Review of "A Minecraft Movie" by Cristian Olcina on 100% Cine

A Minecraft movie is a film that exists solely for the purpose of entertainment. It achieves this with lots of effects, a lot of noise, a lot of sets, a lot of characters, and we could even say 'a lot of lotness.' Below the photo, the more formal written review; further down, the radio review, more informal, available in full only in the audio players on Spotify or Soundcloud, or on YouTube with video.

A Minecraft movie is a film full of adventures, full of noise, images, sound, and movement, which at times can be a bit overwhelming to the senses; it’s a movie primarily made for children, and it has little to offer adults, and it’s also a film aimed at those who play the Minecraft game, and in many ways, it remains quite faithful to it.

One of the major mistakes of many productions adapted from video games, comics, or other media where there’s already a pre-existing design, with costumes and locations that people expect to see, is to redesign everything from scratch and expect the audience to accept it, often with designs worse than those in the original media. Sometimes the audience wants exactly what they saw in the original medium (Hello Wolverine costume!) , and while it’s true that a video game where everything is square, or literally cubic, is quite different from a medium with curves and textures, the fidelity to the world and its designs is quite high. The least faithful element could be said to be Steve, the protagonist, who in this case is overweight and bearded and played by Jack Black. However, Jack Black has an exuberant personality, he’s funny and wild, and he works very well for what the movie’s plans are, as well as its dynamism.

Unfortunately, the film lacks a certain ingenuity that could engage parents accompanying their children much more, and if one wants to go alone or as an adult couple, the film has relatively little to offer. Minecraft is a more or less generic adventure movie, with battles, journeys from one place to another, treasures, the need to find specific items, and also some funny scenes; and as if that weren’t enough, there are even a few brief songs performed by Steve.

The film, to be honest, doesn’t contribute much to cinematography, and while it’s true that it’s faithful to promoting the creativity of Minecraft, and offers a good valuation of what it means to be creative, especially being creative in the real world, the movie itself isn’t particularly creative and squanders the enormous opportunities offered by building houses, buildings, and other objects with ease, as well as the tasks of mining elements from the earth. It greatly underutilizes the excessively easy construction possibilities of that world, where with a single click on the computer in the game, or a slight hand movement as in the movie, something can be built instantly. This is the worst level of utilization in the film, where truly creative things could have been done in terms of what the characters created and the powers they could have had to fight enemies and overcome barriers. Let’s remember, for example, the burst of creativity that was the liquid metal robot in Terminator 2, or Magneto’s hostage-taking in X-Men.

While the film does work, it’s formulaic, and one could say that once it starts, it goes into autopilot mode, becoming a series of action scenes one after another, with little depth, ingenuity, or creativity. It’s a decent movie on many levels, but it feels more like a commercial product, than a work of art, which it could have been. It’s not unfair to demand that Minecraft be a work of art, because many popular products and movies that tackle popular themes, heroes, or situations manage to create great works of art. Who would have thought, for example, that the movie Gilda, about a cumbia singer—a popular rhythm in Argentina not considered very cultured—would turn out to be a work of art of the magnitude it ended up being?

And even if it didn’t have an incredible level of creativity, Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie did have a lot of heart, lovable characters, and dealt with themes about family and human issues, something that is underutilized in this movie. While there is a boy and his sister, they could have been a friend and a friend, or any other type of relationship between two people, and it wouldn’t have made a difference. The friendship that develops between the characters feels a bit empty, and when they refer to each other as if they were great friends, it feels a little forced. It’s not the same as the relationship, for example, between Indiana Jones and his companion in Temple of Doom, compared to what exists between any two people we might find here. That title, in turn, is remembered for a scene where they escape from a mine in mining carts on tracks in a high-speed chase, and even with 40 years of more advanced cinematic technology and experience, the escape scene in the mining carts in Minecraft doesn’t have even 10% of the excitement of that Indiana Jones movie, and it doesn’t even work as a tribute, at most as a mere reference that comes out poorly in comparison.

The movie is about a character who discovers an orb that allows opening dimensions between reality and Minecraft’s main world, and a subworld where hideous creatures live. Then, when Steve’s character is captured, other characters discover the orb and enter those worlds, where there will be a conflict between the inhabitants of the main world and the underworld, while the characters search for a way to restore the orb’s power to return home. In that sense, it’s not very original and lacks the magic of The Wizard of Oz in that search, obviously.

Despite all these issues, after watching the movie in theaters on opening day, it can be attested that people enjoyed it. Many kids enjoyed it and got excited when characters from the video game appeared, naming them, and after the screening ended, it received a thunderous applause, which shows that the movie was well-received and that the audience got what they wanted. If one watches the trailer, the full film is more or less the same in an extended version; if the trailer hooks you, you can watch the full movie, and it will likely hook you. If the trailer seems like it has nothing to offer the viewer, that same viewer in the theater will waste much more time watching the entire movie than the time they wasted watching the condensed trailer.

A Minecraft Movie fulfills its function of entertaining to a certain extent, it’s formulaic, it doesn’t have all the creativity it should, but overall, it delivers what the audience goes to the theater to see, though this might be an audience that isn’t very cinephile and not very demanding when it comes to asking for art, heart, creativity, and something that leaves an unforgettable mark on our hearts. Perhaps in Hollywood, they should have a crafting table like Minecraft’s, where they can forge more creative, more human movies, with more heart, more laughter and joy, and more creativity; but for now, it seems that not even artificial intelligence would be up to that task. It’s time to do some mining work to make better movies.

Cristian Olcina

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Here is the audio review in spanish that was broadcast on FM Play on the day 05/04/2025, further down, in the YouTube player, exactly the same review but with video: