I, like many other teens born in the 00’s, grew up loving Minecraft. It’s one of the most influential and popular games of all time, and remains in the zeitgeist even though it came out 16 years ago. News of a movie was inevitable, but disappointing. I’ve written about other adaptations of media I enjoy (read my review of the Junji Ito anime and Five Nights at Freddy’s movie), but this one is easily the worst I’ve seen.

This film has the worst case of “don’t trust the audience to understand anything we don’t explicitly tell them” syndrome I’ve ever seen in a movie. There was not a single scene in this film that wasn’t filled with the most monotonous, over explain-y dialogue on earth. Even the infamous “chicken jockey” just felt so like… what? Why would he say that? Does it matter? What does it mean? The characters say things, they tell you all the emotions they’re feeling, but they’re so two dimensional you can’t even begin to care. So it all just feels like, whatever. 

Part of me wants to say that the acting in this movie was horrible. But I really do think the actors were doing the best with what they were given. The script wasn’t exactly strong, as I discussed before. But man, all the acting here is just so stiff and lifeless. It feels like one of those 80 part “films” you see on Instagram reels that barely even has a plot. This is most apparent with Emma Myers and Sebastian Eugene Hansen’s characters. These two play a stereotypical “strained sibling relationship,” and they’re both just so stilted. I don’t think there was a single scene in this whole movie where they seemed like human beings, and not aliens trying to infiltrate our minds.

It also definitely doesn’t help that this film has some of the worst editing I’ve ever seen in a major motion picture. The whole thing is almost 100 percent CGI and green screen, and god it just looks so cheap and flimsy. There were multiple scenes where you could see that green outline around Jack Black’s hair that any self respecting studio would take the time to edit out. But why pay people to do extra labor when you could just… not?

More than anything, this movie made me sad. Halfway through I was thinking, if this had been a fan film, I’d probably love it. It’s funny, it’s self indulgent, it pays homage. But it loses all brownie points for being a big radioactive heap of corporate greed. I have no doubt in my mind that the people who made this movie couldn’t care less about Minecraft or its fans. If you want a good video game movie, watch Sonic, not this mess.