After the movie adaption releases of “Five Nights at Freddy’s” and “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” a Minecraft movie adaptation hitting the theaters was very predictable. Although, after it was announced, many people were worried about how the movie would look as a live action film and took to the internet to talk about it. Despite all of the initial controversy, many people, including myself, were proven wrong and ended up truly enjoying the movie. However, there were a couple things that I would have liked to see done differently.
The movie starts out with Steve in the real world struggling with life and searching for a new adventure, causing him to return to the mines he would play near as a child. He ended up finding these two cube pieces that fit together like a puzzle piece. When he put them together it created a portal that took him to the overworld of minecraft where he goes on to create a ton of builds for his minecraft world before being captured in the nether. The movie then introduces the main characters from the real world: Garrett or “Garbage Man,” Henry, Natalie and Dawn. Natalie and Henry’s backstory was very important to the beginning plot of the movie. Their parents passed away and Natalie and Henry were forced to move to Idaho. While this part of the story was crucial to the plot, I do wish the writer came up with a less angsty beginning to the story. Nobody was really entering the theaters hoping to hear about kids who lost their parents while watching the Minecraft movie. On top of that, Natalie’s whole character was depthless and boring, and was shaped in trying to be a motherly figure to Henry, who is struggling with the move and adjusting to his new school. Even Dawn, the realtor who helped them move in, had a fun and interesting character of a sassy woman with a zoo on wheels as her car. I feel like there were so many other ways to have the main characters find the minecraft realm besides a troubled teen who kept making bad choices.
Another big part of the movie that bothered me was how many scenes were based off of fundamentals that were not in the game. For example, Dennis, Steve’s dog, was found by Dawn untamed which could never actually happen in the game, or the amount of items that were crafted without a recipe. While I understand the writers probably included these scenes to give more insight into the characters, I still feel like the movie could’ve progressed the same without it and they could have developed their leads the same way using logic from the actual game.
There were also a good amount of plot holes and things that didn’t add up such as Steve telling Garrett not to use his ender pearl because he has to kill an enderman for it, implying it was really difficult for him but then he has three elytras. This item can only be obtained in the End, which is covered in endermen and you would need to kill the final boss to make it to End city, where they are located.
Despite these issues, one of the things that truly made the movie enjoyable for me was the comedy and how stupidly funny all of the one-liners were. Before even seeing the movie, my for you pages were flooded with Minecraft movie memes, so when I sat down in the theater to hear “I… am Steve” it was almost magical. I also loved that they included references for dedicated players of the game such as using fireworks to fly faster with your elytra and Steve’s creeper farm. The movie’s YouTuber cameos were also a very fun inclusion as I got to see many of my favorite childhood content creators though I wish they had more screen time because I only realized it was a cameo at the last minute.
While I wished the movie would have been more accurate to the game, I still loved how lighthearted and fun it was. In the end, I can still watch unlimited and authentic Minecraft content on YouTube.
