Things Only Adults Notice In A Minecraft Movie

There's no doubt that "Minecraft" has legions of fans of all ages. That should be evident from the fact the film grossed $313 million globally in its first weekend in theaters. That's an impressive haul, especially considering how much fans derided the first "A Minecraft Movie" trailer, with some even calling it an "abomination." However, those early worries are a thing of the past now, and the numbers posted by the film make "A Second Minecraft Movie" feel all but certain to happen.

"A Minecraft Movie" clearly appeals to the franchise's young fanbase – there have been numerous reports of kids and teenagers applauding and hollering loudly during key scenes, like the chicken jockey scene. This isn't just another film; it's a cultural event for many who freak out anytime a character references something from the game, like "slime cube" or the "elytra." For the "Minecraft" uninitiated, that's a cube that helps you bounce further and some wings to fly, respectively.

Younger audience members likely had no problem pointing out all of the small details in "A Minecraft Movie" that relate to the game, but a lot of that stuff will have made no sense to the parents in the audience. Fortunately, the grown-ups who don't have time to play video games weren't completely left out, as there are many jokes and themes in the film aimed at them. Here are the things in "A Minecraft Movie" that only adults would notice.

It's probably asking for trouble to try to find any consistency in "A Minecraft Movie," but we're genuinely curious what that old miner's deal was at the very beginning. We first meet Steve (Jack Black) as a child who "yearns for the mines," but his efforts are hampered by an old miner (Craig McKinney) who points to a sign that reads: "Absolutely No Children Allowed." We suppose it's good he's so dedicated to ensuring child labor laws are enforced. 

Steve returns to the miner as an adult, and the old miner still has a problem with him. With a full beard, he's very clearly not a child any longer, which appeared to have been the reason for his reluctance to let him in the mine. The miner even attacks Steve, forcing him to jump out of the way to finally enter his glorious mine. What's his deal? Why not let Steve mine? It doesn't appear as though Steve has any formal job, so maybe the old miner's just trying to ensure he doesn't run afoul of any miner unions and chipping away at rocks where he shouldn't.

The beginning of the movie mainly just serves to get Steve into the Overworld as quickly as possible. Steve apparently doesn't have issues with any other miners (not that we see any), and pretty much immediately, he discovers the Orb of Dominance and Earth Crystal, allowing him to open a portal to the Overworld. 

Steve needs to find these items because he's the main character, but that old miner at the start had been working in the mines for at least several decades at this point. How did he never find the Orb of Dominance? Steve only has to chip away at one wall slightly to uncover it, so one would assume the miner would have already found every treasure that could be down there. 

Perhaps the miner just isn't interested in glowing blue cubes. He has a job to do — to mine for coal — and that's apparently his sole focus. He's not going to take on extra work for nothing, and honestly, we can respect that mindset. Clock in, clock out, get your bag, king. 

Shawn Levy and Rob McElhenney were both previously attached to direct "A Minecraft Movie" during its long development cycle, but Jared Hess ultimately landed the gig, the guy who previously helmed "Napoleon Dynamite." We don't really hear from "Napoleon Dynamite" star Jon Heder these days, but for a brief period in 2004, everyone was wearing "Vote for Pedro" T-shirts and asking if they could "eat your tots." Hess seemingly pays tribute to his cult hit in "A Minecraft Movie" with several references to the beloved snack. 

Natalie (Emma Myers) makes a tater tot pizza for Henry (Sebastian Hansen) to enjoy, and later in the film, Henry uses a single tot as a component of a tater tot gun once he learns how to craft in the Overworld. Tater tots aren't the only connective tissue, as Henry and Napoleon also share a love of doodling. Henry takes some liberties when his teacher asks him to draw a photorealistic banana (such as a banana wearing a jetpack) while Napoleon could draw a sweet liger (lion/tiger hybrid). 

The scenes in the real world certainly feel visually akin to Hess' visual language in "Napoleon Dynamite," but that's not the only place where Hess may have laid out some references. When Garrett "The Garbage Man" Garrison (Jason Momoa) takes on the chicken jockey (a zombie riding a chicken), they're in a classic wrestling ring, which feels like a nod to Hess' 2006 film "Nacho Libre" (which also starred Jack Black).

"A Minecraft Movie" may be rated PG, but there's plenty of scenes that may scare younger kids. It's certainly not among the most inappropriate PG movies of all time, but spooky scenes involving skeletons and zombies may be more than some youngsters can handle. However, there's something much darker at play that the movie just glosses over. 

