I’m not sure I’ve seen worse trailers than the spots that have aired for A Minecraft Movie, the live-action hybrid of the famed video game starring Jack Black and Jason Momoa. Now, reviews are in for what looked like a likely disaster of a movie and they are…honestly, better than expected.

No, the Minecraft movie did not reach “fresh” among critics, but it does have a 53% score, a coinflip over which critics liked it and which did not. The trailer told me it didn’t look like a movie that would grab above a 20%, but there is reportedly chemistry between Black and Momoa, a great Jennifer Coolidge subplot, and there are enough fun integrations with the game to be enjoyable, bad greenscreens or otherwise.

Why do I believe that Minecraft is headed toward a billion dollar haul at the box office despite middling reviews? Two main reasons:

• This is Minecraft, we’re talking about, the literal best-selling game in the history of time, moving an estimated 300 million units since its debut in 2011, becoming a childhood staple of million of kids across the world as they’ve grown up, and it remains hugely popular to this day. And Minecraft fans are not picking apart the quality of greenscreens in a trailer. They see their beloved world, they see Jack Black being silly, they see Jason Momoa in a funny outfit and that’s enough. Reportedly, estimates have opening weekend at $135 million to $150 million globally on a $150 million budget.
• Second, this is almost exactly what happened with The Super Mario Bros. Movie. The animated feature that had a close to identical 59% critic scores, but a stellar 95% audience score among fans who were always going to love the (admittedly somewhat average) movie no matter what. Super Mario Bros. went on to earn $1.3 billion globally. While Mario is a massive video game icon, do not underestimate how iconic Minecraft itself is among a certain generation (or two). I doubt that Minecraft will top Mario Bros., but can it hit a billion dollars? My guess is yes.

There are just some things that movie critics and snobbier viewers don’t “get,” and much of the time, that has been video game adaptations that are beloved by either core gamers or young audiences that are allowed to be just “okay”.” I’m also reminded of the $291 million that Five Nights at Freddy’s earned on an impossibly small budget. This happens more often than you think, and I think we are definitely on the way to this happening with Minecraft, and of course, that will mean sequels are in tow.

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Beneath the fluorescent lighting of his hotel room in Pylos, Greece, Jesse Garcia combs through his greasy strands of hair after a daylong shoot for “The Odyssey” — Christopher Nolan’s upcoming movie adaptation of the Greek epic.

“I got set hair,” says Garcia on our video call, somewhat apologetically. Despite a demanding schedule, he has relished his time shooting in Morocco and Greece, along with Hollywood A-listers like Matt Damon and Zendaya. As he looks back on his trajectory, Garcia’s own hero’s journey through Hollywood seems to mirror that of the Greek character Odysseus: a man faced with great challenges that at times feel insurmountable yet formative.

“It’s like nothing else I’ve done before,” says Garcia of the big-budget film, which is set for release in 2026.

The actor, 42, has just wrapped up a different kind of odyssey — he also stars in a new Latino road trip comedy on Disney+, “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Road Trip.” Released on March 28, the family film sees Garcia as the loving patriarch of the fictional Garcia family, played by an all-star cast made up of Eva Longoria, Paulina Chávez, Thom Nemer, Rose Portillo and Cheech Marin.

“Road Trip” follows the 2014 film “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day,” which was based on Judith Viorst’s 1972 children’s book. Garcia appeared in the first movie as an animal wrangler; in the new film, he plays a chef. “Maybe I was an animal wrangler so I could put myself through chef school,” he says.

Directed by Marvin Lemus, the new flick depicts a topsy-turvy experience that Garcia is familiar with. “My parents used to take us to [Durango] to see my dad’s family every year,” says Garcia. “So we [did] that road trip a lot when we were little kids.”

Unlike many of his colleagues in Hollywood, who came from affluent families and studied in prestigious schools, Garcia was born into a Mexican American family in Rawlins, Wyo., a small mining town with few resources for aspiring actors. “I auditioned for a play in high school,” says Garcia. “Of course I didn’t get it, because I didn’t know what I was doing!”

Garcia, an athlete, would devote himself to cheer routines and stunts in high school — he was later awarded a cheerleading scholarship to the University of Nebraska, where he studied exercise science. This skill set later helped him choreograph a scene in the 2007 sports parody “The Comebacks,” which featured former NFL tight-end Tony Gonzalez.

“If I’d known better back in the day, I would’ve done cool classes [in college],” Garcia says with a chuckle.

At the behest of a friend, he moved to Atlanta to find his direction. This led him to take acting classes at WHAT Films, an innovative theater class where he learned to write, direct, act and produce original materials under actor-director Judson Vaughn. “It was a very unique format — that was the foundation of how I work,” says Garcia.

