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A Minecraft Movie, starring Jack Black and Jason Momoa, directed by Jared Hess
Trailer: Warner Bros.

A Minecraft Movie
Directed by Jared Hess
Rated PG
Born 4 April 2025
#Minecraft

This is not your child’s video game movie. It’s much better than that.

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Movies based on video games are always a dicey proposition. Until recently, with child-skewing fare such as The Super Mario Bros. Movie and the Sonic the Hedgehog movies, video game adaptations have typically achieved only low scores at the box office. On the small screen, The Last of Us and Fallout have also racked up bonus rounds. Otherwise, there have been too many Resident Evil movies, not enough Tomb Raider.

Thankfully, A Minecraft Movie comes front-loaded with a fresh vision of where to take the source material. For starters, throw in a couple really big stars, Jason Momoa (Aquaman himself, Dante in Fast X and even Duncan Idaho in Dune), and Jack Black, one-half of the face-melting rock duo Tenacious D and the star of so many pop-culture landmarks, including Jumanji and School of Rock.

Great. That’s obvious. They’re all over the trailer.

Make it a comedy. (Okay. That’s also obvious.)

Then take a deep breath. There’s something transcendentally quirky going on here. It’s something even bigger than Momoa and Black combined.

That’s some kind of secret sauce and it comes with maybe a little less name recognition. A Minecraft Movie is directed by Jared Hess, the guy behind the legendary Napoleon Dynamite and the guy who got Jack Black to don light-blue stretchy pants in Nacho Libre. Hess 1-ups A Minecraft Movie and sends it to the next level of video game adaptations. His sense of humor is front and center in a movie that keeps the jokes coming fast and furious (sorry, Momoa, that’s not a franchise reference). It’s the kind of movie wherein if a joke flops (and those are few and far between here), there’s another coming in just a sec.

The tricky thing is so much of that humor revolves around references to the 1980s. It’s a sense of humor that might be lost on the littlest ones attending this PG flick. But everything’s so colorful, the storyline basic enough and the action very game-like, it might not even matter. Call it a win-win for both parents and kids.

Well-played, Jared Hess. Well-played.

Steve’s World

Even with the caliber of Momoa, Black and Hess, it still wasn’t a given A Minecraft Movie would be any good. It gets a little scary seeing the screenplay was written by a committee of five scribes, none of whom have much in the way of screen cred, working with a story co-crafted by Allison Schroeder, who has written some solid work, including Hidden Figures and Christopher Robin.

It’s a goofy storyline. But that has to be expected of a movie based on an immensely popular open-world gaming experience that’s been around for 14 years. The game — reportedly the best-selling video game of all time — doesn’t make any particular demands on the players, with the intent being to let the players roam free and be creative in a world made of chunky blocks and populated by chunky, blocky people and animals. Photorealism is not on the radar in Minecraft, the video game, and the movie’s visual effects match that mindset.

Maybe A Minecraft Movie should be described as the live-action Pixar movie Pixar never made and had absolutely nothing to do with. While we’re at it, we might as well say it’s a marvel of a movie that has absolutely nothing to do with Marvel. It’s likely the kind of movie that will be enjoyed by adults (of a certain mindset, anyway) more than kids; possibly enjoyed by video gamers of the ‘80s more than Minecraft players of the ‘20s.

Jack Black is in fine form here as Jack Black... er... rather, as Steve, a scruffy, smelly fella with a sad backstory. As a kid, he wanted to go explore a nearby mine, but the cranky old guard wouldn’t let him near the entrance. ("Absolutely no children allowed," reads the sign next to the mine’s dark, gaping hole.) So, poor Steve went home, grew up and went to work selling erasers or some such for "the man." In the process — as is not uncommon — he lost his soul. He lost his creativity and sense of play (these things are topics of real scientific study, so consider A Minecraft Movie as being grounded in reality).

Disenchanted with his entire life, Steve goes back to the mine in an effort to reclaim what was lost. As he colorfully narrates, he’s in the same outfit he wore as a kid, just much bigger, fatter and with a graying, wild beard. The old, cranky miner guarding the entrance hadn’t aged a bit.

With a not-so-quick football move, Steve dodges the elderly guard and enters a world of adventure and creativity.

It’s a rapid-fire pre-title opening that deftly sets the stage and tone for all that follows.

The Nether and the Over World

Let’s get the nutritional stuff out of the way.

A Minecraft Movie is about the value of creativity and the importance of living in the real world; making wonderful things happen in reality, not just while holed up in the basement and playing video games online. It’s also about teamwork, friendship and family.

Most importantly, the fundamental message is to keep dreaming, no matter your age.

