A Review of A Minecraft Movie, Surrounded by My Kids and Meme-Loving Teenagers
Truly, one of the most surreal experiences I've had watching a movie.
A short review of A Minecraft Movie: a bad movie with a good heart. Like The Super Mario Bros., my kids had a blast pointing out what they recognized, and it will not shock you to learn Jack Black made them giggle. I don’t think it’s going to be long before we see Fortnite and Roblox movies announced, and hopefully the sequel is a little more focused after Minecraft’s notoriously long slog to finally becoming a film.
Your kids will have a good time. I had a good time, though beers helped. This isn’t transcendent like The Lego Movie, but sometimes some low hanging fruit is enough.
Now, a longer review of the wild experience of watching Minecraft with my children.
I could have brought my kids to a quiet theater, but we went to a packed IMAX showing because it promised something streaming does not: a live audience.
(I wrote about how the movie theater has a unique hold on my children, lulling them into patience with storytelling in a way that we’re rarely able to achieve at home.)
I know most people don’t like being in movie theaters because it’s a coin flip on whether you’re going to get a distracted audience looking at their phones and the theaters are rarely as well maintained as the price of the ticket you’ve paid for, but…
Part of the reason my wife and I go to the movies is because of the communal aspect, and how showing up on opening day is permission to verbalize your excitement.
When I bought a beer, the AMC employee told me to “enjoy the movie [brief pause, looking me directly in the eyes] and…chicken jockey!” I nervously laughed in response.
30 minutes in, my five-year-old tapped on my shoulder and whispered a simple question: “Daddy, why is everyone clapping?” I have been to a bunch of opening day movies over the years, including Avengers: Endgame, so I’m used to being in active and (overly) participatory audiences who are reacting to what is happening on the screen.
The first time I have felt well and truly old was watching Minecraft, a movie starring actors I was familiar with and a video game I have spent dozens of hours playing.
And yet, I was lost at sea. I told my daughter they were just excited to see Steve. Ugh.
The clapping felt random. Yet…in unison. Cultish, even. The audience was a mixture of young kids, parents of those same young kids, and teenagers. That last group, of course, were the ones clapping. It felt like I was watching a comic book movie where the cameos were going over my head. But in this case, it was internet memes.
I want to give you a specific example of what she was talking about. I recorded this a decent way through the movie, when I was pretty clear the audience was gonna pop:
By then, I’d put together lines from the trailers that had, themselves, become memes online through TikTok and elsewhere. Chicken jockey. Flint and steel. The nether. First we mine, then we craft—Minecraft. I watched the trailers for Minecraft many, many times with my kids, but I had no idea they’d taken on a life of their own online. It was a strange experience, too, because the clapping was both ironic and sincere. Nobody was clapping for a reference that put a smile on their face, but they were clapping to signal to others as a social cue saying “hey, I get it.” An in-person heart of approval.
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
These children have grown up online and may not know the difference between irony and earnestness. Their excitement—which does not work as well offline—was genuine. There’s joy in taking what we do online (i.e. Minecraft itself!), which itself has value, and taking it into the real world, where physical connection adds its own value.
It’s unlikely a TikTok teenager would describe it that way, but it’s what I observed.
I suspect many in the audience didn’t pick up on this and thought it obnoxious. I mean, it was. The point was to be obnoxious. Cops were called during some screenings.
To be a kid is, in many ways, to be obnoxious. You’re figuring out who you are by surfing with the herd, so eventually, you can break off. The herd is bigger these days, and the place to take social cues from isn’t the people around you, but online, as well.
It sounds like a hard way to grow up, honestly.
It also made it next to impossible to discern if they were, in fact, even having a good time with the film. In 2025, is the measure of a good time derived from participating in the meme, or enjoying the actual movie? The answer is probably somewhere in-between, and to pull the two apart is beside the point. (It strongly reminded me of watching Snakes on a Plane in a theater years ago.) I do not think the filmmakers and actors behind Minecraft intended for this to happen, which is probably why it happened at all. They made a movie, then young kids did their thing— which young kids have done forever. The difference now is the internet’s involvement, which allows for a bit that would otherwise be localized to spread like a virus between children.
Most teenagers do not know what they like, and understandably follow from those around them to fit in. To that end, halfway through the movie, my children were clapping, too. They didn’t have a clue what they were clapping for, but did it anyway.
Joining the herd starts young, because it feels good to be recognized. But there is also reason to believe—and worried—that such a happy accident is commercialized. I nodded along to this observation by New York Times tech reporter Mike Isaac:
“this is concerning to me for what movie theaters actually look like in the future and what types of movies get made. my guess is they look hard at video game IP now but should probably look at stuff that is more socially driven than just ‘here's a popular video game’ i think plot and narrative become secondary in a post-marvel universe of what you want kids to go to a theater to watch”
Deeply concerning! I am, perhaps, the optimist to Mike’s understandable cynicism: whatever gets them into the movie theater, because it means movies are being shown.
Movies are important to me because they’re Movies. Today, though, they’re content, which hopefully comes across less as me Old Man Yelling at Clouds than describing reality. Understanding where Movies sit with kids is the best way to try and save them.
Later, my five-year-old asked why I wasn’t clapping. I blinked, then turned into a seal, slapping my hands together alongside the 16-year-olds. Flint and steel! Flint and steel!
Your mileage may vary, but we had a blast. Clapping included.
If that sounds like a nightmare (I get it), wait a week. Inevitably, all memes die.
Without the clapping, what you’re left with is a perfectly OK movie with Jack Black.
Have a story idea? Want to share a tip? Got a funny parenting story? Drop Patrick an email.
Also:
When we left the theater, guess what my kids wanted to do? Play Minecraft.
At the movies, I ask my kids questions about the various posters to gauge their interest and wonder how they’ll do with the rest of the public. Based on this trip, it’s not a shock Snow White was a bomb—they have no personal touchstone for it—and the Lilo & Stich movie is going to be absolutely massive when it comes out.
Are any of the Lilo & Stitch video games any good? There are shockingly few of them, as it turns out, and it seems Disney hasn’t made one for more than 20 years.
Great review!! Loved the analysis/ explanation of how kids figure out what they like and the herd mentality!! My son aged 6 went with his mum on Monday and he asked me do I clap when I goto to the cinema?
Took me a few minutes to come up with an answer that explained his curiosity!! Thanks as always for your parent/kid game related articles, always a fascinating read :)
I went with my 9-year old and had almost exactly the same experience haha. Neither of us are any closer to understanding anything beyond pink sheep being rare. The movie was....bad, but he had a good time so that's all that matters.