Much of Thomas Giblin’s childhood was spent playing Minecraft. Does the new movie adaptation do it justice?
I’ve adored Minecraft, the open-world sandbox video game where you can build whatever you want, ever since I was a speckly-faced, spikey-haired, socially-awkward kid. I spent all my lunchtimes and countless late nights crafting a new vision for my life and the world. My greatest in-game accomplishments were the construction of a fully-functioning lighthouse and a giant roller coaster that spelled out “Happy Mother’s Day”.
The 14-year-old-me would’ve been shocked to find his future self at the Aotearoa premiere of the Hollywood adaptation of their beloved game this week. But there I stood, a forlorn adult, waiting with my friends in a snaking queue. If being at a movie premiere wasn’t shocking enough, it would’ve further blown that teenager’s mind to learn that the blockbuster adaptation of Minecraft was filmed right here in Aotearoa.
As the proud Kiwi cast and crew of A Minecraft Movie murmured with excitement, I was quietly filled with a sense of dread. Despite my affection for the game, the movie’s red flags were hard to ignore. It had been over a decade since plans for the adaptation were first announced by the game’s creator Markus ‘Notch’ Persson, who shortly after would express his support for misogyny, transphobia and white nationalism publicly on social media.
Despite Persson’s controversies and the first director departing due to creative differences, it should have not come as a surprise that A Minecraft Movie has been trapped in developmental purgatory. Minecraft has no set quests, stories or characters to pull from. There’s a swathe of different game modes to choose from. Every experience of Minecraft varies widely – how do you adapt that into a film that players recognise and relate to?
A Minecraft Movie starts out in smalltown Idaho, where the once-great gamer Garrett ‘The Garbage Man’ Garrison (Jason Momoa) is on the verge of being evicted from his vintage game parlour. Young aspiring inventor Henry (Sebastian Hansen) stumbles through the door with his sister Natalie (Emma Myers), a struggling social media executive who strikes up a friendship with Dawn (Danielle Brooks), the local realtor whose side hustle is a mobile zoo.
Before long Garrett and Henry inadvertently transport themselves, Natalie and Dawn to the Overworld – aka the Minecraft world. Upon their arrival they’re saved by Steve (Jack Black), a pro of this world, who must safeguard this merry band of misfits as they journey across Minecraft’s perilous biomes.
This whirlwind of exposition all happens in mere minutes, but among it something unexpected appears – the grandiose Huntly Power Station has been transformed into a potato chip factory with a giant Pringles-style mascot atop it. Even in this madcap green screen Minecraft world, Aotearoa shines through. When the threatening tenor of the antagonist, the evil Piglin queen Malgosha (Rachel House) rings out, I half expected her to say “she’ll be right.”
As a longtime fan of the game, I was ready to be disappointed by A Minecraft Movie. But when the tamariki dotted around the theatre began to gasp in awe, something changed. As the film’s heroes worked together and fought off Malgosha’s horde of piglins using the creativity and self-expression that the Minecraft world empowers its own players with, I came to a realisation: it was time to pass the baton of Minecraft to those who now need it more than me.
A Minecraft Movie is far from perfect – it has a nauseating amount of candy-coloured CGI, and Jack Black delivers one of the unfunniest performances I’ve ever seen, hamming things up to a tedious degree. It exhaustively namedrops mechanics, tools, biomes and mobs from the game, but stays too focused on the punchline of a mildly-humorous gag, or nonsensical song to properly explore why each element of Minecraft is so special.
For a game containing limitless possibilities at your fingertips, A Minecraft Movie could stand to be more creative in its storytelling. Instead, the film is a low-stakes but fun-filled spectacle, with a surprisingly endearing and earnest celebration of creativity and self-expression at its heart. If any family-friendly Hollywood film is going to make millions off the horde of cynical tie-in merchandise, at least this one has a message.
A Minecraft Movie is in cinemas now.
