For as long as there have been video games, there’s been an ouroboros-like relationship between games and movies — with almost every movie from the ’80s onwards having a tie-in game (even if some were bad enough to end up buried in landfills). But eventually, video games got big enough to start getting movies of their own. The relationship hasn’t always been great, and most of those early game-to-movie adaptations didn’t exactly deliver — until recently. Now, with arguably one of the biggest games in the world getting its own big-screen adaptation, the question is: are we digging up dirt again, or have we finally hit diamond?
For those who have just woken up from their decades long coma since the original Mortal Kombat movies were in cinemas – Hi, everything is terrible and maybe the coma wasn’t so bad, but there is this really cool game you should try called Minecraft. Minecraft was first published in 2009 as largely an open to the world game before it was snapped up by Microsoft a few years later for Scrooge McDuck money bin levels of money.
With fairly basic graphics that really are now eternally considered the Minecraft aesthetic Minecraft is a first person survival game where you are dropped into a procedurally generated world made up of blocks. Within the world you are dropped into you have nothing, but you are able to ‘mine’ the world for resources so you are able to ‘craft’ to make things to make your procedurally generated world better for you, either to survive in the day night cycle and defend yourself from creatures OR to play in the more build mode where people have recreated everything from the 7 wonders of the world to ACTUAL scale models of the real world in collaborative Minecraft servers.
Minecraft is different from most games but really was one of the big first survival game style titles where there was no real story. You have one mission, survive in an completely open world. With players left to their own devices to discover and figure out things as the game evolved and updates were released we learn that the main character in this world you live in is named Steve and the world is a lot bigger than the infinite it seems with it being possible and not just in building intricate mineshafts to run carts through, but with other realms that you access through portals and such with an endgame of being able to reach, survive and defeat an Ender Dragon. But that is just if you are playing the game.
A Minecraft Story (the actual title of the film not ‘Minecraft’) kicks us off with a pre-teen Nacho Libre in the shoes of a young Steve with a yearning to do nothing more than go into underground shafts and work like an 1800s urchin. After being turned away Steve grew up and returned to his passion which after not too long resulted in him finding the building blocks to create a portal to the Overworld (the Minecraft green zone).
After a quick montage of living the dream Minecraft YouTuber life without YouTube in building awesome stuff in Minecraft. Building more than just one home and taming a wild wolf into his canine companion Steve finds himself in the Underworld where, when it is clear he will be captured, sends his good boi along with the building blocks for the portal home back to the real world before they fall into the wrong hands.
Fast forwarding to today the blocks sent back by the Kung Fu Panda are discovered by Aquaman and some others leading to a Jumanji situation where they are stuck in the Minecraft Overworld.
Much like the level of deep cut easter eggs in the Super Mario Movie, A Minecraft Movie aims to be as true to the Minecraft mechanics and rules as it can be. From cooking chickens with Lava to the rules around Iron Golems if you are a Minecraft gamer you are going to know what is happening before anyone dragged into the cinema. And if you were the one dragged you are going to either get it explained to you really quickly by who took you or if it gets a chance the movie will do it for you.
Visually the film is exactly how the fine line between a fully modded Minecraft Server and what you might expect from a big studio. In every shot the world feels full and to be honest a lot more active than some Minecraft servers with the number of creatures seen in the background which remain true to the ones you play in the game. While obviously CGI for most of the film, the blending is excellent and the level of immersion does not pull you out of it – which just leaves you free to enjoy the riffs as this film plays out not like a standard 3 act film but more like a video game with a healthy dose of side quests necessary progress.
So, should you go see it? If you are going into this expecting a post modern take on man vs cube then this is not the movie for you with the target audience being squarely set at those who enjoy Minecraft at any age (and for those not old enough to buy a ticket, their parents). While this is a solid Minecraft movie it is also heavily loaded with quips while keeping it PG rated – so if you are the type of person who can be friends with someone who is sincere when they call more than one thing awesome & you like Minecraft, you are in for a good time.
A Minecraft Movie comes out in cinemas across Australia from April 3rd
