Summary
A Minecraft Moviehas no less than six credited people responsible for the mangled mess of a story that it delivers. Between this and the fact that the movie has been in various states of development and production for the better part of the last decade, it’s apparent that the film was written and rewritten time and again. AndA Minecraft Moviecertainly feels that way, with its jarring tonal shifts and narrative cul-de-sacs.
However, out of all of this, one thing that becomes increasingly apparent throughout the movie is that the makers desperatelywanted it to be a gargantuan blockbuster hit. In order to do this, they took some extensive notes from the highest-grossing video game movie of all time: 2023’sThe Super Mario Bros. Movie. However, this wasn’t always to the movie’s benefit.
Minecraft’s 80s Music Tracks Are Lifted Straight fromSuper Mario Bros.
On the surface, taking a few cues from a billion-dollar-making blockbuster behemoth makes perfect sense.SuperMario Bros.was an extremely lucrative film, and despite the tepid critical response, it resonated with widespread audiences. However, to say thatSuper Mario Bros.was as much of a creative success as it was a financial one would be an outright farce, given how compromised of an adaptation the film was. It struggled to find a coherent and compelling story amidst the decades of source material, which made it hard to strike a balance between appeasing hardcore fans and enticing general audiences.
One of the oddest choices made to this end inSuper Mario Bros.was theoften grating use of 80s pop songs as needle drops. It’s difficult to discern where this thought process came from, other than the most generalized connection that the firstMariovideo game was released in the middle of the 1980s. However, the franchise has never associated itself with the Americanized ideal of the 80s aesthetic before this, and has its own iconic music in the form of Koji Kondo’s integral musical score.
It seems theSuper Mario Bros.filmmakers wanted to give general audiences music they would recognize and harbor some sense of nostalgia for, in the vein of other Chris Pratt-led films likeGuardians of the Galaxy. But here, the song choices are unmotivated and feel jarring. Inexplicably,A Minecraft Moviesteals this trick, but without any rationale as to why, considering the game was released in 2011. Furthermore, despite having iconic musician and composer Mark Mothersbaugh create a new score for this film, it frequently drowns out his original compositions in favor of uninspired 80s needle drops.
A Minecraft MovieTurns the Jack Black Content Up to Eleven
From one of the weakest elements ofSuper Mario Bros.to one of its strongest, Jack Black’s vocal performance as Bowser is a genuine highlight. He goes all-in on a gravelly, character-driven performance that manages to blend the more traditional takes on the character with his owndistinct new verve. This is only clearer when comparing Black’s performance to several of his co-stars, such as Chris Pratt as Mario, whose work is far less articulate and informed. On top of the great performance, the talented actor/musician also delivers a stellar original song in-character in the middle of the movie with his go-for-broke piano ballad, “Peaches.”
Black’s performance was highly praised, and the song went viral. Thus, it’s no surprise thatA Minecraft Movie, another video game adaptation featuring Jack Black in a prominent role, would attempt to mine the same levels of success. However, the results are far less inspiring.
Black’s performance as Steve is unhinged, with the actor delivering one of the most quintessentially Jack Black-ian performances of the last several decades. Inreteaming with director Jared Hess(with whom he collaborated onNacho Libre), it’s as if Black felt entirely unencumbered and was, in fact, encouraged to riff and improvise as much as possible. The result is a sporadic, all-over-the-place performance that has entertainment value in its own right, but fails to do anything beneficial for the film itself.
Even worse,A Minecraft Moviefeatures a couple of musical performance bits from Black that also fall flat. The mostdisappointing is “Steve’s Lava Chicken,”which sees the film’s already wavering momentum skid to halt so that Jack Black can try and create another viral meme. It feels blatant, obvious, and kind of insulting.
Both Movies Mistake References for Story Elements
The worst lesson thatA Minecraft Movieseems to have learned fromThe Super Mario Bros. Movieis what audiences want in their video game adaptations. Both films feature a slew of references to characters, locations, or elements of the video game, masquerading as actual story elements.The Super Mario Bros. Movie, in attempting to set up an interconnected universe of video game adaptations, speed-runs through many of the most famous moments from the character’s history. Everything from Mario’s conflict with Donkey Kong, to Luigi’s entrapment in a haunted mansion, toMario Kart is run throughfast, with precious little time to do any of it justice.
As a result, the film makes a lot of passing references to things that video game fans will recognize, but ruins the chances of them being adequately rendered cinematically. These pieces of the story from the video game could have made for compelling film entries in their own right, but now they’ve already been covered in a matter of minutes in this one film. The result is a lot of squandered potential for this franchise.
The makers ofA Minecraft Movieapparently saw this and did not think beyond the fact that these references made people applaud on opening night — because they did the same thing. Hugechunks ofA Minecraft Movie’s runtimeare devoted to passing references to the video game. Jack Black’s character calls them all out by name, practically making a YouTube Easter Egg video within the confines of the movie. These are accompanied by several elongated moments of screentime so that the audience can assumedly clap. It’s egregious and cribbed directly fromThe Super Mario Bros. Movieplaybook, and not in a good way.
