A few weeks ago, my friend and I found ourselves in a particularly rigorous intellectual debate. A debate that will surely put many a Union squabble to shame.
‘Bee Movie is objectively better than A Minecraft Movie.’
My friend spoke in proposition of this motion. She made some fairly solid points. I mean, the 2007 DreamWorks animated comedy is a classic, and in 2015 to 2016, it received reinvigorated interest as the object of internet meme culture. And besides all the meme-ry, the film has a deep and undeniable underlying message about the cold, uncaring cruelties of contemporary capitalist society.
However, I vehemently opposed my friend’s worldview. It had been weeks since I’d watched A Minecraft Movie with my family, and I was ready to stand my ground. “But – but – it’s just funny though!” I tried to play off a classic “so bad it’s good” movie against another film with perhaps the quintessential claim to “so bad it’s good”-hood. One debate later, we were no closer to any consensus on this clearly contentious issue. And so, here we are. After last week’s foray into the world of Twilight, I thought I’d try my own hand at rehabilitating what might be called an objectively “bad” movie. This is my defence of A Minecraft Movie.
For those of you unacquainted with the cultural phenomenon that is A Minecraft Movie, this 2025 action-adventure-fantasy-comedy is an adaptation of Mojang’s hit 2011 sandbox game of the same name. In the film, four misfits (played by Sebastian Hansen, Emma Myers, Danielle Brooks and – yep – Jason Momoa) stumble through a magical portal into the blocky Minecraft world (AKA the “Overworld”). They must work with the master “crafter” Steve (played by the one and only Jack Black) and embark on an epic quest to safely return to their own world.
The film has been met with a mixed to lukewarm reception by critics. One popular criticism has been the plot of the film, or lack thereof. Minecraft is a virtually plotless game – players are encouraged to craft, mine, build, and explore the world in whatever way they please. It therefore comes as no surprise that the filmmakers struggle to string together a cogent thread of story for the big screen. Each scene feels like a random and disparate moment, only loosely connected. One moment, the group are exploring the shenanigans of a Minecraft village; the next, they’re flying off on elytras (wing-suits); the next, they venture into a cave; and so on. One critic aptly describes the film’s story as “confusingly and erratically presented”.
The film’s characters and humour can similarly feel shallow. The other actors pale in comparison to Momoa and Black, and their characters feel far less inspired or interesting. That is not to say that Black’s performance is infallible. A great deal of this film’s comedy boils down to: “Ha ha! Jack Black says funny word in funny voice!”. And while this might appeal to children – after all, A Minecraft Movie is ultimately a kid’s movie – it perhaps loses its novelty for some of the put-upon parents in the audience…
It probably didn’t help that this movie had a far more immediate impact on the internet than the Bee Movie’s. Some of the Minecraft Movie memes are relatively harmless: Black’s song, Steve’s Lava Chicken, is an absolute banger and rightfully became the shortest song to hit the UK’s Official Top 40 Chart. But there was another, less benign chicken-related meme to take the internet by storm, and that was the moment that Black exclaims the words “Chicken jockey!” TikTokers would film themselves going ballistic: shouting the words, obnoxiously cheering while throwing popcorn and drink all over the place, even bringing a live chicken into the theatre in one case. With theatres asking audiences to be a little more respectful – even having to call the police in a few cases – it’s no wonder that this film ultimately left a bad taste in many mouths.
I fully acknowledge that A Minecraft Movie is a deeply flawed piece of media. It’s loud, it’s cringe, and it’s far from Oscar-winning.
But.
When I first watched this movie in theatres, I just couldn’t help but burst into laughter. It may be more of a reflection on my childish sense of humour than anything else, but come on – Jack Black is Jack Black, and it’s hard not to chuckle at his tongue-in-cheek, overexaggerative style of performance. Whether he’s singing songs about lava chicken or putting on a sombrero and performing the “Birthday Rap” to distract a gang of murderous Illagers, he is constantly an entertaining presence on the screen.
Somewhat surprisingly, he has real chemistry with Momoa. A single scene best encapsulates the relationship between Steve and Garret “The Garbage Man” Garrison (Momoa’s character). Black rides on Momoa as they soar through the air on a shared elytra suit. They create what Black rather suggestively calls a “man sandwich” in order to squeeze through a tight hole in a cliff face. I can’t fully do the scene justice in writing, but their awkward attempts to re-position themselves, coupled with their frantic exclamations and exaggerated facial expressions, make it, in my opinion, the funniest scene in the whole movie.
I used to watch a series called ‘The Search for the Worst’ by the aptly-named YouTuber I Hate Everything (IHE). IHE works through IMDB’s bottom 100 films, in a quest for the film that perfectly embodies that much-coveted category, “the worst.” Every now and then, IHE acknowledges some value in an atrociously atrocious movie: films like The Room, Birdemic, even the infamous Cool Cat Saves the Kids are so bad that they’re laughable – in other words, they’re so bad, they’re good. A Minecraft Movie is obviously working on a far higher budget than some of these lower-grade “bad” films, but I think a similar principle still applies. The movie generally doesn’t take itself too seriously (though I wish this movie embraced the irony from beginning to end, rather than unsuccessfully trying to shoe-horn in some “serious” emotional moments). For the most part, it’s hard not to laugh at how ridiculous a lot of its set-up is.
As I said before, a lot of this humour is quite juvenile. It isn’t particularly clever, or witty, or deep. But I think it’s healthy to allow ourselves a good dose of childish jokery, once in a while. I allowed myself to laugh out loud at various points in the movie, to embrace my inner child.
But this is not the only way that the Minecraft movie encourages us to embrace the child within.
Because beyond the comedy, I think there’s something to be said about the value of film adaptations of video games. This has been a surprisingly popular genre in recent years, with films like the Sonic the Hedgehog trilogy (2020-2024) or the recent Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023) making millions at the box office. Their critical reception has been a different question, but fundamentally, these movies thrive on their appeal to nostalgia. Many of us grew up with Sonic and Mario in our childhoods; while I don’t personally regard the Mario movie as a cinematic masterpiece, I do appreciate its attempt to recapture the colourful worlds that I used to immerse myself in during my DS days.
Minecraft similarly played a big part in my – and I’m sure many other people’s – childhood. In the days before Nintendo Switches and PS5s, there was a really simple pleasure in going to a friend’s house with our iPads, jumping onto a Minecraft world and spending hours on end building shelters and defeating Ender Dragons together. To see this game turned into a feature-length movie would have been 9-year-old me’s dream. To this film’s credit, the directors do try to replicate that nostalgic experience; they even feature a very brief cameo from DanTDM, a Minecraft YouTuber I used to watch for hours on end back in the day.
The film is quite colourful, and this in itself speaks to my nostalgia. The Overworld is differentiated from the “real” world by its bright, stark hues, its blue skies and lush (and blocky) greenery. The CGI isn’t always spot on (its rendering of the sheep is pure nightmare fuel), but to its credit, it does generally feel like a really creative way of re-imagining Minecraft. The movie creates this real feeling of immersion into a vibrant, magical world – a feeling that recalls the first time you created a Minecraft world, in those early iPad days.
So, to return to the debate that kicked all of this off in the first place: which is better, A Minecraft Movie or Bee Movie? In the end, I suppose the only advantage of the former movie is that they at least bothered to give it the definite article…
Perhaps the question itself is redundant, however. I bet that in a decade’s time, A Minecraft Movie will reach a similar level of notoriety to Bee Movie; already, its global effect on the internet is something that will not be easily forgotten. But if I were to choose the film that best speaks to my inner child? A Minecraft Movie wins by a landslide.