Minecraft movie makes little sense but looks and sounds great on 4K disc

Fans of the Minecraft video game have a new guilty pleasure to play with, as Warner Brothers has released the movie (well, "a" movie, according to the title) version of the extremely popular game.

My grandkids are Minecraft fans and I've watched them play the game many times. I've even tried my own hand at it, rather ineffectively. My biggest issue with the game is its lousy graphics and I admit I have trouble getting by that.

But most of my Minecraft angst came, I found out when I sat down with the boys and watched some of the "Making of" stuff that accompanies the movie on this new 4K disc release, because I had no idea what the heck was going on. All I saw with the game was the kids building stuff and wandering around the virtual world that Minecraft lets them create. But there's apparently a lot more to it than that.

Hence "A Minecraft Movie", a film the grandkids thought was okay but which I thought was stupid and boring, though it looks and sounds great.

Obviously, I'm not the target market for this 4K disc release, which is why I dragged my 11 and eight-year-old boys into this review. To them, the movie made sense!

Go figure.

Here's how the blurb describes the film: "Four misfits are suddenly pulled through a mysterious portal into a bizarre cubic wonderland that thrives on imagination. To get back home they'll have to master this world while embarking on a quest with an unexpected expert crafter."

That expert crafter is Jack Black, who I remember most from Peter Jackson's King Kong, where he played the lead character of Carl Denham. Here he's Steve, who my grandkids tell me is kind of the generic human character in Minecraft. He tends to chew the scenery, but this is a scenery chewing-type of movie.

Also getting a decent meal out of the décor – much of which was actually built on set – is Jason Momoa, who I remember as Aquaman (I liked him there) and as Duncan Idaho in Denis Villeneuve's Dune (he was fine, but miscast). Here, he's a once famous video game champ (Pixels comes to mind, as does Tron) now basically marking time in life as the owner/operator of a used nerd stuff store. Or something like that.

Along for the ride and undoubtedly to add the all-important diversity, are Henry (Sebastian Hansen), his older sister Natalie (Emma Myers), and to ensure the film isn't all-white, real estate agent Dawn (Danielle Brooks), because off course diversity is far more important than a compelling screenplay. The four of them (they'll meet Steve later, even though the audience has already seen him) get zapped into the world of Minecraft and, to no one's surprise, have to find their way back out again so they can resume their useless lives in the real world.

Of course they run into Steve who basically becomes their guide. And of course we need a villain, so besides the lush Overworld where the humans find themselves, there's also a Nether world and it's a hellish place full of pig-like critters and ruled by their boss Malgosha (voiced by Rachel House). She wants to take over and rule the Overworld as well as her current domain because, well, because that's what villains do.

I didn't really care for any of the characters. Black is okay, as are the others, but I particularly hated Momoa's whiny little beotch of a loser and that disappointed me because I tend to like Jason Momoa.

Not his fault, of course; he's just the actor.

He wasn't the only annoying one, either. Pretty well all of the other main characters – possibly excepting Black, surprisingly enough – brings enough baggage and angst to their life stories to make them particularly insufferable. It's pretty tough to root for them!

I didn't understand most of the movie or the universe in which it's set, but that didn't really seem to matter. For me, it was merely a chance to look at some (hopefully) great visuals and try to understand what the grandkids could possibly see in the game. I still don't really get it, but the movie did make a certain amount of sense once the boys explained it to me. 

Most of the changes Alexander and Andrew noted were of the "characters in the game act like this, while in the movie they're different" variety.

It must be tough adapting a video or computer game to the narrative style necessary for a compelling movie, and not every game-based movie has succeeded. My favourite to date is Gran Turismo, but that's because I'm a fan of both the game itself and of good racing movies.

Minecraft took a gang of writers to come up with its mishmash of a script and this may have been a contributing factor its lack of coherence. It certainly feels thrown together as if made by committee.

The 4K disc looks and sounds terrific, though, and there are even a few interesting extras thrown in to help sweeten the deal.

The 4K picture, with HDR and Dolby Vision, is razor sharp and ultra clean, with pop off the screen detail and really great colours and deep, deep blacks (not just Jack!).

The Dolby Atmos audio track which, as always, is backward compatible to Dolby TrueHD 7.1 and 5.1, is of similar quality. I had to crank it a tad to get it to its optimal volume, but it wasn't a big deal. The fidelity is first rate, as is the use of the surround channels.

It's too bad the screenplay couldn't have been up to the standards of the technical stuff!

There's no Blu-ray in the package, but Warners has included a digital code for people who might want to sit through Minecraft again.

Then there are the extras, which are sandwiched onto the 4K disc.

First up is "Building the World of Minecraft: Block Party", which runs just shy of 15 minutes. It's a behind the scenes look via cast and crew of the production of the film and it's pretty interesting. "Creepers, Zombies and Endermen Oh My!" uses most of the same people and is a look at how they created the many various, well, Creepers, Zombies, Enderman etc. I did find it interesting to see how they combined live action with CG to create the stuff.

"A Minecraft Movie: Pixel Pals" is a look at the cast and "A Minecraft Movie: Block Beats" is a hagiography to Jack Black's musical skills. I didn't care, but Black fans might. There's also a short feature "Marlene + Nitwit", which looks at the "romance" between the annoying vice principal Marlene (Jennifer Coolidge) and a Villager that managed to stumble from the Overworld to our world.

I have no idea if there's a better Minecraft movie waiting to be made, but I know this one is an empty but lovely 101 minutes in the home theatre.

Jim publishes TechnoFile Magazine. Jim is an affiliate with the Automobile Journalists Association of Canada and his careers have included journalist, technology retailer, video store pioneer, and syndicated columnist; he does a biweekly column on CBC Radio One’s The Business Network.

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