In 2003, with only $2,000 in his pocket and a roommate he found on Craigslist, Garcia made L.A. his home. The city’s strong Chicano presence overwhelmed him at first, but he eased into the community. “I didn’t grow up with a strong Latino community in Wyoming,” he explains. “When I got to L.A., I worked in this movie called ‘Walkout’ with Edward James Olmos [and] started learning about the history of Latinos in L.A.”

Garcia landed his breakout role in the 2006 film “Quinceañera,” a coming-of-age film directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland. In it, Garcia played Carlos, a gay teen estranged from his Mexican family, along with his pregnant cousin and protagonist Magdalena (played by Emily Rios). The film gained traction at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award. The film was later acquired and distributed by Sony Pictures.

“I [think] I got like a thousand dollars to do that movie,” says Garcia of his indie flick, which was a nonunion production. “[But] it started my career.”

(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)

Garcia followed this momentum with small roles in procedurals like “CSI: Miami,” “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” and “ER.” Although he asked his agents to opt out of stereotypical Latino roles, usually limited to gardeners and gangsters, he relented for a role in the movie “Days of Wrath,” an “action gangster flick,” as he puts it. Directed by Celia Fox, it featured a stellar roster of Black and Latino actors: Laurence Fishburne, Lupe Ontiveros, Taye Diggs and Wilmer Valderrama.

But the film, which was slated for release in 2008, would never see the light of day — though he’s still looking to get the rights to it. “Celia, call me,” he says to the camera.

“I was just a broke actor, then 2008 happened,” says Garcia, whose happy-go-lucky demeanor instantly seems to wash away.

In the aftermath of the 2007-08 writers’ strike, roles for the blooming actor became harder to come by — a situation that was made more dire by the nation’s crushing financial crisis. Nearly 20 years later, creatives continue to fight for their artistry amid growing concerns about AI and streaming revenue, all while production has slowed down in L.A.

Jesse Garcia in “Flamin’ Hot,” his first lead role in a major studio film.

(Emily Aragones / Searchlight Pictures )

His first lead role in a major studio film would not come until 2023, when he was cast as Richard Montañez in “Flamin’ Hot,” the story of a janitor turned self-proclaimed “godfather of Latino marketing,” who claimed to have invented the finger-licking snack Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.

“When I first got the audition for ‘Flamin’ Hot,’ I read it and went, ‘This is mine. … They wrote this for me,’” says Garcia. “I just have to jump through hoops and prove that it’s mine.”

First-time director and friend Eva Longoria tells De Los that Garcia, whom she considers her “cosmic soulmate,” was “meant to be Richard Montañez.”

“He didn’t have one day off, so he had this intense approach to it,” says Longoria. “He wanted to do well — not just for me but for our community. … We could not fail on ‘Flamin’ Hot.’”

The pressures of the role weighed on Garcia — not because he carried the Latino community on his shoulders, which is an obligation he vehemently shrugs off, but because he was present for all 36 days of shooting.

“Nobody knew [it], but I could have had a mental breakdown every day,” he says.

“There was one day that [co-star] Annie Gonzalez put her hand on my chest just to say hello and check in with me, and I was like, ‘Oh s—, why am I so emotional right now?’” says Garcia.

Gonzalez, who played Montañez’s wife Judy in “Flamin’ Hot,” remembers this moment during filming. “Jesse does mask a lot of things with play,” she says. “I put my hand on his chest and gave him my energy, ’cause I can only imagine carrying this film.”

Although the veracity of this marketing success story was contested in a 2021 L.A. Times investigation, which the real-life Montañez cites in his 2024 defamation suit against the popular chip company, Garcia says he resonates with his character’s go-getter spirit. (And, for the record, he also stands behind Montañez’s account of events: “I believe him, he has receipts.”)

“I [too] have felt like the underdog,” says Garcia. “I’ve felt like I’ve wanted to quit.”

He says that when thinking back on those stormy moments in 2008, he asks himself: “Would the 21-year-old version of myself be stoked to meet the current version?”

To that, he says: “Yeah, I would be proud of that guy.”

A Minecraft Movie, 2025.

Directed by Jared Hess.
Starring Jason Momoa, Jack Black, Danielle Brooks, Emma Myers, Sebastian Hansen, Jennifer Coolidge, Rachel House, Matt Berry, Kate McKinnon, Jemaine Clement, Valkyrae, Jared Hess, and Jens Bergensten.

SYNOPSIS:

Four misfits are suddenly pulled through a mysterious portal into a bizarre, cubic wonderland that thrives on imagination. To get back home, they’ll have to master this world while embarking on a quest with an unexpected, expert crafter.

Sometime after siblings Henry (Sebastian Hansen) and Natalie (Emma Myers) inadvertently discover the Overworld, where everything from buildings to environments to animals to food to other random objects are block-shaped, the former uses his child genius creativity to instantly start building elaborate constructions, as one does in the mostly plotless, sandbox video game Minecraft, but his sister struggles. She criticizes him for being a regular screwup in the real world (a heat-of-the-moment outburst she immediately regrets) while proclaiming that none of this makes any sense. Her character practically feels like a vessel for those of us coming into director Jared Hess’ A Minecraft Movie with minimal exposure.

