It’s been a while since I’ve done a movie review. I’ve never been all that good at them, so bear with me while I try to remember how this is done. I think mostly these things devolve into just me ranting about stuff. Sometimes that stuff includes the movie I’m reviewing.
First let’s rant about Minecraft. What is it, you might be asking yourself if you’re older than 40, and don’t have kids.
Well, it’s a survival crafting game. What is a survival crafting game? God, we’re really learning to walk here.
Survival crafting games, like 7 Days to Die, drops you in a world with barely anything to keep you alive against the oncoming threats in their world. 7 Days it’s zombies and in Minecraft… well, it’s also zombies.
You have to craft everything you need to live, clothes, armor, weapons, farm food, build shelter, everything.
And everything is destructible. If you can see it, you can mine it for resources.
There’s no real story, aside from the one you create yourself. In a small way Minecraft does however have a set goal for the player. You can raid dungeons, fight bosses and the main goal is to kill the Ender Dragon. A missive outing that is hidden to the player, something you have to figure out on your own. Or nowadays just look up on YouTube as this is something several people try to speedrun.
My knowledge of Minecraft stems only from watching others play it. But I feel that grew out of fashion about 5 years ago, when this movie should have come out. As that was peek Minecraft hype with a whole slew of Minecraft YouTubers. Who ironically have mostly all been outed as sexual predators and pedophiles.
At one time almost every famous Minecraft streamer got caught up in some kind of controversies involving minors. Not the game’s fault, just strange that it turned out that way.
Which makes me somewhat worried about the cast of the Minecraft Movie. What things will come out about them? Other than Jack Black being a massive sellout.
I want to point attention to the writers on this film, all 6 of them. That’s a giant redflag. Most of them have almost no credits whatsoever. And the ones who do really aren’t that impressive.
What I’m not seeing is Jared Hess and his brother as writers, like we saw for Napoleon Dynamite, Nacho Libre and Gentlemen Broncos, nearly all his other movies.
What makes a Jared Hess film for me is the strange humor. Napoleon Dynamite I think is one of the strangest most original comedies ever made.
Minecraft Movie kind of falls in the Gentlemen Broncos category. It has that vintage retro feel, and that weirdness, but it isn’t memorable.
Minecraft Movie is played very safe. Only hints of Jared Hess are there. Like aromatherapy where they think if you keep deluding it with water, the water will retain the DNA. But really, you’re just drinking water.
This movie is so generic, it was like they had a list they checked things off of. We need a Creeper, check, we need Jack Black to yell a bunch of random things for the trailer. Chicken Jockey! Flint and Steel! Check. And how about we toss in a few random songs. Like that halfassed Peaches song his did in that terrible Mario movie the kids love. Do that, but like 6 more times.
I want to add that the live action characters in this block CGI world just doesn’t work. It looked strange and out of place in the teaser trailer, it looked strange in the full trailer, and it looks so out of place with the actual movie.
I kept thinking about that all CGI but real actors movie Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. How weird everything looked because it was like the first time aside from Tron anyone had tried this.
This should have been an all CGI movie, keep the hyper realistic look, but make the characters at least in the Minecraft world blocky and animated.
I do want to explain the plot, but it makes so little sense, I’m having difficulty trying to figure out where to start.
The movie actually starts with like a 15-minute introduction to “Steve”, the Jack Black character.
That’s another thing that kept creeping (pun intended) up on me while watching this. Like Star Wars Episode One, who is the main character?
Is it Obi-won aka Steve? Is it Jason Momoa? Is it the kid they crammed in this? Sure, it isn’t the sister who looks 12, who I guess is meant to be an adult. And I know it isn’t the random real estate agent, who for some reason tags along on this adventure.
I’m not the biggest fan of this technique, where they feel the movie needs an “Audience Surrogate” for them to relate to, while drawing focus away from the usually more interesting character. Examples being Pirates of the Caribbean.
These characters aren’t likable or relatable enough, so we have to focus on Will and Elizabeth. I don’t care about them, just give me more Jack Sparrow!
