The Good, The Bad, The Chicken Jockey; A Minecraft Movie Review

On April 4, 2025, A Minecraft Movie premiered in theaters worldwide, sparking chaos and multiple controversies upon release. From critiques over the poor editing and CGI models to memes that led to workers and police being called into the theaters themselves, A Minecraft Movie has been quite the topic of discussion for viewers and longtime fans of the game itself. Hold onto your flint-and-steel and release your water buckets as we discuss this bumpy and blocky adventure.

A Minecraft Movie stars Steve (Jack Black) as he explains how he found the cubed paradise known as The Overworld and his discovery of The Nether, captured by Malgosha (voiced by Rachel House) an evil piglin sorceress and ruler of The Nether, bent on destroying everything and revoking creativity from all. In the real

world, Garett “The Garbageman” Garrison (Jason Momoa) is at the brink of losing his game store and stumbles across Henry (Sebastian Hansen), a creative boy who doesn’t quite fit in, Natalie (Emma Myers), Henry’s caring older sister and now legal guardian after the passing of their late mother, and Dawn (Danielle Brooks), a real estate agent who has a side job for a mobile petting zoo. All are transported into the same world Steve entered and have to stop Malgosha’s evil plan with the Earth Cube, dubbed as “the most powerful cube-shaped orb in the universe.”

The movie got mixed reviews from viewers all over on IMDb. Many spoke out about how the story was dull or another cash grab, big companies are trying to bag by conceptualizing media with big fanbases (i.e. Sonic, FNaF, etc.) to draw attention. Others were quick to defend that it was a kids’ movie and not entirely intended for adults. All in all, reviews were mixed from all ages, some making jokes about recently made memes from trailers.

 

One big controversy that occurred before the movie even came out was the mob designs. In Minecraft, animals and monsters are all “mobs,” which were recreated in the movie in order to match the likeness of the

live action. However, when the designs were leaked online, people pointed out the uncanniness of the designs, saying they looked like early 2010 videos of “Minecraft Mobs In Real Life.” The hype slowly died down as more trailers came out and people warmed up to the designs. The way the human characters were edited into the blocky world was subtly criticized, with editing that made them look smaller in some scenes and larger in others, to the green screen subtly seen outlining the people, and even out of place in certain angles, there was nothing short of critiques that overanalyzed the details in something that’s meant to be magical for children.

The trailers sparked many memes, such as the Chicken Jockey scene, where Steve and Garett are captured by

Illagers (an evil counterpart to the peaceful Villager) and put in a boxing ring with a baby zombie mounting a chicken, dubbed a chicken jockey by Steve. This caused theater chaos, with people chanting out loud, throwing popcorn, and even prompting someone to take a living chicken to the theater. One worker from AMC Theaters located in The Block of Orange, CA, stated that the first couple of weeks were difficult working in the theater for him, bringing up an encounter where he had to call the police due to someone taking fireworks into the cinema. 

However, Mojang, the creators of the game and overseers of the production of the movie, catered to longtime fans, with cameos from big YouTubers who are staples of the fandom early on. YouTubers DanTDM, Aphmau, Mumbo Jumbo, and LDShadowLady made cameos as attendees at an auction in the beginning of the movie. Jens Bergensten, known as one of the lead designers for Minecraft, was a waiter in the dinner scenes between Vice Principal Marlene (Jennifer Coolidge) and a Villager (named Nitwit, voiced by Matt Berry) who managed to enter the real world. Crazy romantic side plot, I know.

All in all, despite how harsh fans were, the hype created approximately $780 million in the box office so far, with $162.7 million domestically on opening weekend, marking it as the best opening weekend for a video game movie, taking the title from 2023’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie ($146.4 million).

So, is A Minecraft Movie a good movie to watch? It truly is up to the viewer. Some believe it’s peak cinema, others think it’s a cash grab slop to take from devoted fans. So just get your lava chicken, tame your wolves with femur bones, and decide if it’s as good as people say. After all, art is subjective, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder.