A Minecraft Movie And What's Making Us Happy
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A Minecraft movie is the first attempt to adapt the blockbuster video game Minecraft for the big screen.

The film stars Jack Black and Jason Momoa in a goofy and sprawling adventure full of blocky animals and magical MacGuffins. I'm Stephen Thompson. Joining me today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour is Regina Barber. She's a host and reporter for NPR's Science Podcast, Shortwave. Hey, Regina. Hey, Stephen. This is awesome. It's great to have you. Also with us is James Mastromarino. He is a producer for NPR's Here and Now and leads NPR's gaming coverage. Hey, James. Hey, Stephen. I am thrilled to have you both here.

Minecraft is the biggest selling video game of all time, so it's only natural that it would spawn a film franchise. It's true. Even E.T. the Extraterrestrial for Atari 2600. But the Minecraft universe in the games isn't really built on characters with discrete personalities. It's more of a sandbox-style world-building game where you construct elaborate shelters that help protect you from marauding pig warriors and zombies.

Turning Minecraft into a movie presents a challenge because the film has a lot of character development to catch up on. But as the Lego Movie and Barbie have demonstrated, it's possible to get it spectacularly right. I'm not saying this one does. Yeah.

A Minecraft movie stars Jack Black as Steve. He's the default blank slate character in the Minecraft games. Here, he is an extremely eager adventurer who lives for the mines and is trying to protect a powerful cube that allows its holder to pass through different realms.

An army of pigs wants to use the cube for the purposes of plundering, but their efforts are complicated when the cube, the movie does have fun with the fact that everyone calls it an orb, falls into the hands of a washed-up gamer named Garrett the Garbage Man Garrison. He's played by Jason Momoa. Yeah.

Soon enough, Garrett, Steve, a pair of plucky orphans, and a realtor played by Danielle Brooks are venturing through different realms. Naturally, along the way, they unveil and deploy various Minecraft Easter eggs and maybe even learn a little something about the value of creativity and friendship. It's in theaters now. Regina Barber, I'm going to start with you. What did you think of a Minecraft movie? From the trailers, I did not have a lot of hope. Yeah.

And so I went in with basically zero expectations. And I have to say, I had a lot more fun than I thought I was. I was laughing a lot more. The one-liners were great. So I have a daughter and she begged me to play Minecraft with her. And I never... And you were like, no. I never could understand just like building things that didn't have great graphics, that everything was so blocky. But, and then like,

My current partner, and he was like, do you want to play Minecraft together? And I was like, okay. And this enraged my daughter, who was much older at the time, no longer playing Minecraft. And I was like, we can play together now. And she's like, no, it's too late. Cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon. That's right. But I have played it, and I started to understand. She never wanted to play with people attacking you. So once that kind of came in, then my gamerness...

started to reach out. So I knew it a fair amount, but still I was like, how are they going to turn this into a movie? And they did an okay job. I was worried it was going to be like stupid bad, but it was just stupid fun. So I liked it. Okay. How about you, James? Yeah. It's been in my orbit since like 2011 when the indie game first came out. And I basically take various different times to dip in and see what's going on because I have...

that are way more creative and inventive than I am with Minecraft systems. I'm not agreeing that you're not creative. I'm just saying I can identify. Yeah, well, I mean, you can laugh at me for that too because they'll build whole villages and castles and stuff that I just frankly don't have the patience for. I like the adventuring side of it too, actually, Regina. What the film does translate well is the absolute terror of your first night first playing Minecraft where you know that anything can kill you.

I'm very mixed on the movie because I was holding it up to the Barbie movie and the Lego movie and these other things that used really blank slate properties to kind of tell actually pretty interesting stories. And on the one hand, the Minecraft movie might have more constraints because it can't

It can't be entirely about a product that's been around for decades and been in people's minds for generations. It has to kind of check a bunch of boxes. It has to establish what Minecraft is for the benefit of some parent in the audience. It's not as immediately evident to a toy that you can pick up and

handle, even though it is very akin to Lego in terms of giving you a wide canvas to build your own dream. And the first like 15 minutes of the movie are Jack Black telling you exactly what is appealing about this world. Jack Black shouts a lot of exposition in this movie. Yes. It's bookended by him doing that. I kind of liked the intro.