It’s a whole lot of wholesome and all of that works great to — you know — score that coveted "EI" tag (that’s "educational and informative" in TV parlance).

To drive home all those things, the Minecraft universe is divided into two worlds. There’s the Over World, where creativity flows with wild abandon. The grass is green, the sky is blue and nighttime comes every 20 minutes. There’s also the Nether. That’s a dark, dreary place ruled by Malgosha, an evil old hag, a queen who has banned all play and creativity. Kind of like the Evil Queen in Snow White, there’s only a lust for treasure. As Malgosha (voiced by Rachel House, Hunt for the Wilderpeople) says, "To hope, to create, to dream is to suffer."

She’s actually right. But the goal is to take that pain and make something beautiful.

As it is, even Malgosha gets a cute back story involving her being a contestant on Nether’s Got Talent. Her notoriously bad performance gets her booed off the stage and ridiculed by her parents.

When the Nether army invades the Over World, it’s lights out for all things creative unless Malgosha’s nefarious plans can be stopped.

Hot Garbage

That’s all fine and dandy, but the fun is in the high-calorie, sugary stuff.

Sure, there are loads of fanciful visuals in the Over World and Nether. There’s a lot of fun to be had in seeing the gameplay mechanics come to life on screen.

The biggest laughs, though, come from the human characters, particularly Steve and Garrett "The Garbage Man" Garrison, proud Gamer of the Year, 1989.

Oh, heavens. That’s Jason Momoa as Garrett, sporting a lot of pink. He runs a struggling video game store called Game Over World (get it?). Momoa shows tremendous comic timing here and paired with Black, they’re a dynamic duo of quotable one-liners. They’re both headbanging rockers trapped in a world that’s moved on without them. When Garrett seems on the verge of losing his last life, he requests of Henry, "Tell my story in song... with real instruments." He wants some sort of heavy metal power ballad to remind the world of the fleeting genius of the Garbage Man.

But, wait a minute. Who’s Henry? Actually, he’s the central character, narratively, at least. He’s a super-smart teen (played by Sebastian Hansen, Just Mercy) looking to find his place in the world. He’s being cared for by his older sister, Natalie (Emma Myers, Wednesday), in the wake of their mom’s passing.

All it takes is a faulty jetpack science experiment, a destroyed chip factory mascot and a visit to the video game store to bring these four characters, plus a realtor, Dawn (Danielle Brooks, Peacemaker), together. (And, dang, there’s still a whole, silly thread involving a school principal played by Jennifer Coolidge (A Mighty Wind), who nearly runs over an escaped Over World monk.)

It’s rich comic material loaded with blink-and-miss-it sight gags. Just one that is hilarious, but so easy to miss, involves a bottle of cologne called Velvet Mischief. The top-shelf department store colognes typically feature the city of origin, such as Paris or Rome. This one? Boise.

Boise, Idaho, by the way, is the Earthly home to the human characters. Small town life seems to be part of Hess’ sweet spot.

Hunk City Rampage

Thanks to Hess, Black and Momoa, A Minecraft Movie effortlessly carries an ‘80s movie vibe. It’s light. It’s breezy. It... it’s a strange sensation. It actually feels good watching it. Not many movies fall into that category, especially these days. But, darn it, Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre very much carry that same "all are welcome" tone. Just come with a healthy sense of humor and a bucket of popcorn and you’ll be fine.

Some of the humor revolves around a cube-shaped orb (and, of course, how orbs aren’t cube-shaped). Stepping outside the movie, it’s extra funny to think about how U2 transformed the Sphere in Las Vegas into a cube. But that’s another story for another time. Neither here nor there right now.

Nonetheless, Steve rubs a cube-shaped orb in his armpit before giving it to Dennis, an Over World wolf he befriended. It’s a quick bit, with Black sticking the cube in his right pit before handing it over to Dennis, no doubt as a way of attaching Steve’s scent to the object so Dennis can return to him. That’s early in the movie. It’s not until much later when something akin to a punchline is revealed: Steve is one smelly dude who hasn’t showered in a while. He could use some of that Velvet Mischief.

Who’s it for? That’s usually a poison question for a movie. Last year, Warner Bros. got bit with Joker: Folies a Deux because it was (according to some, but not this one) a betrayal of DC lore, a movie that shunned its audience in ways reportedly unbeknownst to the studio.

Hopefully it’s understood A Minecraft Movie is for everybody. Maybe the adult-skewing humor was another dodge around the studio powers that be, but in this case it’s in an effort to build a bigger audience. Joke by joke. Chunky block by chunky block.

• Originally published at MovieHabit.com.