'A Minecraft Movie' did not resonate with me. Although I don't play the game, I thought I would give the movie a go as lately video game-based movies like Sonic and Super Mario Bros were decently entertaining enough. Perhaps Minecraft was meant for a younger audience, but the audience around me was mostly children and it didn't seem like they were very entertained either. While not disruptive, thankfully, the kids maintained a low-energy level of polite watching. The occasional question seemed more frequent than laughter.
What didn't work for this movie is the open-ended nature of the source material. The game is mostly about learning to interact with the environment by discovering new materials and crafting recipes, then becoming creative in reshaping the environment with these new discoveries. The game raises the stakes from time to time by sending waves of hostiles for the player to defend against. But it is up to the movie to design a motivation for these attacks. While the main villain's arc does fit the overall theme of how society represses creativity by showing how the different characters react in either healthy or unhealthy ways to their own experiences of repression, really, the chief antagonist has the least provocation to overreact as she does. Without strong motivation for the villain, the stakes are uninteresting.
The humour tends to lean too hard into slapstick. Jason Momoa's character, "Garbage Man", is the butt of most of the jokes. Tough guy gets scared and screams like a little girl. Tough guy gets his ass kicked by cannon-fodder level enemies. Tough guy falls down a lot. It gets old after the first couple of gags. He does swoop in later to pull off a spectacular save, so I guess he finally learns how to play, but frustratingly, his process happens off camera. Jack Black's character, "Steve", takes the mentor role, playing the straight guy to Momoa's goofball. Black sings funny, improvised songs but again, once too many times to be funny every time. Sure, the 'rule of three' is there for a reason, but humour is in the escalation of each of the three stages. Here it's just the same thing repeated and falls flat.
I did identify with the theme of repressed creativity, however. I've been trying to be more creative in the last couple of weeks working on some personal projects. But I'm finding that my more responsible commitments have been holding me back from fully realising my creative goals. I recognise I'm still at a learning phase and so my creations are still super crappy, but having the discipline to keep practicing will eventually get me where I want to be. Baby steps. So, while I may not have enjoyed the movie as much as I hoped to, I still appreciate the encouragement I got from it.