I don't know why. I just, I found it funny. It felt a little bit like the Lord of the Rings intro because it's setting up like this epic world, but instead of doing it with gravitas, it's doing it with Jack Black offbeat humor. Yeah.

I basically had a similar relationship to this movie, I think, that you guys did, which was coming in with relatively low expectations based on a combination of the trailers, which weren't necessarily blowing my socks off, and just a general sense that this is a massive blockbuster IP extension. This is designed. There is a certain mercenary quality to this project that is to be expected and that is only really rarely expected.

exceeded, right? Like we keep mentioning Barbie in the Lego movie, but you know, you haven't heard us mention the Emoji movie. There are many, many, many, many IP extensions that do not work as well as those films. To me, this cleared a relatively low bar. I thought that it's very lively. Everyone involved is very committed. My relationship with Minecraft is entirely based on

At least one of my kids played it. But it was not an obsession in my house to the extent of something like Toontown or Pop Tropica or later Roblox. Right. Roblox is huge. That movie's coming out eventually. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

I wouldn't be surprised if you saw a nostalgia vehicle built around Pop Tropica and or Disney's Toontown at some point down the line to tap into Gen Z nostalgia. Gen Z nostalgia. Yeah. Already. It's a thing, man. Death comes for us all. But it's worth noting that this film was directed by Jared Hess. And Jared Hess did Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre. And Jared Hess's...

you know, kind of narrative stamp is a certain kind of humor that is very loud. And ridiculous. And I like that. Yeah, it's ridiculous. It's absurdist, but it is not necessarily like sliding jokes subtly under the door. And the fact that you have Jack Black, who, as I've kind of alluded to, Jack Black basically screams every line he says. Who are you? I am Steve. Steve.

And everything is just like pitched to the farthest rafter. And, you know, Jason Momoa is going very, very big here. The animation is big. They're kind of playing off of the limitations of the Minecraft animation in the way that the Lego movie plays off the limitations of Lego animation. It's very committed. It's throwing a lot at the screen. If you have a headache, don't go to this movie. Yeah.

But if you want just like a fun, big, loud, silly kids movie and maybe you have kids who are excited to go, you could do a lot worse. Yeah. I think that's the key when you keep on saying committed and the actors were committed and the storyline was committed to being loud and consistently all the way through. I think that's why it exceeded my expectations. There's so many movies that try to do something and then they like halfway through or two-thirds of the way through like –

don't continue, you know? And I think the one-liners, they didn't stop. They kept going in a nice pace. I don't know how somebody who loves Minecraft, who's younger, would want more. Yeah, I mean, it's funny that you say it so loud because Minecraft isn't loud. It's like actually pretty understated. It's often credited for this really quiet atmosphere

and immersive soundtrack, for example. That's true. But you can't replicate that sort of experience of discovering Minecraft for yourself on a big screen. So they have the most enthusiastic stand-in tell you exactly why the overworld is cool and worth protecting. And then...

I think for me, ultimately, it felt like it didn't quite deserve its emotional payoffs. No. I didn't quite believe everyone's character arc. Yeah, that's true. The female characters had a lot less to do than the three male ones. But I still am laughing because...

Internally, at some of the things Jack Black and Jason Momoa say, like particularly those two and their bromance is actually pretty great. I mean, I kept on thinking to myself, is this a movie that's actually about male loneliness? Yeah.

And it isn't not about male loneliness. It's not not about male loneliness. I think that's a really good point. And this is where I want to give a little bit of credit to Jason Momoa, whose level of commitment to this role. And let's just say, like, Jason Momoa is not having to emulate a character from the Minecraft games. He's just a guy. He's like a washed up. He was like the world champion in some, like, street fighting game from 1989. And he's like never let go of that.

triumph in his life. What he is very, very much to his bones is a Jared Hess character. He is a Napoleon Dynamite, Nacho Libre style, silly character. Stuck in the past. Yeah. Who's stuck in the past, late 80s washout. He runs like a retro video game store in which I wish to live. Yeah.

