The release of “A Minecraft Movie” has become a sensation around the world, with the film generating nearly $150 million in its first weekend, surpassing all expectations for the film. Although “A Minecraft Movie” is a financial success, but does the movie live up to the hype?
Minecraft has become a staple in many childrens’ lives today, with many college students even growing up playing the game in two-week phases with their close friends. Not only has Minecraft become a success for young people, but the game has been a massive success overall, with it being the best-selling game of all time. So, with a game as big as Minecraft, it is expected that a movie would eventually come out for it, and what a movie it was.
However, due to the popularity of this franchise, it has led to issues within the theaters themselves. Trends across social media have started to emerge about cheering and clapping at certain parts of the movie. These parts aren’t anything special within the movie but are just clips from the trailers that became memes simply because Jack Black pronounces words wackily.
The reactions to these memes have started to become even worse within the theater. Due to the aspect of social media, people are always trying to top the last viral video, so movie goers have gone from cheering to screaming and from screaming to trashing the entire theater. This social media-ecentric experience may seem like just for entertainment on your favorite doom-scrolling app, but this isn’t just happening online. It is also happening in theaters everywhere, even in Murray.
My experience started… interestingly to say the least. The theater was very loud for most of the movie, with a group of about two dozen high school students talking the entire time. Although this group didn’t cheer at every quote from the movie, they did clap and cheer at “I… am Steve” and the Technoblade pig memorial. What took my experience to the extreme was the infamous “Chicken Jockey” scene.
I knew what was coming as soon as I saw the chicken appear on screen. The crowd erupted into cheering and applauding behind me, popcorn and drinks flying all over the theater. Right after the high school group did this, half of them sprinted out of the fire exit so they wouldn’t get in trouble. I thought it was funny, but once you think about it for a few seconds, you feel sympathy for the staff and realize just how horrible this trend is.
This movie is a fantastic example of the societal shift in norms due to the influence of social media. Growing up, everyone was taught to be respectful at movie theaters with every movie theater playing ads about being respectful, silence your phones, clean up after yourself, etc. In today’s world, we have seen these norms shattered by social media, with these “meme” movies causing chaos in the theaters.
This trend started during “Avengers: Endgame” when Captain America caught Mjolnir. Everyone cheered at the theater, which broke the norm of the theater, but it was acceptable because this had been built up for almost a decade. This trend continued into “The Minion Movie: The Rise of Gru,” where people dressed in suits to watch the movie. We have also seen other films have a strong audience reaction, like the Sonic movies or the “Five Nights at Freddy’s” movie. However, “The Minecraft Movie” brought this trend to its extreme.
Trashing a theater over some quotes is just disrespectful. The poor workers having to clean up the messes of others is disheartening. These people work at a movie theater to make ends meet, and having to deal with high schoolers throwing popcorn and drinks everywhere is horrendous. Imagine going to Wal-Mart just to grab a gallon of milk and slam it to the ground for social media credit, this is the equivalent of that at a movie theater. Many of these issues can then be traced to social media.
Apps like Instagram or TikTok have caused these issues to prosper just on the hope of fitting in or trying to get a few likes on your account. Trends like devious licks are funny when you first see them, but the repercussions afterward are awful with it taking time and resources to try and rectify these issues. I believe this movie is the pinnacle of this shift of norms within theaters, which is setting up a dangerous precedent for the future. This issue will only become worse as social media tries to top the last trend because that is how social media works.
Some theaters have already reacted to this issue by even showing new custom messages of how moviegoers should react to these films, but it won’t make a difference; if anything, it will only rile people up more. Posts online have received millions of views, and only go up in popularity the crazier they are. I have seen posts from people launching fireworks in a theater to someone bringing a live chicken to the theater, as well as trashing the entire theater.
Audience reaction to this film is going to be hurtful for theaters for the time to come. It’s funny at first, but the repercussions of these actions have caused stress for the workers as well as ruining the movie experience for regular people or even families. The worker in my theater nearly had a breakdown because he had to clean the entire theater FOR THE SECOND TIME THAT NIGHT, and there were only three showings of the film that day. The way the audience has reacted to these films is unjust and needs to be addressed. I can guarantee this movie won’t be the last time we see these trends, and it’s only going to become more of a downhill issue.
