Minecraft is a multi-platform video game made by Swedish developers Mojang Studios and was released officially on November 18th, of 2011 (my 14th birthday). Since release, it has sold more than 300 million copies worldwide, making it the best selling video game of all time. It is an open world sandbox experience that gives players seemingly unlimited possibilities to do whatever they want inside of their very own realm. With no real instruction or storyline, you are truly encouraged to unleash your inner creativity to play the game however you want, making it unique compared to other games that are typically more structured and linear. I started playing Minecraft in 2009 while it was still in beta. To make myself sound old, that’s even before they added in beds so you actually had to survive through the night without the option of skipping over all the danger with the ease of a quick snooze. This has been one of the only games I have consistently played on and off since it originally came out, and I still play it to this day. It’s always a comforting experience and a good way to clear my clouded head while I build a log cabin or harvest my large wheat farm to make some bread.
I knew that inevitably this pop culture phenomenon would make its way to the silver screen, so as soon as I heard the announcement of the 2025 film, I was instantly on board. To further add to my hype, seeing Jack Black get top billing and being directed by Jared Hess (director of Nacho Libre and Napoleon Dynamite), there was no chance I would miss seeing this one in theaters. And let’s just say that it was one of the most memorable theater-going experiences I’ve ever had, but unfortunately for all of the wrong reasons. As of the time that I am writing this, the film’s two week box office total is up to $550 million worldwide, which makes it the highest grossing film of the year so far, and the second highest grossing video game movie adaptation of all time behind 2023’s ‘The Super Mario Bro’s Movie’.
If I am really interested in seeing a movie, I never watch trailers to avoid spoilers so when I finally do watch it, everything feels brand new to me. I had no idea what to expect and that kept me excited. Now I don’t typically go to the movies and see blockbusters opening weekend because I tend to prefer a empty theater for a more chill experience, but I got asked to go on the Saturday after it came out and I was quick to say yes because I was determined to go regardless. I went with my girlfriend, her older brother, and their mom. I excepted us to be on the older side of the spectrum for the crowd, and we were. But that makes sense for a movie primarily targeted towards kids. After the opening previews ended, only seconds into the film starting, the audience bursted into applause and was loudly cheering. I wasn’t used to being in such high energy company at the theaters, but I was just happy that other people were having a good time. But then it started started happening. Everybody in the room kept clapping after every slightly witty piece of dialogue, which was pretty frequent. The middle schoolers behind us were screaming expletives and saying sexual things that I’m not even sure if they knew what they meant. The noise and chatter was so loud that I was unable to hear most of the movie. Popcorn was flying through the air and honestly my anxiety was on the rise. It was so rambunctious that at a certain point, both my girlfriend’s brother and mother very politely had to tell the kids behind us to shut the fuck up. And they did… for a minute. As soon as this one adult who was screaming stupid things started running his mouth, all of the young lemmings joined in. He yelled out for the main protagonist, Steve, to “fuck me so hard in the ass”, and one of the kids behind me said that “that guy is such a legend”. It was alarming to me that someone could glorify another person for being so publicly rude and blatantly disrespectful. In my opinion, that guy was not at all a legend. He was a loser. Even though I couldn’t really hear what was being said on screen, I still made the best out of the movie in the absolutely chaotic environment I was in. On the drive back home, we were all in agreement about that being one of our most disappointing times at the cinema.
After I got home that night, I was scrolling on social media and kept seeing things pop up about ‘A Minecraft Movie’ screenings across the country getting out of control. I thought my experience was poor, but in certain areas crowds were being much more extreme. There are several viral trends, mainly on Tik Tok, that encourage rowdy behavior in theaters during certain scenes in the movie. One scene in particular, regarded as “CHICKEN JOCKEY!!!” is specifically emphasized as a time for people to go nuts. Hundreds of videos show people throwing candy, popcorn, drinks, and even in some cases, glass bottles at the screens. In one instance somebody actually brought a live chicken into the showing! There are several theaters nationwide that have started relying on police presence for crowd control and started enforcing policies where no minors shall be admitted without the supervision of “a responsible adult”. It is wild to think that events like this are happening for such an innocent and family friendly film.