It was pretty nice, actually. I'm the guy who watched the movie Five Nights at Freddy's and was like, I understand that people get murdered there, but could I live at a Freddy's? You'd take that risk. I want to live in a haunted Chuck E. Cheese. It's not necessarily like a fondness for the franchise. You know, that's an attainable goal, Stephen. That'll always be the dream. But getting back to Momoa, I think his level of commitment to the bit really helps sell this movie. Free garbage tip.

Fear is just weakness hijacking your body's cockpit. What a night. And if that happens, you can say bio-cone-dias to your body plane's navigation system. He's not a nuanced character. It's a Jared Hess movie. But he's bringing a vibe to it that you would never think you were going to get from the video games. This movie succeeds at making Jason Momoa so deeply uncool. Yeah. Which is a feat unto itself. Yeah.

And he's given like basically the best lines. I just have to say Jennifer Coolidge had great lines. I enjoyed her lines a lot. She plays the vice principal where one of the kids goes to school. She has like just these random things about her.

her divorce. And like, I will, I will say to our listeners, we were all sitting together in the theater, which is like the first time I've ever done a pop culture happy hour where we're all watching the movie next to each other. We can all hear each other laugh or scoff. Or sigh beleagueredly. Yes. Yeah.

But there's a point in the movie where like, you know, Jennifer Coolidge, something great happens to her and she's like this middle-aged divorcee and these little children are cheering for her. And like, I was just touched. I was like, oh my gosh, these children are so kind.

This movie does give you a few clever cameos. There are definitely people with like little bit parts who will come in and liven up a scene or two. Jemaine Clement from Flight of the Conchords. Just for a second. Pops up almost unrecognizably. You mentioned Jennifer Coolidge. And of course, there are all the Minecraft Easter eggs. Were there any things that jumped out at you guys as like, oh, that's sweet. That's something I wouldn't have thought to include. The chicken jockey.

which is a very strange enemy. It's just a baby zombie riding a chicken. And it's when the movie is at its most nacho libre, Momoa has to fight this bizarre and nearly unstoppable minuscule force. So I was afraid that the movie would indulge purely in memes and antics. Mostly the jokes land without having to be steeped in internet culture. That moment is bewildering, but sort of fits the like...

it fits the moment. What can I say? Yeah, it's bewildering. It fits the tone of the film and the best Easter eggs will delight the people who get them without taking the people who don't out of the film. Yeah. And malevolent babies play really well. It's true. Yeah.

I think the one Easter egg I did get was a Napoleon Dynamite Easter egg, and that's T.O.T.S., right? Like, there was tater tots. Can you call it an Easter egg when it's the entire personality of the real world part of the movie? Yes, exactly. It's Idaho. There are T.O.T.S. Nearly every minute has a T.O.T. reference. Yes, that's true. That's true. They've got a T.O.T. launcher, and it's pretty important. That's true. T.O.T.S. are a recurring theme in this film. I kind of like in this film, like, is it Barbie? Is it the Lego movie? Of course it's not. No.

I think it is more along the lines of the Super Mario Brothers movie, which, one, made like a billion and a half dollars. And two, as much as that was like...

clearly a very slight film. It did have tons of Easter eggs that delighted Mario super fans and clearly caught on with its audience. And I think this film, for all of the kind of invective hurled at its trailers, I think this film can catch on with the people it's engineered to catch on with. I think it's good enough to do that. There's one...

And that is, I also went with my wife and she found the animation off-putting. And this was another complaint people had. Yeah, because you're translating a deliberately retro pixelated art style into this glorious HD world. Kind of glossifying it. Nonetheless. Yeah.

