Some of the characters from "A Minecraft Movie" (source: Closer/Warner Bros)
It can be tough going to the cinema when you’re living in Central Europe. I saw the 2016 film "Arrival" in Budapest, a movie about linguists trying to translate an alien language into English.
They crack it in the third act, and the aliens explain everything they were trying to say. Ironically, the subtitles were only in Hungarian, so they could have travelled through space to give us the recipe for the perfect lángos, for all I knew. I had to Google later what they were actually talking about.
After that, I was reluctant to go to other films in Slovakia – though I can read Slovak reasonably well, I can’t fully enjoy a film if crucial dialogue is spoken in another language and the subtitles are only in the local one.
That’s why I didn’t want to go see Robert Eggers’ recent "Nosferatu" remake. I wasn’t sure whether the film would include significant amounts of non-English dialogue that wouldn’t be translated. After watching the film at home, I saw that some crucial scenes set in the Transylvanian Carpathians had characters speaking in Roma and Romanian. Others spoke Latin and a reconstructed ancient dialect of Dacian. I felt vindicated in my decision to stay home.
Dubbed to death
This issue is even more pronounced when it comes to children’s films. Under Slovak law, any film intended for children under the age of 12 must be screened in Slovak as a matter of priority. However, cinemas are not prohibited from also showing these films in other languages.
As the Audiovisual Act states: “An operator of audiovisual technical equipment who publicly screens an audiovisual work classified, under the unified labelling system, as suitable for minors under the age of 12 in a language version other than Slovak, where that version does not meet the basic comprehensibility requirements in terms of the state language, is obliged to ensure that the work is also screened at a time suitable for such minors with dubbing in the Slovak language.”
This makes sharing the cinema experience with my young bilingual son somewhat tricky. Sure, we can watch whatever we like at home, but the thrill of a packed theatre and a mouthful of salty, overpriced popcorn is priceless.
With so little on offer in English that we can enjoy together, I once took him to see "Minions: The Rise of Gru", dubbed into Slovak. Not only did I miss out on the quality voice acting from Steve Carell and Michelle Yeoh (and, eh, Russell Brand), it remains the only time I’ve ever literally fallen asleep in the cinema. I missed the entire second act.
No such issue with the newly-released "Minecraft" movie, creatively titled "A Minecraft Movie". It came out last Friday and raked in something like €300 million at the box office. It’s bound to be a smash hit. It’s the first time I’ve seen queues out the door of the theatre here.
The cinemas rightly anticipated that this PG-rated film would interest plenty of over-12s, and on Sunday, there were seven English-language screenings alongside 23 Slovak-dubbed ones. That was just in Cinema City Eurovea.
Passing it on
My relationship with the open-world building game "Minecraft" began around 2009, when I was 15 years old. Word spread on the forums I was active on about this interesting browser game doing the rounds. This prehistoric version dropped you into an idyllic world, filled with various hostile monsters and its now-signature blocky landscape.
Using your bare hands, you’d dig out blocks representing different elements, then use them to build structures and craft tools. From those early days, the game kept growing—especially in popularity among younger kids. From the age of 15 to 18 I sunk quite a few hours into Minecraft, up until around when I lost my virginity.
A Minecraft fan attends a gaming convention dressed as a character from the game. (source: SITA/AP)
I truly knew it had breached the containment of the internet when, in my second year of college—around the age of 20—I saw rural Irish schoolkids drawing pictures of monsters from the game. To this day, the sandbox game remains hugely popular on YouTube Kids, with many creators using it to animate fun little stories.
My own son watches these videos, and on the back of that, I decided to repurchase the game and introduce it to him on my PlayStation. And goodness me, he’s taken to it like a duck to water. So taking him to see "A Minecraft Movie" felt like a natural choice.
Is it a good film? Yes and no. It has the most formulaic plot imaginable. About 75 percent of the movie involves the human characters standing in front of a greenscreen—at times, it’s unclear whether some of them are even filming scenes in the same room. Some of the setup exposition and dialogue is ridiculously clunky.
The film is saved by director Jared Hess—of "Napoleon Dynamite" (2004) fame—who elicits such wonderfully odd performances from both Jack Black and Jason Momoa that it becomes watchable for adults. Jack Black’s random, quirky inflections—much like in "Nacho Libre" (2006), also directed by Hess—undercut the silliness of the otherwise clunky exposition. There’s also a much-appreciated B-52s needle drop for the music nerds in the audience.
But all of these criticisms are absolutely secondary to what this film truly is—and represents. This might well be the first movie that’s 100 percent constructed, top to bottom, to be consumed like an internet meme. In a way that mirrors the original viral spread of the "Minecraft" game, even moments from the trailer itself went viral.
Rocky Horror Minecraft Show
Seemingly independent of the film’s marketing team, a kind of "Rocky Horror Picture Show" tradition appears to have materialised out of nowhere over the past weekend. When certain moments from the trailer appear on screen, audiences in some parts of the world—mainly the USA for now, though I expect it’ll spread—stand up and shout the lines out loud: “Flint and steel!”, “I… am Steve!”, and most resoundingly, “Chicken Jockey!”
My screening didn’t feature the raucous scenes seen in viral videos—some teenagers sitting behind us got involved, but not too loudly. I’m sure even Bratislava will see a bit of Minecraft madness next weekend, following the examples set in the US. Let’s hope they behave themselves—some cinemas have had to call the guards and issue warnings to audiences not to fling popcorn around the screening room.
Cultural commentators and sociologists will be decoding the Chicken Jockey phenomenon for years to come. In-game, there’s about a 1 percent chance that a hostile baby zombie riding a chicken will spawn and try to attack you. When one appears in the film, Jack Black shouts, “Chicken Jockey!” It’s arguably the main phrase that sticks in your mind from the trailer—for both adults and kids. After I showed the trailer to my son, Chicken Jockey entered his everyday vocabulary, and after watching the film, it’s likely to stay there for quite a while. It’s a playful combination of syllables. Chi-ken-joc-key. A playful image too, to boot.
An expensive piece of Chicken Jockey merchandise. (source: Cinemark)
It was clearly anticipated by the marketing team to be a success—as even here in Bratislava, there were Chicken Jockey popcorn and drink holders available to buy (for something mad like €35), suggesting a lead time of up to 12 months from design to release, based on the projected popularity of the character. Though even they couldn’t have predicted the runaway success this film is surely going to be.
But even all that furore is secondary to the main point: my son enjoyed the film—and, in the end, so did I.
Should you wish to see "A Minecraft Movie", I’m certain it’ll be in cinemas for months to come, in both Slovak and English. In Bratislava, you’ll find it showing at any Cinema City branch. If you’d prefer to support independent cinemas, Kino Nostalgia will be hosting an English-language screening of the film on Saturday at 19:45, at an absolute bargain price of €6—compared with the eye-watering €11.40 I paid to see it at Cinema City Eurovea.
Chicken Jockey!
