How do you turn a game about the individual art of creation into the inherently passive experience of film-watching? It’s a challenge that the writers and director of “A Minecraft Movie” rise to admirably enough. Call it “lowered expectation,” but it’s a wannabe blockbuster that falls short of its potential while also rising well above similar fare, which put almost no effort into their production outside of hitting enough references to satisfy a loyal fan base. “A Minecraft Movie” is quirky and goofy enough to make one wish it held together better overall, but it’s also a likable venture, a movie that pushes through its cravenly capitalistic reason for existence, flavoring its “content” with enough personality to keep even the few remaining souls who have never played “Minecraft” engaged.
“A Minecraft Movie” opens with an exposition dump that’s so long that you’ll start to worry that this is a sequel to a movie you somehow missed. Steve (Jack Black, doing very Jack Black stuff) was a kid who loved to explore, and, after stumbling on a glowing blue cube in a mine, was transported to a magical place called the Overworld. There, Steve discovered that he could turn his imagination into reality, building structures across this block-based landscape. With his trusty wolf-dog Dennis, Steve found his bliss, but that was shattered when he was sucked into the Netherworld, a vicious place run by a malformed pig named Malgosha (Rachel House), who rules this hellscape with an army of loyal porcine creatures. It’s probably reading way too much into “A Minecraft Movie” to say it’s a commentary on how capitalist pigs can deform creative passion, but that’s perhaps how Roger Waters would read it.
When Steve gets stuck in the Netherworld, Dennis races back to the real world and hides the cube under Steve’s bed. Years later, the cube is in a storage unit bought by an aging gamer named Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison (Jason Momoa), a past-his-prime local legend struggling to make ends meet at his nostalgia-driven game/toy shop. (Echoes of Billy Mitchell from “The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters” feel intentional.) One day, Garrison meets the new kid in town, an inventive teen named Henry (Sebastian Hansen), who has moved to the area with his sister Natalie (Emma Myers) after a death in the family. They discover what the cube can do just in time to get sucked into the Overworld along with a local realtor/zookeeper named Dawn (Danielle Brooks). Can Steve, Garrett, Henry, Natalie, and Dawn stop Malgosha before her quest for dominance takes over multiple planes of video game existence?
While I’m not the biggest fan of “Napoleon Dynamite” and “Nacho Libre,” “A Minecraft Movie” works best in those moments that you realize it was directed by the same person (Jared Hess). His eye shows flashes of personality that are often missing from video game movies aimed primarily at children. Scenes in which Black leans into his goofy persona or Momoa allows himself to be the butt of the joke work more often than not; I’ll take a movie that misses trying to do some weird stuff over those that don’t try at all. It helps the general tenor of a film like this when it feels like the people involved aren’t just going through the motions. Turns out a movie like this could use a bit of “Nacho Libre” flair to spice up what unfolds.
Now, what unfolds is some nonsense. There’s a point around halfway through when it becomes clear that Henry is the real hero of this piece; I had a flashback to “The Last Starfighter,” another tale of an outcast who discovers that a video game world is real and that he can save it. At its best, “A Minecraft Movie” reflects the same idea: that video games aren’t things that dull the senses but rather give creative people a chance to express themselves and maybe even be a hero. Sadly, a lot of the plotting and associated themes get severely muddled in the back half, where the five screenplay credits start to make a little more sense. Despite a few fun set pieces, “A Minecraft Movie” becomes increasingly monotonous and loses its appeal, making it harder to care about what little plot there is.
One might argue that you shouldn’t come to “A Minecraft Movie” for the storytelling. It’s based on a game that responds to what you bring to it, with some people building entire cities (or all of “Game of Thrones”) in the in-game world while others are happy defending their little huts from zombies on coffee breaks. The limitless creativity inherent in the game hasn’t been fully replicated in the movie, which is designed to expand its brand dominance. However, there’s just enough inspired heroism in this flick to make people who put the game down years ago circle back to it and build something new. A video game movie that encourages creation instead of just uplifting capitalism? That’s a small victory in 2025.
