A Minecraft Movie Mines Nostalgia, Misses the Mark

A Minecraft Movie

★ ½

A Minecraft Movie is based on the video game phenomena that has captured the imagination and creativity of gamers, young and old, since its official release in November 2011. In the game, you’re Steve, a character dressed in a light blue t-shirt and dark blue pants. Uniformed blocks of materials surround you and you break them to make tools and materials for mining and crafting (yes, this painfully works its way into a line of dialogue in the film). It’s like digitalized Legos and the creative possibilities are seemingly endless.

This film’s creativity is heavily dependent upon Jack Black, who portrays Steve, delivering lines about things within the Minecraft world with the crazy-eyed delivery only Jack Black can bring.

Jack Black as Steve, Danielle Brooks as Dawn and Jason Momoa as Garrett
© 2025 Warner Bros. Pictures

We begin the film in the real world with Steve as a young kid standing in front of a mine shaft holding a pickaxe. An angry miner blocks the entry next to a sign that says “no kids allowed.” Dejected, Steve grows up to work a mind-numbing job until he remembers his childhood where he “yearned for the mines.”

He returns to the mine and starts chipping away at rocks until he comes across the Orb of Dominance, a glowing blue cube, and the Earth Crystal. Conveniently, the Orb fits perfectly into the Crystal so Steve joins the two. This opens a portal to the Minecraft world, known as the Overworld, where Steve mines, crafts and builds to his heart’s content.

A Minecraft village
© 2025 Warner Bros. Pictures

Steve accidentally discovers another realm within Minecraft, the Nether. It’s a dark place with mean pig-like creatures, called Piglins, led by a wicked sorceress named Malgosha (Rachel House). She holds Steve captive in the Nether, forcing him to mine gold for her indefinitely.

Meanwhile, in the real world, a young woman named Natalie (Emma Myers) is her brother Henry’s (Sebastian Hansen) legal guardian. They’ve moved to a town in Idaho where she’s just bought a small home for them to get a fresh start. They’re met by Natalie’s real estate agent Dawn (Danielle Brooks) who gives them the keys to the house.

Also in town is Garrett (Jason Momoa), a washed-up video game champion from the 1980s. Garret is stuck in his video game glory days, broke and facing foreclosure.

All of them will conveniently come together, find their way to the mine and accidentally activate the portal to the Overworld. Once in the Overworld, they’ll need Steve’s help to get them back home.

Piglins attack
© 2025 Warner Bros. Pictures

Both the advantage and the problem with making a film out of the Minecraft game is that there is no general plot to it. It’s an advantage, because it’s ripe for telling a fresh story. It’s problematic, because there is a ginormous fan base to consider. This is likely why the film was in development for nearly a decade

What we’re given is a messy story, astonishingly bad dialogue and non-sensical characters that tend to exist in a film where filmmakers aren’t sure which direction to take the story. Plot points are all-too-convenient when they do fit within some semblance of story.

Still, it’s hard to completely hate this film. It is Minecraft after all, and if you’re like me, a parent who has played countless hours building and crafting with his kids–and loved every minute of it–you’ll find things to enjoy.

A Minecraft Movie probably won’t find its way into the “so bad it’s good” category. But it will likely find its place as a sort of cult classic. That’s pretty evident by the audience’s playful, jeering cheers at Black’s delivery of lines such as: “Chicken jockey!”