NEW YORK (OSV News) – Motion pictures based on popular video games may have found their perfected form in “A Minecraft Movie” (Warner Bros.).

The film is unrelentingly upbeat and undistracted by manufactured sentiment. Its positive mood is struck and sustained, moreover, without resort to the cheap jokes or occasional vulgarity that often plague such adaptations.

Rather than follow the easy path of anthropomorphizing video characters, the filmmakers instead take a group of people who are frustrated with the paths of their lives in the real world and insert them into a kinetic 3D immersive version of the Swedish game’s landscape where they learn to achieve their goals.

Since their source material is the best-selling video game of all time, the quintet of screenwriters — Chris Bowman, Hubbel Palmer, Neil Widener, Gavin James and Chris Galletta — assume the pool of veteran players-turned-moviegoers is large enough for them to get away with the occasional in-joke. But even newcomers can savor the nuances on offer here.

Director Jared Hess’ production is not the type of picture from which viewers expect to take away an especially meaningful message. But it does carry with it an implied theme about better living through gameplay — in other words, you’re not just killing time, you’re building your life.

In the game, protagonist Steve, one of only two playable human characters, has a dark backstory about being the lone survivor of a worldwide virus. There’s none of that here.

On the contrary, Jack Black gives us a perpetually optimistic — albeit initially dissatisfied — version of the character. His Steve longs to escape the drudgery of being a doorknob salesman and become a miner instead.

Steve gets his opportunity when he comes across the glowing blue cube known within the game as the Orb of Dominance and finds that it opens a portal to a utopian place called The Overworld. Here, players construct their own mini-environments. They also interact with blocky people and animals.

Among the latter are creatures called piglins. The inhabitants of an evil empire known as the Nether, piglins are on a greedy quest for gold.

Steve is eventually joined by a group of other visitors to the Overwrold who are just as happy as he is to leave their unfulfilling pasts behind them. Garrett (Jason Momoa), an arcade video-game champ from decades ago, has fallen on hard times. Failed real estate agent Dawn (Danielle Brooks) wants to be a zookeeper.

For their part, youthful siblings Henry (Sebastian Hansen) and Natalie (Emma Myers) share a belief that their lives have taken a wrong turn. Additionally, Henry finds himself mocked at school for his creative impulses.

There’s no fear of that in this dimension. Having characterized the Overworld as “the biggest sandbox in the universe,” Steve observes, “Creativity in this world is the key to survival.”

Ultimately, of course, the ensemble of characters must head for home, and their return journey is, unsurprisingly, reminiscent of “The Wizard of Oz.” As in that classic, the cast learn lessons along the way and discover talents they didn’t previously know they had.

The film contains intense action sequences and some scenes of cartoonish violence. The OSV News classification is A-II – adults and adolescents. The Motion Picture Association rating is PG — parental guidance suggested. Some material may be inappropriate for children.

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The latest film releases include Freaky Tales, A Minecraft Movie, The Luckiest Man in America, and The Friend. Weighing in are Shawn Edwards, a film critic at Fox 4 News and co-founder of the African American Film Critics Association, and Katie Walsh, film reviewer for the Tribune News Service and the Los Angeles Times.

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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