However, despite never having played the game, I know one thing through cultural osmosis: it is intended to encourage and foster creativity in children and teenagers, which Jared Hess understands. That’s not to say the movie is any good, but “getting it” is a rarity regarding video game adaptations. It’s wonderful that this is an adaptation in conversation with not only why the games are popular, but that parents (in the case of this film, a slightly older sister looking after her younger brother while still grieving the loss of their mother) wrongfully assume that it’s a waste of time and rotting their brains, failing to realize that the game is entirely built on imagination and whatever the player wants it to be.

The punishment of removing or deleting a child’s Minecraft world is admittedly an over-the-top punishment that not only refuses to engage with the game itself but also with what they are getting from the world-building experience. It’s an instant, permanent removal of something unique, most likely impossible to duplicate. Hence, the shattering feeling of losing an entire world. Sure, it’s digital, but was lovingly put together by a human.

Jared Hess unfortunately doesn’t necessarily get to do much with this, as one imagines a gun held to he and his overcrowded screenwriting team’s (Chris Bowman, Hubbel Palmer, Neil Widener, Gavin James, and Chris Galletta) heads forcing them to shove Easter eggs and references down viewers’ throats in every single CGI, green-screened to hell and back image. This is mainly done through Jack Black portraying Steve, the default avatar from the game’s original launch (in games like these, players are encouraged to customize and project their personality onto the character), which obnoxiously amounts to that star playing himself, shouting out locations, objects, and enemy types with the demented energy of someone who just got done chugging five Red Bulls and is yelling all of this into your ear at 7 AM on a Monday when your alarm for work has gone off.

Perhaps that sounds like a hypercritical complaint after acknowledging an individual’s identity is meant to be grafted onto the avatar, but Jack Black is insufferable here. This is an embarrassing use of star power, serving as nothing more than a means to get a cheap pop out of the fans, which is especially fitting terminology since there is a scene that takes place in a wrestling ring. Everyone else will likely sit there dumbfounded. Surprisingly, they won’t necessarily be confused (most items, gear, and tools are self-explanatory), but speechless at the excessive depths of fan service. At the same time, a couple of interesting characters and ideas are ignored.

Other characters include Jason Momoa’s real-world faded superstar legendary arcade gamer Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison, a cocky dimwit facing foreclosure on his gaming store. Through some chance interactions with Henry, he also ends up in the Overworld, hoping to find some treasures to solve his financial woes. Initially, it’s also amusing that the character is a skilled cooperative gamer who routinely messes up inside a fantasy world while failing to work together. However, like most aspects of A Minecraft Movie, this aspect is worn down and tiring.

Similarly, this is an action-packed adventure with a number of explosions on par with a Michael Bay film, except they rarely look visually exciting here since the bright nature of the world and commercial-like photography causes every image to appear fake with washed-out colors. There is strong attention to detail regarding the aesthetics and designs, but this is otherwise a hideous film; one can’t help but wonder what could have been done using more practical effects. There is no wonderment or movie magic here, with no suspension of disbelief that everyone didn’t spend several hours a day in front of a green screen. Once in a while, there is a moderately entertaining sequence, such as a chase in a minecart that runs off a special type of energy, but it’s often weightless and doesn’t pop.

Rounding out the set of main characters is Dawn, a real estate agent, settling Henry and Natalie into their new home. Struggling to pay the bills, she works numerous jobs, including one working with animals, which is handy when finding herself in the Overworld. She is also a consistently funny presence and the only one not overdoing their role into flat-out annoyance.

Together, they must search for a magical object to reopen a portal that will take them home, while aiding Steve in a war against the Nether world’s evil pig race, led by their leader, Malgosha (a voiceover performance by Rachel House). Speaking of Steve, his basic origins as a real-world person and years in the Overworld could have been an entire movie alone. Thankfully, it isn’t, because Jack Black is already irritating enough here. Still, it goes to show the lengths to which A Minecraft Movie goes in cramming in as much as possible, with zero consideration as to what it serves in the context of a narrative. 

Unsurprisingly, A Minecraft Movie‘s most inspired moments involve creativity, mainly through using materials to craft wacky weapons such as a tater tot gun or bucket nunchucks. Despite Jared Hess (and maybe one of the five screenwriters) showing a fundamental understanding of the game, it’s a shame the film is predominantly concerned with fan service and abrasively loud energy from its stars that comes across as desperately begging viewers to care. It mostly chooses laziness over imagination, directly insulting everything Minecraft stands for.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association, Critics Choice Association, and Online Film Critics Society. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews and follow my BlueSky or Letterboxd