At the Box Office
I, like many other Jesuit students, went to go see the Minecraft movie a few weeks ago with my friends. It managed to make 550 million dollars nationally, an amount which is surprising at first glance, especially due to low ratings by critics and the objectively poor casting. How did this movie manage to succeed? It all lies in the viral online memes.
Early Release Trailers
In the time leading up to the film, audience expectations were not high, with many posts on social media making light of the film’s predictable plot as well as pointing it out to be an obvious cash-grab. The fact of the matter is that Minecraft, out of all video games, probably makes the least amount of sense to adapt into a video game. After all, there isn’t much of a plot to go off of. When playing the video game, most time is spent on creating unique structures and exploring. This idea is obviously not possible when watching a movie as interaction is not possible.
Right Before Release
Because of that, the growing trend of making fun of this movie reached its climax around a month before the its release. A couple of sneak peak trailers had just been released and many people on both Tiktok and Instagram made posts poking fun at them. They commented on Jack Black’s constant announcing of various in-game items and his pointing out of the obvious. Among these phrases were, “I am Steve,” “This is a crafting table,” “water bucket! release!,” and “chicken jockey.” Chicken jockey was far and away the most popular due to the ridiculous name. Amid all these memes, the movie actually began to gain some steam.
In the Theaters
Due to this viral success, a new trend was born where people at theatrical showings of the movie would scream, “chicken jockey!,” at the time of the line delivery and throw popcorn in the air. Despite many people (especially theater staff) finding this annoying, it made the movie infinitely more successful. So, ultimately, while this movie was ridiculous, it had a lot of success. And as for my personal experience, I had a lot of fun seeing it with my friends.