I don’t care about the weird stuttering lispy kid and his weird 12-year-old looking sister mother or their dumb Realtor.
Give me Minecraft Steve, the only character from the actual game. And that character probably shouldn’t have been played by Jack Black, since he wasn’t playing a character at all, he was literally just being himself for 90 minutes.
The only one who seemed to actually be playing a character was Jason Momoa. He’s the Garbage Man, a videogame pro from the 80’s who thinks he’s hot shit, but in fact sucks balls and has no friends.
The one who gets the most attention is Steve, as he tells us the audience his story. Although a funnier transition would have been cutting to him telling this story to an annoyed coworker. After telling us that he yearned for the mines, another trailer quote, they cut to him at an office job.
Telling this to a coworker works better comedically than just more voice over, exposition dumping.
After he gets fired for presenting the boss with his idea for Steve Land, which of course featured a song, Steve goes back to the mines where he finds “The Orb”. Which is just a cube, but this is Minecraft where anything spherical doesn’t exist.
This orb opens a gateway to Overworld. Aka cubeland, aka Minecraft where everything is a cube.
He befriends a wolf or maybe it’s a dog who he names Dennis. And the two go on an adventure together that we see through a montage.
During their adventure, they find a portal to The Nether, an underground place ruled by pigs.
Steve is quickly imprisoned, but Dennis manages to escape, taking the orb back through the portal, dropping it off back in the real world.
Now flash forward a few years and we are introduced to our other characters. Garbage Man is broke and about to lose his videogame store, so he heads over to the storage unit auction, where he gets a hot tip about a unit with a vintage game console. Sadly, what he bought was just the box. But inside that box was the orb.
Now to our other characters, Henry and Natalie. I was so confused by the Natalie character, as the actress looks 12 years old. But when we are introduced to them, she’s driving and talking about how she’s now her younger brother’s guardian now that their folks are dead.
And then randomly we are introduced to Dawn, their realtor. This is not a character that goes away, she sticks around for no good reason. She isn’t a love interest for anyone, she isn’t related or connected to anybody other than she sold these kids a house once.
Oh, she also randomly mentions how she runs a lama petting zoo to help set up later in the film when they need someone to tame a bunch of animals.
Clearly what they should have done, 1, make the sister who looks like a child just be in high school. And Dawn, be a friend of the family that is taking them in now that they are orphans.
Hell, just have it be she’s adopting them, I don’t know. Anything would be less stupid than goddamn real estate agent. Or just make Dawn and Garbage Man a married couple. Maybe they’re on the rocks and going to the Minecraft world helps them repair their relationship. Anything would have worked to make her relevant to the story!
Henry is bit of a nerd, with his head in the clouds, dreaming up crazy designs. And I guess he is also prone to getting bullied.
To help him fit in better, his sister makes him a cheesy tots bacon breakfast pizza, which I will be making later.
Instead of going straight to school, Henry instead visits Garbage Man’s shop. I guess I’ll just call him by his real name, which is Garrett. Him and Henry kind of spark up a friendship, with him taking the tot pizza for himself.
In school, Henry brags about being able to build a rocket, which flies into the chips factory his sister works. I think that gets her fired and him expelled from school.
I can’t remember, it’s been a couple of days since I’ve seen it and it’s already fading from my memory.
Henry asks Garrett to act as his guardian as to not upset his sister, but instead of going home, the two hang out at his store. Now missing, Natalie teams up with her realtor to find him. And I think one of them has a location finder on their phone. Which would make sense if it was the sister, but I remember it being Dawn the complete stranger who has it. Could be wrong.
They all meet at Garrett’s place where they activate the orb, leading them to the mine where the portal is.
Again, the better way to do this would be Jumanji style, where they get forced into the game. If they need a portal to enter it, just have things in the store crush into cubes or something, forming the gate, and they just walk through it.
I can’t even remember how they got to the mines in the first place… oh I think Jack Black left a letter, which they ignored.
