Movie Thoughts: A Minecraft Movie (2025)

 

• Released: April 2nd, 2025
• Directed by: Jared Hess
• Running time: 1h 41min
• Rating 2.5/5

Synopsis

Several characters end up in the world of Minecraft, where they have to stand up against a Piglin sorceress named Malgosha.

My Thoughts

For context, I know next to nothing about Minecraft. I've never played the game, I never watched any let's plays of it, I am going in pretty much blind here. All the information I know about the game, I learned through my younger brother or by just being on the internet for long enough.

And this movie...yeah, not good. It's not the worst or anything, but boy did it not have me hooked. I didn't care about the characters, I didn't care about the world, and therefore I didn't care about the whole of this movie. If I don't care about these people and the world they're trying to save, why should I give a damn about the rest of the movie?

The characters are horribly boring and one-note, with predictable arcs. Steve himself is probably my least favorite, he's mostly just there to say exposition about the Minecraft world. The kid characters are just...boring kid characters. Boring brother and sister who of course grow closer over the course of the movie. I couldn't stand Garrett. I think that Dawn is probably the best character out of the main cast, but that's not saying much.

The movie is honestly just painfully generic in its execution. Maybe there's something here that I'm missing, because the audience in the theater (mostly nine-year-old boys and their families) went nuts a few times. But this movie overall just made me feel nothing.

The visuals are also a bit painful to watch. Honestly I just don't think the more realistic textures on these otherwise very cartoon-y and blocky looking animals and creatures just don't work. Honestly why wasn't this just an animated movie? Wouldn't the style have lent itself to that way more than this uncanny somewhat-realism crap? 

So yeah. Not a great one, this is. I didn't hate it or anything but eh I really am not a fan. Maybe there's just something I'm missing because I never played the game, but this movie does nothing to draw in a casual audience who is unfamiliar with the game.

PS I forgot to mention this, but this movie is also painfully unfunny. They think singing a song about boiling a chicken alive in lava or saying the term "chicken jockey" counts as a comedy, apparently.