Vice and Virtue: A Minecraft Movie

Image Credit: IMDB

Vice

The Minecraft Movie – no, sorry – A Minecraft Movie was terrible. It says something that they couldn’t even get the licensing to be the Minecraft movie. Not only that, but Mojang, the company that makes Minecraft, didn’t have any hand in this movie. At all. This explains the blatant inaccuracies, which you know are bad if an amateur like myself, who only ever played on creative mode, could pick them out. This movie was obviously trying to be cringe and pander to a brain-rotted generation, but using the word “unalive” in a movie you have to pay to see felt offensive. There was a collective wince in the theater after that line. 

Here’s a piece of advice for film execs: unless you have Avatar’s budget (i.e, a quarter of a million dollars), either stick with full animation or full live action. A Minecraft Movie couldn’t commit, and the resulting Minecraft-world villagers and animals can only be described as uncanny, cubical horrors. 

Every joke with Jack Black and Jason Momoa was “what if two grown men were emotional? Now, what if they hugged? Isn’t that hilarious?” One Jack Black-Jason Momoa joke would have been one thing. But it was the punchline of every single scene with the two of them. It got old. Fast.

Speaking of punchlines, they were few and far between, but in A Minecraft Movie’s defense, the sub-par delivery often made it hard to tell what was an earnest moment and what you were meant to laugh at. To be safe, I didn’t laugh at all.

Clearly, the Bechdel test was fresh on the minds of producers. To remedy their fear of a film in the year 2025 without proper representation, they so graciously gave us the two female characters in a slow-mo crowbar attack to the tune of a Zara “girl power” song, and a short-lived existential heart-to-heart not much later. 

This film was clearly meant to be a joke. Why else would there be a song about lava-fried chicken in an otherwise music-less movie? What they missed, though, is that jokes are meant to be funny. Let’s try again, maybe with Mojang involved.

Virtue

After watching A Minecraft Movie one and a half times, I can tell you that it is quite literally a masterpiece. I know the haters are gonna pick it apart — “This wouldn’t actually happen in the game,” or “why is Steve so old,” or “isn’t Jason Mamoa better than this?” Let's be real. No one is good enough for this movie. But the cast got pretty close to perfection. 

Jason Mamoa plays Garett “The Garbage Man” Garrison, a wannabe alpha male who peaked in highschool, and he does it pretty darn well. The 15-year-old Sebastian Eugene Hansen plays Henry, this nerdy kid who likes to doodle. The casting director cooked with that one. Unlike most kids movies, the two female leads Danielle Brooks and Emma Myers are more than just two dimensional side characters—they have complex lives and are integral to the story, which is why I am talking about both of them in one sentence. And finally, Jack Black, the masterful hilarious comedy and music genius who brought this movie together. I know everyone complained about how old Steve was, but has anyone realized that Steve is actually hella old in the game? He is approximately 1,070 years old right now, so if anything they made Steve too young in A Minecraft Movie. 

One of my favorite additions to this movie was Jennifer Coolidge. I mean, how can you hate something that Jennifer Coolidge is in? She already has money and fame, so you know she chose to be in this beautiful film. That says a lot about the script in my opinion. 

 It's also important to mention that the movie pays homage to some of the best Minecraft YouTubers. The movie features cameos from DanTDM and LDShadowLady, as well as a tribute to the late youtuber Technoblade who passed away in 2022. This film was very well thought out, in part because Mojang was one of the producers of the film. Overall, this was a great movie. On the surface, A Minecraft Movie may look like a joke, but it's clear that this movie is a masterpiece that shows the beauty in crafting your own adventure.