Minecraft is a very well-known game for PCs, consoles, mobile devices, and web browsers. The beta version was released on May 17, 2009.
However, the game didn’t fully become popular until around 2013-2014 because of the significant boost in popularity as it was the #1 trending game on YouTube.
The movie itself didn’t come out until April 4, 2025.
The film mainly stars Jack Black, who plays Steve (at first I thought he wasn’t going to be the best fit, but he started to grow on me). Jason Momoa plays Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison, which was completely out of the ordinary. I always saw him act serious, so I found it to be a breath of fresh air seeing him be so silly on screen.
Emma Myers plays Natalie, Jennifer Coolidge plays Vice Principal Marlene (which was cinematically beautiful), Sebastian Eugene Hansen plays Henry, and Danielle Brooks plays Dawn. There is so much to unpack from this movie, and I can’t decide whether it is good or not; either way, there is some criticism.
Almost the entire film is based on CGI, which many movies use. My only issue is that the quality of it all is so bad. Everything is cubes, which is what Minecraft is known for, but part of me wanted the movie to have real actors play the villagers dressed as they are depicted in the game.
When I saw the trailer, I initially thought it was flawed and unappealing; however, as I fully watched the movie, I fell in love with the CGI.
Something that I loved about the movie was the soundtrack. The song “Dragon Fish” by Daniel Rosenfield, who is also known as C41, is regarded as the earliest song added to Minecraft.
The movie does an extremely good job of depicting the struggles of the real world, such as siblings losing their parents, struggling to keep up with the bills, and fitting in with everyone else. I never expected that the movie would have a background story for every character’s life.
Something that I never thought about was having a portal from “the real world” and the “overworld,” aka the Minecraft world.
I also genuinely appreciated how the monsters, typically called mobs, only appear at night. One of my favorite scenes is how a Creeper sneaks behind Garrett. If you don’t know what a Creeper is, they are a mob that is practically silent and attempts to creep up behind you and blow up, which can destroy anything near it, hence why it’s called a Creeper.
Watching a character being blown up and launched away was very entertaining to me, as it happens to every Minecraft player, which is extremely annoying if it blows up something that you have built, ruining your progress.
Another thing that I loved about the movie was how Jack Black turned it into somewhat of a musical, where at random points in the movie, Black starts singing “Steve’s Lava Chicken” (yes, that’s actually what the song is called).
Something also about this movie is how many people tend to repeat movie quotes over and over again, as well as people going onto many types of social media apps, circling the Minecraft movie. This is good marketing, even for people who critique it; they’re still spreading the movie around.
Overall, the movie wasn’t the best PG movie I’ve ever seen, but if you grew up playing Minecraft and enjoy silly, family-friendly comedy, then this is a PG movie I would recommend.
