My relationship with Minecraft is, as I’ve gathered, a common one. Every so often, I remember I have it. I play it for ten hours a day, every day, for a week or two. And then classes pick up, or work gets busy, and I forget it exists for six to eight months—until the cycle starts all over again. The beauty of it? This cycle tends to repeat a few times per year, meaning the game has been a consistent part of my life since its release in 2011. Nearly 14 years of tirelessly collecting cubic supplies, venturing into the fiery depths of the Nether, and bringing entire cities to life later, and we’re still going strong. There’s something about the game’s endless possibility—the quiet stillness of the open world, the crisp lines of a perfectly constructed building—that keeps me coming back, after all this time.
In Minecraft, you can build—and do, really—anything you can imagine, which makes the idea of a film adaptation especially appealing. The game’s lack of narrative and direction means that there is an entire world to build and discover, one whose norms and rules you have to learn for yourself as if it were your own. Within the limits of your screen, you are Steve. The more time you spend crafting, the less often you find yourself checking your recipe book. The more you build, the faster you get, and with every mob you slay, your confidence grows. As a game, its lack of realism does not detract from its immersion in the slightest—somehow, nothing feels more real than the brightly colored pixelated cubes burned into your retinas after hours disappear into the void. It’s disappointing, then, that the same cannot be said of the adaptation. Without striking a sufficient balance between commentary and commitment to the bit, A Minecraft Movie finds itself stuck between bedrock and a hard place—unsure whether it wants to make a statement or a joke.
Starring Jack Black as the mononymous Steve, the film follows a group of real–world misfits as they accidentally fall through a portal into the overworld and find themselves caught in the middle of an age–old battle between Steve’s desire to save the world and the determination of evil piglin leader Malgosha (Rachel House as voice, Allan Henry as body) to annihilate it. Joined by disgraced video game champion Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison (Jason Momoa), newly orphaned siblings Natalie (Emma Myers) and Henry (Sebastian Hansen), and their eccentric realtor Dawn (Danielle Brooks), Steve sets off to retrieve the all–powerful Orb of Dominance, save his beloved realm, and—most importantly—reunite with his dog Dennis. Many of our well–known and well–loved mobs make an appearance, from creepers to villagers to iron golems, fighting both for and against our protagonists in triumphant battles that highlight both the game’s original mechanics and the strength of the group’s found–family bonds. When an airborne Garrett swoops in to save Henry, audiences cheer. But the fight scenes aren’t the highlight—A Minecraft Movie has something meaningful to say.
Malgosha, the evil ruler who’s taken charge of the Nether and forced all of the realm’s piglins into gold–seeking submission, is revealed to have had artistic aspirations in her past. As a child, she dreamt of being a dancer, but was laughed offstage by her peers. Since then, she’s sworn off creation—and creativity—altogether. She spears a baby piglin for making a drawing of a house instead of searching for gold. She snaps at several of her constituents that “creativity will never make [them] happy … but you know what will? Gold! Go find some!” And in her final battle with Steve, she stands by her bleak perspective for the last time. “To hope, to dream, to create, is to suffer,” she snarls. “You’re right,” a solemn Steve responds. “It is harder to create than to destroy. That’s why cowards tend to choose the deuce.” This moment between them sums up the film’s entire argument: that creativity is worth it, even when it hurts. That the pain of creation is always preferable to the pain destruction brings. A profound statement for the Minecraft movie, you may think. And it is profound. It’s relevant. In a world increasingly overwhelmed by AI–generated “art,” it’s easier than ever to choose the path of least resistance—of least impact, in every way.
As the film goes on, it becomes increasingly clear that this—the notion of creation vs. destruction—is what the conflict is really about. It’s literally the name of the game. You can mine, taking from the environment by breaking blocks—or you can craft, using your imagination to build something new from the ground up. In–game, the difference speaks for itself: It takes no thought to enter a mineshaft and chip away at pixelated stone, hoping for a smattering of diamonds. Crafting, though, requires recipes and memorization. Building requires planning, measurements, and careful decision–making to ensure your new house will fit everything it needs to. In short, creation requires effort, as all real art does.
The ongoing, troubling shift away from this effort is what A Minecraft Movie challenges—or rather, claims to challenge. Because while a real statement does come through about the integrity of art and intrinsic value of creation, no matter how refined or unrefined the end product, you first have to sift through the sea of corny jokes, jarringly placed musical numbers, and low–budget–looking green screen effects.
And the film is full of indicators that it doesn’t take itself too seriously. Garrett “The Garbage Man” owns a failing video game store and a “GAMR 89” vanity license plate; Natalie works as a marketing executive at a potato chip factory, and Henry nearly gets kicked out of school for flying a jetpack into said potato chip factory. Better still than all of these features, Jennifer Coolidge makes an appearance as Vice Principal Marlene, hits a stray villager with her car after he wanders through the open portal, and they fall madly in love. The absurdity of these characters, the objectively cliché plot, and the questionable pacing have garnered their fair share of harsh criticism, and with good reason—the film is rushed and half–baked in a way that doesn’t feel satirical. One of the first things we hear Steve say is “the children yearn for the mines,” a reference to a literal Twitter meme from 2022. The film starts as a joke and remains one throughout.
At the end of the day, the problem comes down to a direct conflict between the film’s two goals: to fulfill the idea that it would be funny to make a movie about Minecraft, and to spoon–feed audiences a moral about creativity that it itself makes no effort to embody. The latter requires a level of earnestness that the former strictly prohibits. A lighthearted love letter to Minecraft would be fine, but A Minecraft Movie tries to elevate itself without actually putting in the effort to—and in doing so, falls into the trap of prizing marketability over artistic integrity. All the people going to see this as a joke are still seeing it—and thus contributing to the film’s current $303.3 million profit and status as the second highest grossing video game adaptation of all time.
It’s unfortunate that a film with so much potential felt that it had to sacrifice depth for humor, especially when predecessors like The Lego Movie and Inside Out have proven that kids’ movies can be silly, colorful, and nuanced all at once. Ultimately, Minecraft has fostered creativity for an entire generation, and it deserves an adaptation crafted with the same level of care.
