Minecraft is one of the most popular and influential video games of all time. At a moment when so many video games look increasingly like $200 million movies, Minecraft players can build their own worlds, explore alternative dimensions and battle Creepers and Zombies in a world whose purposely pixelated aesthetic has a nostalgic eight-bit appeal.
The environment of the game, which was created by Markus Persson in 2009, consists entirely of cubes. The simple mechanics of building with these blocks have encouraged collaboration and creativity on a global scale, inspiring not only huge online communities but also educational applications: the Danish designer Bjarke Ingels, a proponent of fun, sustainable building, has argued that Minecraft paves the way for a more democratic, populist approach to architecture. Schools have used the game to teach coding, mathematics and history. Minecraft’s YouTube and Twitch communities have propelled gaming content creators such as the Co Meath-born stars Ryan and Scott Fitzsimons to a very 21st-century class of fame.
The game, which Microsoft acquired in 2014, has evolved with updates and spin-offs – and now, inevitably, there’s a movie. Jared Hess, the American film-maker behind the 2004 comedy Napoleon Dynamite, was a miner, as the game’s enthusiasts are known, long before he signed on to direct the new family comedy A Minecraft Movie.
“When the game came out my kids started playing it immediately, and they were just obsessed with it,” Hess says. “They were always giggling and laughing their heads off. I thought, Oh man, I’ve got to join this party. We started playing together as a family, and it just became this amazing, fun thing. We were always pranking each other and destroying each other’s builds.”
He laughs. “I once built what I thought was a pretty awesome-looking fortress. I realise now that it looked like a 1980s Pizza Hut. My kids destroyed it, and then my daughter rebuilt it into a hotel that she populated full of wolves.”
A Minecraft Movie has been in development since 2012, when Steve Carell was due to star in it. Covid and industrial action repeatedly delayed filming. Various iterations with various directors were proposed before Warner Bros and Legendary Pictures tapped Hess for the job. It was an interesting decision to pick such an original, unclassifiable film-maker.
“Cale Boyter and Mary Parent at Legendary Pictures first approached me,” says Hess. “And they were wondering, ‘Hey, are you into the game? Do you know what this is?’ I’m thinking, Say no more! I love Minecraft. What an amazing space to build an epic adventure comedy.”
Hess’s cast is headlined by Jason Momoa and Jack Black at their rowdiest. The stars are sucked into Minecraft’s Overworld alongside their fellow misfits Henry (Sebastian Hansen), Natalie (Emma Myers) and Dawn (Danielle Brooks). Together they battle the game’s “piglins” – one of several mobs – with blocky weapons and improvised forts. It is unabashedly a kids’ adventure, save for a wickedly funny turn from Jennifer Coolidge, who plays a divorced headmistress improbably romancing a pixelated Minecraft villager.
“I think parents are going to have a good time,” Hess says. “We could have made a whole other movie with Jennifer Coolidge’s improvisations. We populated the whole movie with amazingly talented people. I think so much of the comedy is character-based, which hopefully translates to kids and parents alike.”
The film is rather better than many commentators expected. Last September, when the first trailer dropped, it was greeted with the same wailing and gnashing afforded the Sonic the Hedgehog trailer, in 2019. (In that case, following a tide of criticism from diehard gamers, the character was controversially redesigned before the movie’s release.)
“The first Minecraft movie trailer is here, and it is horrifying,” Forbes magazine said. Fans expressed dismay at the mix of live-action antics and computer-generated animation. It is a tricky business trying to re-create a game that is all things to all players.
“For years and years, Minecraft content creators have been making their own amazing stories and producing their own videos and animations of whole worlds that they’ve created around the game.
“We are A Minecraft Movie: we are one of many, many stories that have been told about this amazing world. We just had to approach it with the same love that everybody has when they make something about the game. We took all of our favourite parts and tried to put them into the movie. You can’t do everything, because it’s infinite. But we took what we loved,” Hess says.
Like Minecraft, Hess started underground. He and his wife and frequent collaborator, Jerusha Hess, became an overnight sensation after making Napoleon Dynamite, a cult classic that took more than $46 million on a $400,000 budget and won three MTV Movie Awards, including for best movie. It spawned a spin-off cartoon series, a themed summer festival in Preston, Idaho – where Jared Hess grew up – and millions of Vote for Pedro T-shirts.
The bumbling titular hero, played with supreme awkwardness by Jon Heder, became a hero to teen outsiders everywhere.
“It’s so funny,” Hess says. “So my wife, Jerusha, is the cowriter of Napoleon Dynamite. She was also the costume designer. And I remember she had this idea: ‘You know what? It seems like Napoleon would be wearing this home-made Vote for Pedro T-shirt with iron-on letters.’ When we were shooting the dance scene, where he wears it to the assembly, I remember thinking, Oh, that’s actually a pretty cool shirt.
“We had no idea that it would take off. It was ridiculous. One time we saw Denzel Washington wearing one for an interview. To this day you see it all the time,” Hess says. “You do something and it takes on a life of its own. It doesn’t even feel like yours any more. That’s definitely how we feel about the shirt.”
Hess subsequently directed the comedy films Gentlemen Broncos, Don Verdean and Masterminds. In 2022 he was nominated for an Oscar for the short animation Ninety-Five Senses. The following year he codirected the feature-length animation Thelma the Unicorn for Netflix.
A Minecraft Movie is his first collaboration with Jack Black since the $100 million-grossing wrestling romp Nacho Libre, from 2006.
“We wanted to work together again for ages,” Hess says. “And the timing finally worked out perfectly for this one. Jack is a massive gamer, but he’s just one of the funniest people ever. We kind of have a shorthand when we work together. There was nobody better for this film.”
With a production budget of $150 million, A Minecraft Movie is, to use the terminology of the game, Hess’s biggest build to date.
“It’s all about the team and about all of the department heads. Our visual-effects supervisor, Dan Lemon, was incredible. Our production designer, Grant Major, did the Lord of the Rings films. Everybody was critical to translating the look of the game graphics, which are very simple yet iconic,” Hess says.
“We were able to build all of the sets practically: the Midport Village, the mines, the forests, the Woodland Mansion. That really informs the performances of the actors. They had tangible props and could see themselves in an actual space.”
It’s a far cry from working on a $400,000 indie comedy with his wife. But not that far.
“You’re always stressed as a director,” he says. “If you’re doing an independent film you are stressed because you’ve got so many restrictions. Your resources and time are limited. But on a big movie there’s so much to do, so much to pull off. You’re always dry-heaving. You’re driving the set, thinking. Oh my gosh, are we going to pull this off today?”
A Minecraft Movie is on general release