At one point, a pigling shows the main villain Malgosha (Rachel House) a drawing. She promptly stabs the child, turning him into a slab of meat for expressing himself creatively, something she hates. She may be the villain, but killing a kid is pretty dark, even if it was a piglin. This actually represents a somewhat disturbing trend in modern video game adaptations. 

"Sonic the Hedgehog 3" infamously showed Maria Robotnik's (Alyla Browne) death, but that was at least canon in the games. It kickstarts Shadow's (Keanu Reeves) journey into villainy and something he has to address to become one of the good guys, but the death of that little piglin served no plot purpose. We already knew Malgosha was evil; killing a child just seems like a superfluous act.

"A Minecraft Movie" doesn't just show off items from the game; there's a host of pop culture references adults may catch that fly over their kids' heads. For example, Garrett has a "Beetlejuice" poster in his video game shop, and the reason Malgosha is evil is because she was ridiculed on a game show called "Nether's Got Talent," which takes its title from "America's Got Talent." However, the most delightful reference comes when Henry, Garrett, Natalie, and Dawn (Danielle Brooks) first meet Steve.

Even though Garrett wants to be in charge of the Orb of Dominance, Dawn hands it to Henry, saying how he has those "good Frodo vibes." This "The Lord of the Rings" reference is appropriate, given that Henry is being entrusted to carry an immensely powerful object, but Sebastian Hansen also looks remarkably similar to a young Elijah Wood, who played Frodo in Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy. He's the smallest of the group, just like hobbits are, and his dark, curly hair make him a frontrunner to play a hobbit for any future "The Lord of the Rings" installments. 

In a B plot that's completely irrelevant to the main story, we see a Villager (whose name is Nitwit) escape into the real world. While walking on the road, he's hit by Vice Principal Marlene (Jennifer Coolidge) in her Jeep Grand Cherokee, who takes a liking to the big-headed "Minecraft" character. In the end, Nitwit proposes to Marlene, who's over the moon about her upcoming nuptials, so much so that tiny cartoon hearts appear around her. 

In the world of "Minecraft," tiny hearts appear around animals to signify that they are ready to breed. This is demonstrated in "A Minecraft Movie" when two pandas have hearts surrounding themselves, and then a baby panda materializes between them. Little hearts is the safe way of demonstrating that two creatures are about to make babies, so it's probably for the best the scene cuts out before we see anything else come from Marlene and Nitwit. Of course, younger audience members who play "Minecraft" will know what these hearts signify and get a laugh out of the idea of the Vice Principal starting a family with the Villager, but for the grown-ups in the audience who know all about Coolidge's history of playing raunchy characters, it's the baby-making part that comes to mind.

Throughout his scenes, Nitwit speaks in the typical Villager language, which is known as Standard Villic. It's basically a bunch of gibberish that Marlene nonetheless takes a liking to. It only takes one day and the power of love for Nitwit to speak in perfect English, with a thick British accent no less. But the adults in the crowd should undoubtedly recognize that voice as belonging to Matt Berry.

The "What We Do in the Shadows" cast member has a lengthy filmography, bringing his signature talents to shows like "The IT Crowd," "Portlandia," and "Community." But it really was "Shadows" where he made a name for himself as Laszlo Cravensworth, whose unusual inflections turned Laslo into a fan favorite. Typing it out doesn't really do it justice, but Berry delivering lines like "He's my best friend, he's my pal, he's my homeboy, my rotten soldier, my sweet cheese, my good time boy," became the stuff of meme legend. 

One can't help but wonder if Nitwit was originally supposed to have a heftier part in the film: Matt Berry's casting in "A Minecraft Movie" came out in May 2023, which feels like it was announced way too far in advance for a simple cameo. Either way, we hope Berry can deliver more meme-worthy lines in a potential sequel.

To escape an oncoming piglin horde, Steve equips Garrett and Henry with elytra (rare wings that allow players to fly in "Minecraft") so that they can jump off a cliff safely. Henry has a blast, but Steve has to hop on Garrett's back to escape the army as he doesn't have a third set. There are a couple of things to note for this scene. The first is that when we see Steve triumphantly riding on Garrett's back, he's holding Garrett's long, luscious locks like they were reins. Visually, it's reminiscent of how characters would ride dragons in "Game of Thrones," which also starred Jason Momoa.

The other thing adults will notice about the elytra scene is that it's filled with double entendres. Garrett doesn't appreciate Steve riding on his back, but Steve's response is, "Just relax, let my hips guide you." Later in the flight, Garrett and Steve need to go through a tiny hole in a mountain, and the only way they can do that is to make "a full man-sandwich." That means Steve positions himself so his face is in Garrett's crotch and vice versa. It looks goofy, but adults may think they're re-enacting a certain position that shares a name with a number.

