A Minecraft Movie (2025)

A Minecraft Movie arrives in 2025 as one of the more eagerly anticipated family blockbusters in recent memory, and with good reason. The Minecraft video game, developed by Mojang Studios and released back in 2011, has grown into one of the best-selling games of all time, its blocky, open-world aesthetic familiar to pretty much anyone who has spent time near a child in the last decade and a half. Translating that kind of cultural phenomenon to the big screen is never straightforward (the games-to-film graveyard is well-stocked), and this adaptation has been in various stages of development for years before finally landing. The film is a joint production between Warner Bros. Pictures, Legendary Pictures, and Mojang Studios, with a runtime of 101 minutes that pitches it squarely at younger audiences and their increasingly patient parents.

Behind the camera is Jared Hess, the American director perhaps best known for his deadpan, offbeat sensibility. The premise follows four unlikely companions who are pulled through a portal into the Overworld, the game's signature landscape of cubes and crafting tables, where they must find their way home with the help of a seasoned survivor named Steve. It is the sort of fish-out-of-water adventure that family films have returned to reliably for decades, though the specifically pixelated visual world here gives it a look unlike most of its peers. Compare that, say, to the rather different portal-to-another-world logic of Alice in Wonderland, which I have also covered on the blog, and you get a sense of how well-worn this particular story shape actually is. The co-production carries a distinctly international footprint, with Sweden listed alongside the United States as a country of origin, which puts it in rather different company from other Swedish productions I have written about here, including Persona and Only God Forgives.

The cast is led by Jason Momoa and Jack Black, two performers with very different energies who are rarely boring on screen even when the material around them is polished but unremarkable. Jack Black in particular has carved out a comfortable second home in family and animated features over the years, and his voice and physicality lend themselves to this sort of broad, good-natured comedy. Alongside them are Sebastian Eugene Hansen, Emma Myers, and Danielle Brooks, filling out the group of travellers navigating the Overworld. For a sense of how family films can carry genuine weight alongside their entertainment value, it is worth looking at something like The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which I have reviewed previously, though A Minecraft Movie is aiming at a rather more straightforward kind of fun.

This could ONLY have starred Jack Black Ordered this for my Son who loved it in the cinema. He watched an hour of it at home then got bored. In truth, so did we. The intro is great. The beginning of the story is good. Then it loses steam drastically. I think they probably had too many characters. The two female characters I think added very little to the story, especially as the main "cool stuff" all featured around Henry, Steve and Garrett. I think they could have done so much more witn those characters and in the end they just felt kinda tacked on without much depth. Overall, I expected it to not be great but after the hype I'm a little disappointed. Then again... I'm not the target audience.

And honestly, that last point matters more than it might seem. I went into this as someone who did not grow up with the game, and there is a version of this film that works brilliantly for an eight-year-old with a hundred hours of Minecraft under their belt. For the rest of us sitting alongside them, it is a different proposition entirely. The opening has genuine energy, and Jack Black does exactly what you would want Jack Black to do, but when a film starts to lose even its junior audience midway through, that tells you something. The character balance feels off, and a tighter script with fewer mouths to feed could have given everyone more room to breathe. It is not a disaster by any stretch, but it is a reminder that brand recognition and a decent cast will only carry you so far. Be there and be square, the tagline says. Just maybe do not expect to stay riveted to your seat the whole way through.

Rating: ★★½  | Year: 2025  | Watched: 2025-06-01

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Trailer

▶ Watch the official trailer for A Minecraft Movie (2025) on YouTube

Where to watch

Watch in the UK
Stream: HBO Max Amazon Channel · Sky Go · Now TV Cinema
Buy: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Sky Store
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi

Watch in the US
Stream: HBO Max Amazon Channel · HBO Max
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US

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Related on Movies With Macca

More from Sweden: Persona (1966) · Only God Forgives (2013) · The Match Factory Girl (1990) · Nymphomaniac: Vol. I (2013)
More from the 2020s: Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025) · The Long Walk (2025) · Americana (2023)
More family: Alice in Wonderland (1951) · Wonder (2017) · Kirikou and the Wild Beasts (2005) · Anastasia (1997)
More fantasy: Viy (1967) · Alice in Wonderland (1951) · Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025)