A Minecraft Movie

Note: This review contains spoilers for A Minecraft Movie.

What happens when you make a movie based on a video game with no story? Markus “Notch” Persson tried to find out in 2014 when his company, Mojang, struck with a deal with Warner Bros. to develop Minecraft, Persson’s creation and currently the best-selling video game of all time. As with many Hollywood projects, however, the project went through development hell for nearly a decade, surviving several personnel changes both at Warner Bros. and at Mojang, including Microsoft purchasing the company and Persson subsequently stepping down. Finally, in 2022, production finally went into full swing, with filming conducted in 2024 and the final release in 2025. Although the film received mixed reception from critics, with a 48% on Rotten Tomatoes, it still earned just shy of $1 billion at the box office against a budget of $150 million. A rather impressive feat.

Although I had some experience with Minecraft, I didn’t really watch it out of any genuine excitement. The first trailer left a bad impression between its use of The Beatles’ “Magical Mystery Tour” and editing that didn’t contain a single trace of sincerity. The following trailers did a better job with showing the actual plot and comedic tone, but did little to wash out the sour taste left by the initial reveal. Of course, when the movie succeeded despite expectations, it gained awareness not for any indication of quality, but from the memes that spawned from it, including the infamous “Chicken Jockey” trend that caused headaches for theaters and the employees who had to clean up huge messes, not helped by how director Jared Hess didn’t really discourage the behavior (he did benefit from the increased ticket sales, after all). The non-zero possibility of witnessing such chaos firsthand discouraged me from seeing in the theater, even if I really wanted to, so I didn’t consider it until I could stream it on HBO Max, free from spills, live chickens or rowdy theatergoers, if only to see what all the fuss was about. About 100 minutes later, I walked away fully convinced that such an average film’s success came entirely from memes, for better or worse.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters

Though the rematch between monster movie icons King Kong and Godzilla lies just around the corner, our buildup to Godzilla vs Kong wouldn’t be complete without a look at its direct predecessor, Godzilla: King of the Monsters. With a five-year gap from Hollywood’s previous Godzilla film, Godzilla (2014), the film also doubles as a celebration of the franchise’s 65th anniversary and the first Hollywood Godzilla to feature other Toho kaiju. Though King of the Monsters generally pleased Godzilla fans, critics were harsher, mainly citing issues with the story and characters. After finally getting a chance to watch it ourselves, in 3D no less, we find ourselves agreeing more with the critics.

Pokémon Detective Pikachu (Film)

With Pokémon being one of the largest pop culture juggernauts since its introduction as a video game in 1996 in Japan, it's understandable that an IP that’s lasted this long would eventually want to experiment with its formula. In 2016 (2018 in the West) came Detective Pikachu, a somewhat obscure 3DS game that put the Pokémon Pikachu in a detective setting wherein it had to team up with a human in order to solve a mystery. When the announcement of a live-action film adaptation was announced, I was a little worried how it might look considering the track record of live-action video game adaptations, however the first trailer was enough to win me over. As some one who has some experience with Pokémon, I found the movie, Pokémon Detective Pikachu, to be one of the best video game movies I had ever seen, possibly even the best one made in live-action.

Second Opinion - Man of Steel - Bland of Steel

I'm not one to call myself a Superman expert, but I do have some history with the man of steel. The only other Superman movie I've seen is Superman Returns, though not out of choice, but otherwise my experience with the last son of Krypton comes from various bits of animation, the first handful of issues of the Superman, Action Comics, and Justice League books from DC's New 52 relaunch, and the recent Injustice: Gods Among Us. That being said, I wasn't sure whether I would ever see the latest relaunch, Man of Steel, because, like with The Amazing Spider-Man, the ads made it seem like they were going to turn the character into something more akin to Batman, but I decided I may as well see it to be up to date. Now that I've seen it, I can say that, for a movie trying to retell Superman's origin story, it seems to have a lot of holes in it.

As stated in the introduction, the plot of Man of Steel is yet another re-tread of Superman's origin story, but with a twist. As the planet Krypton is in danger of exploding, Jor-El (Russel Crowe) and his wife Lara Lor-Van (Ayelet Zurer) have their son, Kal-El, and decide to launch him inside a pod to another planet so that the Kryptonian race can go on. However, General Zod (Michael Shannon) tries to put a stop to those plans, killing Jor-El in the process, but is too late as Lara launches the pod; as a result, Zod and his followers are launched to the Phantom Zone for 300 cycles as punishment for their crime (though why they would bother with this in the midst of planet-wide extinction is unclear). Years later, an older Kal-El, aka Clark Kent (Henry Cavill), is struggling with keeping his powers a secret as General Zod makes his way to Earth.

While the story is somewhat easy to follow, it has...problems. Like The Amazing Spider-Man, there are a lot of holes in the tale Man of Steel is trying to tell, though explaining any of them would require a lot of white text. One thing I can say is that, similarly to The Social Network, everyone comes across as a jerk, mainly towards Clark Kent in particular. As seen in trailers, a young Clark saves a bus from sinking, but everyone, including his father (Kevin Costner), treats it like it's a bad thing, as if Clark should have let everyone inside the bus just drown. There's plenty of situations that are also like this, most, if not all, of which are more likely to make you scratch your head rather than just go along with them. This movie also includes a number of twists, none of which make any sort of sense (again, this would require a good chunk of spoiler tags). There are some laughs here and there, but they alone are not enough to salvage this story.

If I thought this movie was better written, something is wrong.

That said, the acting was pretty decent, with special mention to Michael Shannon for his rather hammy performance as General Zod. For what it is, the actors do a good job with their characters, though that doesn't mean the characters themselves are exactly likable. As for the special effects, I found them to be really well done, especially when it came to the eye lasers and Kryptonian technology (though whether some of it is well thought out in-universe is another story). Still, for the most part it didn't seem like effects for the sake of effects. While Danny Elfman did a good job on the score, it's one of those soundtracks where, while it gets the mood right on-screen, it isn't really all that memorable.

In conclusion, Man of Steel is more like it's made of balsa wood: It has some good points, but otherwise it falls apart rather quickly. Fans that have far more experience with the Superman character are more likely to get something out of this, though I doubt they would get that much enjoyment out of it either. For everyone else, it's at least something to watch until Thor: The Dark World comes out. Though the movie is rated PG-13, it may be best to avoid bringing in small children, as the story deals with some heavy concepts that may require a bit of explaining from an adult. If DC really is planning to use this movie to start their own Marvel Studios-like cinematic universe, it's not exactly off to a great start.