FILM REVIEW: “A Minecraft Movie” mines the box office

The latest video game adaptation has taken the internet and box office by storm with its portrayal of the wildly successful and adventurous game.

By Michael Doyle

In 2011 the video game “Minecraft” spawned into the world, changing the gaming industry and pop culture forever. It follows the player through an infinite three-dimensional world where they can build, explore and interact with non-playable characters (NPCs) and mobs, with no specific plot or end goal, allowing the player creative freedom within their open world. 

“Minecraft” spawned several spin-off games including “Minecraft: Story Mode” and “Minecraft Dungeons” which include story-driven plotlines. The games received mixed to positive reviews from critics but didn’t reach the popularity of the main game. 

The Warner Brothers studio decided to give the franchise another shot with a new film titled “A Minecraft Movie,” released on April 4. It featured a star-studded cast with Jack Black as Steve, a doorknob salesman who dreams of being a miner and Jason Mamoa as Garrett The Garbage Man Garrison, a former video game champion who owns a struggling video game store in Chuglass, Idaho. 

Siblings Henry and Natalie, played by Sebastian Hansen and Emma Myers, move to Chuglass after their mother’s death. The siblings meet Dawn, played by Danielle Brooks, who is their real estate agent and an aspiring petting zoo owner. 

The main cast is a strong combination of familiarity and new faces. Jack Black and Jason Mamoa are worldwide superstars, instantly recognizable by their names alone which add credibility to the cast. Brooks and Myers have been featured in popular shows such as Brooks’s role in “Orange is the New Black” and Myers’s role in “Wednesday,” while Hansen is starring in his first big role. 

Steve discovers a pair of items, the Orb of Dominance and the Earth Crystal, creating a portal taking him to the Minecraft Overworld. Steve builds a city within the world the same way players do in the video game and later discovers another portal to a hellish world with lava called the Nether, where he is imprisoned by Malgosha, the ruler of the boar-man fusion piglins. 

I enjoyed the opening scenes as Black’s comedy chops compliment the lighthearted film well, and while I was unfamiliar with the Orb of Dominance because it originates from “Minecraft Dungeons,” I appreciated the film sticking to the source material for characters and locations. 

Malgosha wants the Orb, which finds its way to Garrett in the real world. Henry finds himself in trouble at his first day of school and employs Garrett to pretend to be his uncle, rather than having Natalie find out he got in trouble.  

In the first act, Henry combines the Orb and Crystal, leading him and Garrett to Steve’s Mine where all four characters are sent to the Overworld. 

During the first night, mobs like skeletons and spiders spawn and attack the four before Steve saves them, although the Crystal is destroyed. They must find a replacement to return to the real world, much like the series “Jumanji” that Black is also featured in. Steve teaches everyone how to craft items in a village, where Henry crafts a potato gun. 

The way they combined real-world characters with the villager NPCs and implemented the game’s crafting system was neat and felt natural. After the movie ended, I was confused why they felt inclined to include a non-Minecraft weapon in the film when the game is full of diverse weapons like axes and swords. This detail stuck out, and unless the weapon was from one of the spin-off games, its inclusion felt unnecessary and out of place. 

Malgosha and the piglins raid the village and send out the Great Hog, a giant mutant piglin. The raid separates the male and female characters, with the male characters going to a mine where Garrett intends to take a share of Steve’s diamonds in return for the Orb. The three flee the mine as it explodes, blowing up the Great Hog and arrive at a woodland mansion where they find the replacement Orb. 

These scenes served more as a means for the plot to continue but also show depth to Garrett and Henry’s characters. The film removing the female characters for these scenes and the following few stunted their character development as the film didn’t spend time panning between all of the characters. 

At the mansion, Steve and Garrett distract the pillagers and vindicators with a song and dance, showing off the actors’ comedic sides, while Henry finds the Crystal. He encounters an Enderman that causes him to hallucinate and see all of his friends demeaning him, furthering his character depth. Steve and Garrett’s distraction wears off and they end up in the viral chicken jockey scene, which the audience applauded. 

After escaping the mansion, the Orb is lost and Garrett sacrifices himself as Malgosha attacks all of them, with the surviving characters waking up safe with Dawn and Natalie. The ultimate fight begins as Malgosha uses the Orb to darken the sun as piglins invade the Overworld. Garrett survives and helps Henry reobtain the Crystal as Malgosha and her army are defeated. 

The fight was short and Garrett’s reemergence was too early for the surprise to really mean much. There was not an overwhelming amount of suspense that I think the scene could have used and it overall felt a bit too straightforward. 

I wish the film made more of an attempt to include more of the NPCs of the game rather than almost exclusively piglin and villager characters. The game has over one hundred NPCs but only used a small handful. The final fight scene would have been an easy way to include more diversity of mobs. 

All of the characters return to Chuglass, including Steve who is now ready to take his creativity back to the real world. The ending gives each of the characters a nice resolution, but it is tapered by the character’s screen time. Steve and Garrett turn their lives around, Henry accomplishes something he attempted earlier in the film and Dawn and Natalie get better jobs. The film hints at a sequel through the post-credit scene. 

Although all the characters get a happy ending, I also wish that the female characters had more screentime, as their characters never really evolved at all. The rate of only three of five characters having any character development is not great, especially for a franchise that is marketed for all genders. Dawn and Natalie being removed for a portion of the film did little for their characters and there could have been a way to include them more prominently. 

While watching, it felt like every scene was relatively short and made for people with short attention spans, leaving the plotline underdeveloped. Additionally, the film made more of an attempt to be full of one-liners and potential memes for internet clicks and viral videos, and while that has left a noticeable mark online, it makes the film pretty redundant. 

As someone who was obsessed with Minecraft as a kid, I felt the film was marketed exclusively towards children and people who have never played the game, leaving the generation who made the franchise so popular feeling left out.  

While it would be less marketable to pander to an older audience, there are plenty of children’s franchises that resonate with multiple generations such as “Star Wars” and Marvel. 

The film has already become the second-highest-grossing film of 2025 and the second-highest-grossing video game film of all time, raking in 570 million dollars for the Microsoft-owned franchise. The sequel is already in development while the franchise as a whole will continue to print out money, lacking the substance to make “The Minecraft Movie” memorable in a few years.