The 2025 release of Jared Hess’s ‘A Minecraft Movie’ has seen a huge cultural revitalization of Minecraft in mainstream pop culture. While Minecraft has always been a dominant force, recent promotional and marketing pushes have seen kids from four to 24 flocking to McDonald’s to track down the Grimace Egg or to Walmart to find the action figure of the lead Steve, portrayed by Jack Black. These crowds have also flocked to the theaters to watch the infamous movie. Even the local Black Bear Cinemas in Orono saw massive turn-out on the first Wednesday after the release, where students rushed to claim the last available supply of UMSG, inc. funded free movie tickets. The line to the theater went out the door. However, what could’ve been a wholesome trend driving people to the theaters has also revealed a pattern of troubling behavior.
The movie has a much-memed scene on the internet in which Steve’s character sees the infamous Chicken Jockey, a ‘mob’ from the game composed of a baby zombie riding a chicken, and exclaims “Chicken Jockey!” This scene has been much discussed since the moment it was first revealed in the trailer, in part due to the comedy of Jack Black’s line reading. However, during this scene, movie theaters burst out into pure chaos. I’ve seen videos online of a theater room in which various people in the crowd throw large bags of popcorn while also holding up a live chicken that they had somehow brought in. This trend is not only a problem in theaters far away. Barstool Black Bears has a video on their instagram of the crowd reaction to the scene on that Wednesday night, and in the video it’s clear that popcorn was thrown. While a bit of crowd merriment is okay, making a mess is not.
This trend is indicative of a greater lack of care for how to act in public and also an incredible decline in empathy for service workers from the teen/young-adult population. Social media is heavily to blame for this. It’s not uncommon to see videos on Instagram reels or TikToks of people walking into random kitchens in fast food establishments and doing various pranks, even going as far as to dip brooms in fry vats which is a huge Health and Safety risk. Service workers are beginning to suffer for the sake of creating viral trends. This bad behavior is being encouraged by the algorithm in exchange for likes and views.
Movie theaters as an institution are still struggling to recover under the boot of streaming, especially after the pandemic. This trend driving people to the movies is huge for profits, but creating a mess in the theaters is hurting the workers who keep these places running and operating smoothly. It also risks creating a longer turnover time, potentially delaying the next showing and throwing things off schedule. This is also in tandem with a cultural devaluation of art and the reduction of art to irony. If this is how we’re going to culturally engage with movies, then movie theaters are going to continue to suffer as studios pump out movies that profit only off of the hype of memes. ‘A Minecraft Movie’ is a movie made for kids. Adults in this space need to be mindful that they are the invaders here and they’re creating potentially unsafe environments for the movie’s target demographic.