A week after the movie’s release in an interview with Variety, director Jared Hess made the following statements:
“It’s weird when you’re having too much fun and the cops get called. It’s funny because I think it’s just literally cheering and throwing popcorn, which is so funny to me that cops are getting called for popcorn. Yeah, it’s hilarious. I’ve seen so many funny videos. It’s great, especially when people are climbing on their friend’s shoulders and standing up and cheering for those moments. It’s like this crazy anticipation. But man, I’m just glad people are making memories with their friends and families.”
I must say that I have a few issues with these statements. I feel like Hess only finds this situation funny because he’s not the one who is getting paid close to minimum wage to clean up these messes. Or the person who has to pay thousands of dollars to replace the screens in their theaters. I didn’t really find it too funny having to constantly look over my shoulder in fear of being hit by projectiles. I read an account of a cinema employee from Atlanta who had to stay at work 3 hours late in order to fully clean the mess from a Minecraft showing. It is slightly disheartening when people who are in a position of power and influence are complicit and almost encouraging to vandalism and disrespect on such a large scale. Because when people read statements like that, it makes it seem like okay behavior. Kids and teenagers are especially the most easily influenced demographic, and I have seen first hand how far some people will go to follow certain trends.
Viral trends have been a thing since the birth of the internet. And not all of them are negative. Some of them are actually pretty positive and can even be great ways to help build community. One of the more popular ones when I was younger was “the ice bucket challenge” which had people dump buckets of ice water over their heads to help raise awareness and money for ALS/ Lou Gehrig’s disease. I won’t lie though, I was also a victim to doing some things I saw online just because everyone else was doing them too. Like the seemingly harmless “cinnamon challenge” in which you have to try and swallow a spoonful of cinnamon without spitting it out, or inevitably choking on your powdery coughs. As the years started to pass though, I realized just how idiotic humans could be, and instead of participating, I started opting to watch and laugh at other’s stupidity. One of the catalysts that made my mindset change was when I hung out with a couple of friends in middle school and they were all trying this thing called “the salt and ice challenge” where you pour salt on your body (typically on your arm) and then apply pressure on an ice cube into the salt. The reaction causes a sensation similar to frostbite, and the objective was to see how long you could withstand the pain. Doing this can cause second and even third degree burns equivalent to touching the metal end of a hot lighter. Seeing people causing physical harm to themselves right in front of me made me come to the conclusion that maybe the herd mentality wasn’t the best way. And since then, the trends only seemed to have gotten crazier and crazier. “The polar plunge” had people jumping into frozen bodies of water, in some cases leading to hypothermia. And for some reason at the beginning of the pandemic, kids thought it was cool to eat Tide Pods like candy, literally ingesting dangerous chemicals for fun. Young children have no real sense of danger so they wouldn’t know any better than to not eat laundry detergent, especially if everyone else was doing it. In some of the most extreme cases, there have been a handful of Tik Tok trends that have even led to death. Challenges that had people coming as close as they could to passing out from asphyxiation, resulting in people accidentally hanging themselves, or seeing how long someone could hold their breath underwater, resulting in people drowning. Now, I’m not saying that short-form content sites like Tik Tok or Instagram should be banned, because they are still a very positive platform when used constructively, but dark instances like these are very sobering and eye opening to just how impressionable the youth actually is.
Again, I’m not trying to stop anyone from having fun and enjoying themselves, but it does become a problem when your “fun” negatively affects other people. Every generation most likely feels similarly about the generations after them. But that’s just a part of getting older though. Our grandparents probably thought that our parent’s generation was out of control in the same way that our parents felt about us. And the bottom line is that our youth is our future. Maybe the kids who are throwing popcorn now will be the ones that some day become first responders and save lives. Or perhaps the children who ate Tide Pods might grow up to become teachers and be the ones that teach the next generation to not be absolute morons. As annoyed as I was during my viewing of ‘A Minecraft Movie’, I can’t fault kids for being kids. But sometimes they definitely deserve to be scolded for being little spawns of Satan.
As for the movie itself, I give it a 7.5 out of 10. I’ll probably watch it again at home when it drops on streaming so the only distraction will be my cat pooping literally everywhere besides the litter box because she hates me.