When Steve, Garrett, and Henry arrive at the Woodland Mansion, they need to acquire an Earth Crystal to reopen the portal, and Henry also wants to grab an ender pearl, which allows the thrower to teleport to where they throw the object. But if Henry's going to sneak past the inhabitants, Steve and Garrett need to cause a distraction, and the result is a recreation of one of Jack Black's best talk show moments. 

Steve and Garrett burst through the doors wearing mushroom hats and playing saxophones. It's yet another Steve musical number in a film that has a surprising quantity of them, but seeing Black hold a saxophone may make some viewers remember a 2018 appearance the actor had on "The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon." Fallon gives Black a toy saxophone since Black would take such a toy, known as a Sax-A-Boom, onstage with him at Tenacious D concerts. Some of the language from Black's performance may not be suitable for the primary demographic of "A Minecraft Movie," but it's fun for the adults who remember this iconic late night moment.

Piglins exist in the Nether as opposed to the Overworld because if they get exposed to sunlight, they zombify and then die. Malgosha wants the Orb because it will allow her to block out the sun (which, as adults in the audience will recall, is very similar to a plan Mr. Burns had at one point on "The Simpsons") and allow the piglins to rule over the Overworld. The heroes create an assortment of weapons and tools to take on the piglin army, with Henry ultimately getting to the Orb and bringing the sun back, defeating the piglins once and for all. 

The piglins are the bad guys (even if some of them were funny), but still, the way Henry, Steve, and others beat them is by killing every last one of them. This is nothing short of a genocide against piglins, some of whom wanted to express themselves creatively like the young one Malgosha killed earlier in the film. One might assume some of the piglins could've been rehabilitated. It's ultimately pretty jarring to see everyone cheering and hugging one another as piglins perish around them. 

Malgosha is evil all the way through, as seen when she repeatedly tries to stab Steve at the end. It wouldn't be bad if she just died — after all, there have been some genuinely disturbing deaths in kids' films before. It's possible some piglins stayed behind in the Nether, but if not, an entire race was just wiped out in an instant, and that's a little much for a kids' movie.

One of the dumbest things about "A Minecraft Movie" is how the story's themes are completely undone by the ending. The main characters, including Steve, decide to go back to Earth where they turn their blocky adventure into a game. Instead of being called "Minecraft," it's known as "Block City Battle Buddies." Henry is back at school, but everyone seems to like him now since he did, in fact, get a jetpack to work. In his free time, he works on the game's circuit boards. Garrett's business is booming once again, Natalie teaches self-defense, and Dawn opens a petting zoo. Everything works out well for everyone in the end, and it seems to be the end of their money problems. 

We definitely don't want to begrudge anyone making a living, but the whole point of "A Minecraft Movie" up until that point was that people should pursue their passions even if it doesn't necessarily make them money. That's precisely what happens to Steve, as he has an unfulfilling doorknob salesman job at the beginning but then goes into mining because that's what he really wants. If Steve's dream is to mine, why does he even leave with the others and take on singing gigs with Garrett in his shop? 

Everyone should have something they're passionate about, whether it's painting, music, or building an entire universe in "Minecraft." It would be awesome to make money doing any of them, but sometimes, you need a regular job to pursue what you really want to do. "A Minecraft Movie" ends by showing everyone profiting from their passions, which is great, but shouldn't be the endgame.

"A Minecraft Movie" has already made hundreds of millions of dollars and could very well hit the $1 billion mark at the box office. However, you would think that the secondary goal of a project based on a popular I.P. is to have more people buy the original product. If the message of "A Minecraft Movie" was to play "Minecraft," that would be depressing — yet, it would make sense. The film instead takes viewers through a loop and encourages people to actually go outside and get out of the Overworld once in a while. 

This isn't a bad thing, as no one, especially a child, should spend all of their waking hours in front of a computer mining imaginary supplies. It's just surprising and subtle enough that perhaps the younger audience members wouldn't have caught onto it. A post-credits scene even shows Steve go back to his old house to see Alex (voiced by Kate McKinnon) living there. He wants to grab some of his old gear: It's clear Steve's entry to the real world is temporary, as he and Alex will probably venture into the Overworld if a sequel ever happens. 

Steve pursued his creativity in the Overworld but then realized he needed to take a break to forge friendships. Video games can be fun, but they shouldn't come at the expense of not having anyone around you care for. There are plenty of things "A Minecraft Movie" gets wrong, but that's one lesson everyone, no matter their age, should learn.