A Minecraft Movie: not for me, but maybe you’ll like it

Luca Fontana

2.4.2025

Translation: Megan Cornish

A hero named Steve, Jason Momoa with curly hair and a cube that’s supposed to be a sphere. The Minecraft movie is loud, wild, garish – and yet surprisingly empty. Not even the children laugh. But they do clap.

Don’t worry, there are no spoilers in this review. Everything mentioned here has already been revealed in trailers.

I’ve never played Minecraft. There, I said it.

No, really. I know Minecraft’s a global phenomenon. I know millions of people play it with the same level of dedication I had when I was lining up my Star Wars figures. I still have no idea how to identify creepers, why you should stack blocks, or what’s so fascinating about pixel cows.

And yet, of all places, I’ve ended up at a press screening for the Minecraft movie, surrounded by excited ten-year-olds.

The children – apparently a primary school class invited by the production company – provide the first bit of entertainment. One boy has saved several seats for himself and his friends. Another boy – not one of his friends – then sits in one of them. Arguments erupt. Two teachers intervene, but are thwarted by the complexity of the seating logic. In the end, the first child, of all people, has to vacate his seat. His indignant expression said more about the injustice he’d just suffered than I could ever express in words.

Then the lights go down. I’m still smiling – and only 100 minutes later will I realise that this prelude was the most emotionally complex drama of the day.

A cube that’s a sphere

It all starts with a boy named Steve, who wants nothing more than to dig in a mine. Unfortunately, children are strictly forbidden, so Steve does something truly monstrous.

He grows up.

Years later, played by Jack Black – high-spirited as ever, never at a loss for a rock song or a raised eyebrow – he finds himself in a dreary office job that destroys his creativity as effectively as a lava flow destroys a wooden house. But then he remembers the old mine. Of course. What else would an adult think of than returning to a child-free mine of the past?

There he finds a magic cube, which somehow turns out to be the key to the so-called Overworld. A world where you can create things with the sheer power of imagination. Houses, landscapes, magical worlds. Everything you could dream of – and which apparently looks like the visual incarnation of an epileptic seizure in cube form.

And it’s here – somewhere between an animated adventure on steroids and a metaphor for life with the subtlety of a wrecking ball (never lose your creativity and never do things like everyone else just because they tell you to) – that the film begins to gleefully dismantle itself.

Because what follows is a dramatic fever dream of blocks, portals, pixelated wolves, and Jason Momoa in a mix of Rambo, Mario Kart, and midlife crisis. He plays Garrett, the Gamer of the Year 1989, wears clothes from the 1980s, has a lot of testosterone and sports an embarrassing hairstyle. All of this is meant self-deprecatingly, of course. It still isn’t really funny. Not the first time. Not the fifth. And not even when you’re ten and are full of sugar.

And then there’s the magic sphere, which is actually a cube, but for some reason it’s still called a sphere. The cube-sphere lands on Earth, is found there by two orphans and an estate agent – because, why not? – and brought back to the Overworld, where it becomes the MacGuffin for the grand finale, where everyone must work together to defend themselves against the evil Piglin queen from the Netherworld.

Sound absurd? It is. And that’s the problem. This film feels like the result of a brainstorming session where no one had the courage to say «stop» at any point. An overloaded, tonal zigzag ride, cobbled together by no fewer than five screenwriters who apparently never quite agreed whether they were writing a meta gag, a heroic tale, or a YouTube sketch.

Missed the target. At least for me.

I calm myself down. Take a deep breath. And try to look at the film from a different perspective. Maybe the problem lies with me.

Because it’s obvious I’m not the target audience. I’ve never played the game anyway, and I’m probably missing out on multiple amusing Easter eggs. But the film doesn’t pretend to offer anything for me. No hidden agenda, no subtle adult references, no clever meta level. Instead, Minecraft focuses entirely on a younger audience – and maybe that’s fair.

So, I observe. The children that is.

But what I see irritates me. There’s hardly any laughter. At least not during the dialogue. I shake my head inwardly. Not because the jokes are bad (although they are), but because the room’s completely silent. No giggles, no laughter, not even an annoyed groan.

Only when Jason Momoa – in the best slapstick style – flies through a portal and crashes into the plump estate agent at full speed does the audience stir. They laugh. Finally. As the credits roll, the children even clap enthusiastically. Apparently, this is the level where the film seeks – and finds – its target audience.

To each their own.

I realise what I have to offer is the opinion of someone who’s never played the game, but hopes the film will at least pique their interest. Nothing more, nothing less.

And yet, I believe that even simple children’s films can be more than visually inventive; they can be narratively charming, or at least rhythmic too. The Super Mario Bros. movie demonstrated exactly that: it wasn’t a narrative masterpiece either, but it knew exactly what it was doing. It celebrated itself, enjoyed being self-referential and didn’t patronise the audience, instead gifting them Easter eggs and delighting them with a magnificently orchestrated soundtrack.

Minecraft, on the other hand, feels like a wild mix of noise, nostalgia, and sensory overload – but without any discernible signature. Where Super Mario Bros. zips through a brightly coloured fantasy world with a wink, Minecraft blasts through a pile of half-baked ideas at full speed – hoping that a joke will land somewhere.

Luca Fontana

Senior Editor

Luca.Fontana@digitecgalaxus.ch

I'm an outdoorsy guy and enjoy sports that push me to the limit – now that’s what I call comfort zone! But I'm also about curling up in an armchair with books about ugly intrigue and sinister kingkillers. Being an avid cinema-goer, I’ve been known to rave about film scores for hours on end. I’ve always wanted to say: «I am Groot.» more

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