would assume the adaptation is a cinematic portal into a world we’ve mined, crafted, and dreamt of for over a decade.
But alas, the film falls short of our nostalgic wishes.
Rather than immersing the viewer in the familiar thrill of exploring the Overworld’s endless biomes or battling the Ender Dragon with enchanted gear, A Minecraft Movie seems oddly eager to flee its own universe. The characters spend more time trying to escape the very realm we once longed to enter than actually basking in it.
The film opens with several minutes of narration from Jack Black, voicing Steve—the face of “Minecraft.” Through Black’s exposition, we learn that Steve—the fearless explorer of my childhood imagination—was just a bored office worker. Apparently, he led a thoroughly mundane 9-to-5 life until he discovered a mysterious artifact in a mineshaft, opening a portal to the Minecraft Overworld.
The artifact finds its way back to Earth, to a small town in Idaho, where we are introduced to our ragtag crew of protagonists: orphaned siblings Henry (Sebastian Hansen) and Natalie (Emma Myers); Dawn (Danielle Brooks), a real estate agent whose car doubles as a petting zoo; and Garrett (Jason Momoa), a debt-ridden, washed-up arcade champ clinging to his glory days.
Eventually, in what can only be described as a ripoff of Jumanji, a sequence begins in which Henry stumbles upon an artifact at the arcade and ends up getting sucked through a portal into the world of “Minecraft” with the rest of the group.
This sequence takes place a full 25 minutes into a 100-minute film, meaning we spend a quarter of the runtime nowhere near the setting people came to see. But now that they’re finally there, the plot seems determined to shuttle them all back to the small Idaho town where they are unequivocally losers.
Soon after their arrival, the artifact is destroyed during a chaotic brawl with zombies and skeletons, who look like David Cronenberg nightmares rendered in cubes. With no way home, the group teams up with Steve to travel to a Woodland Mansion in search of another artifact. Because, of course, a spare of such a rare item exists.
The film flirts with the signature “Minecraft” mechanics—building, mining, crafting—but never commits. At one point, Henry constructs a tater tot launcher, an item that does not exist in the real game, at a crafting table. It might have been charming if it weren’t so obviously out of place.
Meanwhile, Steve somehow possesses items that, canonically, he should absolutely not have based on his apparent in-game progression. Command “/c” and “/give” do wonders, I guess.
By the midpoint, the movie’s flaws become even more glaring.
The acting ranges from painfully stiff to oddly overwrought. Black is annoyingly over-expressive as if he were pulled straight out of a live-action Tom and Jerry. Hansen and Myers deliver performances so flat they could fit them in their own hotbar. And Momoa and Brooks aren’t much better.
It’s hard to say whether the fault lies more with the writing or the weary expressions on their faces that scream, “How did my agent convince me of this?”
With a reported nine-figure budget, it feels like only six of those digits actually made it to the screen.
Paper-thin plot and clunky performances aside, there is a glimmer of what the movie should have been. As someone who grew up with “Minecraft”—and still plays from time to time—it was genuinely special to see pieces of my childhood brought to life. Watching Henry build a castle and stand proudly inside it, visiting a “Minecraft” village, and dodging Ghast fireballs all in real life—my childhood self would have exploded with joy.
The moment a chain reaction of Creepers combined into one massive explosion—a feature not even possible in the game—sparked that nostalgic, sandbox-fueled thrill of “what if.” And yes, when a wolf appeared, tamed and every bit as adorable as I imagined, my heart melted a little.
Without those moments, the film would’ve been a total nightmare. But it manages to scrape by on nostalgia alone—in the small amounts of it that there were.
Still, it’s a bit insulting that the story expected us to care more about the awkward misfit teens and their earthbound drama than the very game we came to see. The title A Minecraft Movie implies it’s just one of potentially many. Maybe one of those installments will offer better acting, better storytelling, and—dare I dream—better jokes. Or perhaps they will be worse. But honestly, I’m not sure that’s possible.
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