sincerity is dead, all hail the minecraft movie
on sincerity and making good art
Full transparency: I have not actually seen A Minecraft Movie. I can't comment on whether I found the quality lacking or whether I enjoyed it. What I can comment on, however, is the public’s response to this movie. For example, when I look at the star ratings for this movie on Letterboxd as of the time of writing, the average is a paltry 2.8 stars. A quick scroll through the written reviews reveals an interesting pattern: most reviews are either 1-2 stars or 5 stars. It’s hard to tell how many of the reviews were written ironically and how many of them were written by children; one of the 1-star reviews starts with the line “rip big chungus,” if that tells us anything. On Rotten Tomatoes, the critic score sits at 47% (NOT Certified Fresh). It seems safe to say that, outside of providing entertainment for children who enjoy the Minecraft video game, this movie is probably Not Good.
And yet, this movie is the highest-grossing movie of the year by a landslide. TikTok (that wretched app) is flooded with videos of teenagers and college students going to see A Minecraft Movie, throwing food at the screen, and screaming. People are going rabid for this movie, in a bad way. Going to a movie because it’s popular online and filming yourself yelling and throwing food that the theater workers will have to clean up doesn’t feel like genuine engagement and enjoyment – it feels like gross irony and attention-seeking. And listen, if you’re a person who likes the Minecraft video game and you saw the movie and loved it, all the power to you! People are allowed to enjoy things, even when the quality is objectively bad. I like plenty of things that are poor quality (for instance, The Twilight Saga). And A Minecraft Movie was clearly made because Hollywood execs knew that the video game was popular enough with children and teens that it would make a lot of money, which, ok, fine. But why does that mean it has to be bad?
Just because something is made for kids or made to make money doesn’t mean it has to be bad or uncreative or sloppy. Many of the kids’ movies of my childhood were just good movies, straight up. Shrek comes to mind (88% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes), as does Toy Story (100% critic score). Inside Out, which was only made a few years ago, is a great kids’ movie. Kids’ movies can be made with sincerity, not only meant to entertain but to teach or inform, using incredible animation (think Studio Ghibli) or cinematography. Kids’ movies can be heartbreaking (Bridge to Terabithia) or enlightening (Pixar’s Soul) or cover more serious topics like the immigrant experience (Elemental). Maybe they’re meant to be mostly silly and entertaining (Spy Kids), but comedy doesn’t mean bad.
Today, content that pops off is, a lot of the times, slop: troll content, shitty kids movies, mass-produced pop music, authors putting out poorly edited novels to meet public demand (ahem, Onyx Storm); why can’t we still make good shit? With sincerity and authenticity and genuineness, and risk-taking. A Minecraft Movie takes no risks. They made it and put a bunch of big names in it and put it out because kids’ parents would take them to come see it, regardless of the quality. The teenagers and college students going to see the movie to film it and put it on TikTok aren’t there to see a well-made kids’ film, obviously. They want TikTok views or to participate in the great ironic joke of it all, or something. The people who made this movie did not make it sincerely (except for maybe Jack Black), and most of the people seeing the movie aren’t seeing it sincerely, and it makes me sad.
Can we take our art seriously? Both the art we produce and the art we consume? Let us be more pretentious, and sincere, and genuine. It’s good for us.