The blockbuster, based on the bricklaying video game, topped the U.S. box office and, along with the chaos of “Chicken Jockey,” its colorful showings signaled the future of cinema.
Oppenheimer is an intellectual drama starring Cillian Murphy as the scientist who invented the atomic bomb. The Minecraft Movie is a goofy video game adaptation where Jack Black belts out a song about “Lava Chicken.” However, the two films have a lot in common. What is clear is that both films earned nearly $1 billion at the worldwide box office. The Minecraft movie is currently the highest-grossing film of 2025 in the United States and the fourth-biggest film worldwide, while Oppenheimer was the third-biggest film of 2023. But another connection is that both films demonstrate how moviegoing has fundamentally changed since the coronavirus pandemic. Audiences interacted in a culture-changing way that rivaled the two films. That’s why The Minecraft Movie is the most important movie release of the year.
Not that its success was a complete surprise. In 2024, the 10th biggest movie in the world was Sonic the Hedgehog 3, which was based on another video game. In 2023, the second biggest movie in the world, one ahead of Oppenheimer, will be super mario bros movie. Also in 2023, Five Nights at Freddy’s was so profitable that a sequel was released earlier this month. Next year, we can expect Mortal Kombat 2, Street Fighter, and Super Mario Bros Galaxy. Meanwhile, two of the most acclaimed television series right now are The Last of Us and Fallout. Video games are Hollywood’s new favorite intellectual property, now that superhero blockbusters aren’t as all-conquering as they were a few years ago.
Getty ImagesStill, Minecraft wasn’t the most likely candidate for the big screen treatment. That’s not to say it’s not a cultural phenomenon. It’s the best-selling video game of all time, and brightly colored, square-heavy merchandise is everywhere. But it’s actually set in a world made up entirely of pixelated blocks representing different minerals, and the player’s job is to break or “mine” these blocks in order to build things. Entrusting this strange game to Jared Hess, the director of offbeat comedies like Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre, didn’t seem like an obvious way to sell more movie tickets than the latest in the Mission: Impossible or Jurassic World series. Then came the reviews. The Minecraft movie received a score of 48% on review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes. A typical assessment was that it was, as Kevin Maher put it, “a gaudy, headache-inducing…massive sprinkling of commercial propaganda.” his 1 star review For the Times.
the violence it caused
The audience did not agree. The film was a huge hit during its opening weekend in April, with BBC News reporting that it entertained children and adults alike. “It’s a good thing that dads like family movies,” said Steve Buck, chief strategy officer at industry analyst Entelligence. But what’s unusual is that viewers weren’t just laughing at Black’s antics in the blocky alternate world known as the Overworld. They were inspired by the trailer, and especially by the way Black enthusiastically declared every phrase, with fans of the game yelling every time they recognized a line or meme, throwing popcorn in the air, and generally acting like they were at a midnight screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Inspired by the game’s rarely seen characters, a key moment that excited the mob was when a green-skinned zombie child jumped on the back of a hen (which actually resembled a duck) and Black warned, “Chicken Jockey!” Minecraft enthusiasts went wild. Some moviegoers in Utah Bring your own live chicken to a screening. And at some screenings in America, it is reported The police were called.
Source: BBC Culture – www.bbc.com