I forgot to mention they needed to hide the orb on earth because the pigs in the Nether want to mine the Overworld for gold.
I believe in the Mario movie, the original one that is a classic that I saw in theaters, not the terrible CGI one, the goal was to leave the underground and invade our world.
That gave the movie some urgency, stakes were on the line if they failed to stop them. I’m not really sure what the stakes are in the Minecraft Movie.
If they don’t stop the pigs, they’ll… what mine for gold? That kind of seems what this whole world was made for.
Are they afraid the pigs will destroy the land? I didn’t mention it, but this place is kind of a hellish nightmare, where everything wants to kill you, especially at night when the creepers come out, who explode when next to you, and let’s not forget the giant spiders or the living skeletons riding them. Oh, and the hordes of zombies!
Also, the pigs can’t go to the Overworld without turning into zombies themselves because of the sunlight, so this whole plan of theirs makes no sense whatsoever.
I guess technically the goal in the movie is to find a way for our main characters to get back home, as the McGuffin being the orb cube, gets destroyed. Or at least the glass case it came in gets destroyed, so the group’s whole goal is to find a replacement.
The movie does have a few funny moments, mainly coming from Jason Momoa, who is playing an even bigger idiot than Aquaman.
The kids I’d wish would vanish from the movie, which they kind of do once the group gets split up.
I think the worst parts of the movie involved Jennifer Coolidge as the Vice Principal who hits a villager with her car. Then I guess goes on a date with him. If I had to guess which of the 6 writers came up with this, my guess is the one who wrote Mean Girls 2. Just a hunch!
There’s a really bad end credit scene involving the villager and Jennifer Coolidge, the only saving grace was the villager being voiced by Matt Berry, one of the funniest guys alive.
But god, watching Jennifer Coolidge talk villager was just cringy and honestly embarrassing.
In the actual game of Minecraft, there are these temples, I guess you’d call them dungeons where it is filled with enemies but a ton of loot.
The movie actually did a pretty good job recreating one of these places, as our team goes to get the glass case for the orb.
That’s when Jack Black and Jason Momoa get captured and we are introduced to the most memed line in the movie, “chicken jockey”!
To end the movie out, they do a big battle sequence. This is the second time I’ve seen a giant boring CGI battle. The first being that Netflix movie Electric State. Almost the identical ending here.
In the game, towns face off against raiders, couldn’t they have done something with that? Why the pigs from the Nether? Don’t hey just ignore you unless you attack them?
The better plot idea would be you’re trapped in the Minecraft world, much like Jumanji, I don’t care, and the only way to leave is to do the one thing in the game that could be considered “beating it”. Gather the items needed to fight the Ender Dragon.
Oh and the most puzzling thing was the film’s ending.
After the good guys win, Steve just gives Dawn Dennis. Why? I was also very confused about how Dawn gets Dennis, I thought it was just some random wolf/dog, then Jack Black at the end says it’s Dennis I was like whaaaaaat?!
And also, why go back? No one in this movie had any reason to return. The Garbage Man was broke and about to lose his shop. Dawn was a failing real estate agent, whose dream was to own a zoo, Henry could finally realize his dreams into reality, and his sister didn’t need to work at a potato chip factory.
Sure, the Overworld has monsters come out at night, but the real-world sucks even more. Not to mention their lives suck way less in that world.
Whatever, I’m done with this movie. I actually had some hope I might like this. I enjoy Jared Hess and a few of his movies. Jack Black hasn’t gotten stale on me like he has with others, and I do enjoy Jason Momoa a lot. The visuals, aside from the real-world characters, looked amazing.
The movie was just so generic, so clean and kind of boring at times. Honestly, I don’t know what the girls in the group did when they split up because I dozed off a bit when they switched to them.
The random songs were also hard to take, of course they ended on a giant music number. However, if you are a kid who loves Minecraft of course you’re going to love this movie. This thing is going to make so much damn money.
I’m not sure what to rate it. I’m leaning towards a SKIP, but honestly if I had to, I’d probably watch this again, so it gets a light RENT.
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