It's all blocky. Yeah. And that can be very charming, but it also means that characters don't move like you would expect blocky characters do. They move just like anyone you would expect to. And so it's weird when a villain, for example, says, oh, you round people. You're so round and therefore you're wrong. You're not

fit for this world when actually beyond like some sharp angles, most things looks textured and squishy anyway. So I think the animators did about as good of a job that they could with this assignment. But I do think there's a little bit of a, is it an uncanny valley? Sort of your mileage may vary with how you approach to that. I do think they glean enough jokes off of that animation that it generally works. The fact that the MacGuffin in the film is an

orb that is a cube. To me, they went back to that joke maybe one too many times, but I laughed basically every other time, so what are you going to do? Anyway, we want to know what you think about a Minecraft movie. Find us on Facebook at facebook.com slash pchh and on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com slash nprpopculture. We'll have a link in our episode description. Up next, what is making us happy this week?

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Now it's time for our favorite segment of this week and every week. What's making us happy this week? Regina Barber, what's making you happy this week? There's this anime that a lot of people love, and it started in 1999. It's called One Piece. And I was conscious in 1999, could have watched it, didn't. One Piece is about, you know, a group of...

I've only watched the first season. A group of pirates that are traveling around in this mysterious world, and one of them has special powers. They're fighting, but they're also super wholesome sailors and pirates. I started the series, and it's like over 20 seasons. It's got over 1,000 episodes in it.

I'm in episode 70-something, and I am loving it. Like, I have no idea why I waited this long in my middle age to watch One Piece, but it is paying off. So that's One Piece that you can watch on Netflix. I say if you've been thinking about it for years, just do it. Nice. Thank you, Regina Barber. James Mastromarino, what is making you happy this week?

Oh, man, I feel shamed for not starting One Piece because it's been in my life for a very long time. Just do it, James. I have something that has a little less commitment, and it's another anime. We did not plan this. Yeah, we didn't. But it is an animated movie called Look Back. Look Back.

It came out last year to critical acclaim, and it got on my radar because both the film critics I follow and the anime fans I follow were both raving about it. So I caught up with both it and the original manga it's based off of, and it's a brilliant story.

touching story about two aspiring manga artists in Japan and their friendship from elementary school days to young adulthood and

I can't really say much more without spoiling it. Other than that, it is beautifully animated and it had me crying buckets because I, at one point in my life, wanted to be an illustrator and I had a friend who was better at art than me and I related to this friendship quite terribly. But it is a gorgeous film and I cannot recommend it enough. That's Look Back, which is a great film.

which you can watch on Amazon Prime Video. And I should note here that Amazon supports NPR and Pace to distribute some of our content. I have to say, James, I have a daughter who's an illustrator who loves manga, and we are adding that to our queue right now. Yeah, me too.

So for me, it has been an unusually great spring for new albums. And I've already heard a ton of records that are going to be in the running for my favorite music of the year. One of those records came out about a month ago. It's called Foxes in the Snow, and it's by the singer-songwriter Jason Isbell. He's one of the biggest stars in Americana music, but his new record is...

The rawest and most stripped down thing he's ever done. It's just Jason Isbell with an acoustic guitar as he processes a bunch of major life changes, including his recent divorce from the great singer-songwriter Amanda Shires. These songs cut deep and really resonate. And my favorite is a song that's just...

a bunch of life advice that he's passing on to his daughter. It's called Don't Be Tough, and it absolutely clobbered me, speaking of buckets of tears. Tighten up your belt and laces. Feel the pain and fear. Don't be tough until you have to. Let love knock you on your ass.

So that's Jason Isbell. His great new record is called Foxes in the Snow, and that is what is making me happy this week. If you want links for what we recommended, plus some more recommendations, sign up for our newsletter at npr.org slash popculturenewsletter.

That brings us to the end of our show. Regina Barber, James Mastromarino, thanks so much for being here. Thank you, Stephen. This was great. Absolute pleasure. This episode was produced by Liz Metzger and edited by Jessica Reedy and Mike Katziff. Hello, Come In provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Stephen Thompson, and we will see you all next week.

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