Minecraft (dir. Jared Hess)

Written by Tom Augustine.

Recently, when the enormous-yet-underwhelming cast of the new Avengers movie was announced, including cast members from the 2000s X-Men films, an image circulated of Ian McKellen, in Gandalf costume, sitting with his head in his hands on a set awash with green. The image is from the famously tortured production of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit films, now more than ten years old, and yet the energy of the image felt especially semiotically potent in the current moment in which we find ourselves. I’m not even just talking about cinema — though that’s where it’s obviously most apt — because there’s something so poetically miserable about this remarkable actor, in fantasy garb, despondent in a world of digital emptiness. We’re in an era where what is ‘real’ (a fraught idea at the best of times) has never carried less weight, in our politics, in our interactions with one another, in our art. A pervading exhaustion couples with that emptiness — we’re all stranded in this world we’ve made for ourselves, and none of us seem capable of making the effort to escape, either. I can’t say that image didn’t float through my mind watching A Minecraft Movie, a film that honestly isn’t as bad as some of the worst of the greenscreen era of blockbusters, but which nevertheless bears the same dispiriting markers of the modern IP craze — garish hyperactivity, little emotional depth, a cast seemingly cobbled from social media following size, and a desperate fawning over the product at the story’s centre. 

I’ll frontfoot this review with two key caveats: one, this is absolutely a film for children, and anyone with a passionate opinion on the faithfulness to the IP of this franchise that isn’t one should probably get some new hobbies. Two, I’ve never played the game Minecraft, and know very little about its world beyond the vague knowledge that it’s kind of like Lego in video game form (with zombies? Apparently?). Lego is an apt parallel here on many fronts, because it’s The Lego Movie’s success that A Minecraft Movie is aiming for (with a bit of Barbie thrown in for good measure). That film managed to mostly distil the global affection for a product into something like its creative essence, matching the imaginativeness implied by the lego brick with zany, inventive visual language and scripting. The Lego Movie is one of the strongest examples of an IP blockbuster that (largely) didn’t feel like it was selling you something. A Minecraft Movie’s method is to throw so much chaos and hyperactivity at the screen that you don’t stop for a second to consider the gaming industry’s bottom-line. At this, it largely succeeds, though the experience is by-and-large a wearying one. It’s directed by Jared Hess, whose spotty track record as an offbeat indie comedy filmmaker nevertheless carries an enduring Millennial affection, with films like Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre under his belt. Whether Hess’ Taika-esque style works for you is one thing, but it’s a mark in the pro-column for A Minecraft Movie that there’s at least some trace of a directorial stamp here. Hess’ trademark goofiness survives the transition to the biggest of budgets, with some appealingly old-fashioned comedic stylisation at play in both visual language (plenty of crash zooms, Wes Anderson-core symmetrical framing, and offbeat absurdity) and scripting, that aims for the broadest of strokes, winking at its own constructedness in a way that should be exasperating, but which mostly coasts by on the strength of certain performers.

Shrill, overbearing and occasionally funny, A Minecraft Movie is a children’s film that platitudinises the value of creativity and originality but bears little of the same in its own fabric. Mostly exhausting, its sugar-high visuals will be catnip to kids and IP fanboys, but the film only truly comes to life when filmmaker Jared Hess’ oddball tendencies occasionally wink through the noise.

Shot in New Zealand (a fact that’s never more apparent than in a major sequence that utilises, hilariously, Huntly Power Station), the film has united an exceedingly eclectic cast. What’s notable about A Minecraft Movie is the energy and enthusiasm the cast brings to the work, despite never entirely gelling as an ensemble in any significant way. Performers have seemingly been thrown into the mix because of their individual popularity — there’s Jason Momoa, y’know, Aquaman!; Jack Black, who appeals to the Millennial nostalgia crowd; Emma Myers, Wednesday cast member and hyper-popular it-girl among the pre-teen girl crowd; Jennifer Coolidge, because a lot of people liked The White Lotus, I guess? The lack of chemistry between all these assembled players is staggering, but each has turned the schtick that they’re known for up to eleven, with all the shrillness that implies. Doing the most is Black, around whom the film’s plot largely revolves, playing Steve, a one-time doorknob salesman who stumbles his way into the world of Minecraft, Jumanji-style. Of all the remarkably thinly-sketched personae floating through the film, his is the one we connect to most, a manchild who has found refuge from a cruel world in a place where he can create endlessly. When the villainous pig-things of the ‘Nether’, a kind of Minecraft underworld devoid of creativity, capture Steve, he sends a glowing orb (an ongoing gag being that the orb is, in fact, a cube) to earth with the hope it’ll bring help back with it. The pig things (called Piglings) are led by an evil sorceress (Aotearoa’s own Rachel House) who is hell-bent on destroying the placid, low-key world of Minecraft for some reason. The orb lands in the hands of Momoa’s Garrett, a one-time arcade-playing legend with the nickname ‘The Garbage Man’, and Henry (Sebastian Hansen), a teen who has just moved to Garrett’s small-town after the death of his mother. Along for the ride is Henry’s sister Natalie (Emma Myers) and their real estate agent Dawn (Danielle Brooks).

Black and Momoa both work extremely hard to inject life into A Minecraft Movie, generally in the form of screaming or pithy one-liners. Some of them land, but the wide ensemble is so thinly spread that we have little time to form an emotional connection with any player involved. Why are there so many people to keep track of in a film like this? Hess leans heavily on Black’s rock’n’roll bonafides as Steve becomes a kind of sage wizard guiding the newcomers through the world of flint and steel, complete with a finale performance that recalls School of Rock. Momoa ultimately fares best, his Garbage Man a loveable idiot given most of the best lines in the film, including a faux-inspirational speech that peters out hilariously just as it seems it’s arriving at the point. Hansen and Myers, ostensibly our eyes into this world, barely register, just more conventionally attractive young performers to throw on the pile. Brooks, meanwhile, is entirely perfunctory, as is a largely unfunny subplot involving Henry’s Vice Principal (Coolidge) falling into a romance with one of the Minecraft world’s sausage-nosed villagers. 

It’s a hell of a lot of activity for a movie that clocks in at just over 100-minutes and bears the marks of some pretty vicious editing. That’s probably the point — there is so much event to this film that kids will barely have a second to breathe. This can work well, as in an inventive and enjoyable airborne chase sequence midway through the film that plays to Black and Momoa’s strengths, but it also ensures that by the time the film wants to wrap up and play its emotional hand, there’s nothing to fall back on. What made The Lego Movie such a success was its surprisingly rich emotional core, the way it played into our youthful love of the product in a way that didn’t feel overtly cheap or manipulative. A Minecraft Movie pays extensive lip service to the value of creativity and originality, values one can see at work in the game itself, but these ideas are barely given any oxygen in the action or the execution of the film itself. It’s a movie that is sure to have kids on the edge of their seats (as the ones I went with were), but it’s also one that crucially fails to back itself by neglecting to mine the depths, holding it back from being a genuinely worthwhile construction. 

And please, no more greenscreen.   

Minecraft  is in cinemas now.

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