The clock struck 8 and I grabbed my coat. Outside a gentle breeze blew cherry blossom petals through the air as I walked to Renfrew Skytrain station. It was a Friday night and I felt good, I was going to meet some friends at Brentwood cinema. The mall felt modern, I felt modern, it seemed like the place to be. I met my friends and we opted for the reclining seats, I was excited to try them out.
Then the movie started.
Immediately images are flying everywhere, max saturation, max colour, max speed. No frame lingers more than .8 seconds. Around me a writhing mass of anxious teenagers scrolling rapidly on their phones if the sound occasionally dipped, which it rarely did. The images and insanity kept accelerating. The noises kept getting louder. Characters that formerly walked, now were teleporting. The colours kept getting more garish.
There is no plot, there are no characters. We can’t slow for a second – or the kids will start vibrating faster with anxiety and look for more stimulation on their phones than the big screen. Everything keeps getting louder. The kids keep popping more Adderall. You can’t pause; it has to keep moving. There are no slow scenes, there are no moving moments. It’s just pure crack cocaine. The staff kept reeling in additional speakers for MORE, LOUDER, SCREAMIER sound.
As the kids anxiously click faster, afraid that a stray thought may intrude into their consciousness, the movie bathes them in the light of trillions of indecipherable blinking images, zapped at light speed into their brains, the machine able to keep pace with their fear of introspection. The images bolt. Songs are a few seconds long then rapidly teleport to another scene, no introduction, no conclusion, no speaking, just spasmodic CGI action. Every 15 mins the crowd is sprayed with sugar syrup, gotta keep that heart rate up, gotta not slow down or let the doubt take hold for even a second.
The color red, squares, explosions, one liner’s – some of them are too slow and the masses are scrolling TikTok on 2x speed now, a warning signal flashes in a distant corporate boardroom about this attention failure. Bang! another blast of garish screaming from a disjointed set of images that might make sense to their brains but have started to leave me behind. They look up, a brief flash of Jack Black “Blaugha”, then a monster pig “fflaa”, snap, a quick shot of somebody’s ass, colorful spinning fractals, more sugar syrup, more speakers, more fucking sounds, popping spiraling heads of celebrities spatting nonsense from their mouth holes.
By now the staff had started reeling in particle colliders, fucking electrons in arcing jets across the theater. The crowd had now moved on to amphetamines, chomping them down, no food, no water, just pure speed and electrons. The framerate kept increasing, the temperature of the room was now over 50 degrees centigrade and everybody’s teeth were chattering in the extreme heat, with the blaring sirens everywhere mixing with the fragments of dialogue as blinking images of Jason Mamoa battered my consciousness into submission. The kids were now rocking back and forth over 400 times a second. I was trying to take more drugs quicker to keep up but I couldn’t shovel them into my mouth fast enough.
Then a kid appears to actually teleport, briefly appearing at the top of the screen, quickly they’re all doing it. I don’t know if I’m going insane or if people could always do this. Maybe they’re characters in the movie, but they’re changing all the time, it’s hard to keep up? Don’t fucking think, just let this thing take you – see the sparkles of electrons and the indecipherable fragments of sound. The spastic hammering of thousands of teleporting kids, the blinking images of Jack Black’s “Steve”, the shrieking sounds of pop like sensations, trillions of times over and over, the wailing of pigs, the state of utter alarm.
A fragment of awareness in me momentarily sees through the trillions of triangles to an image of an ancient forefather. He is sitting on a log, his face lined and smiling. Above is a sea eagle and I can smell tree sap and see bluebells flowers. Where am I!? He is explaining to me the myth of the creation of fire, how it was stolen from the Gods and is a form of forbidden knowledge. We were not meant to have such technology, who knows where it might lead, he suggests jokingly!? In the distance I can see an open woodland with light streaming through. I feel the old man’s hand on my shoulder. Was he my father in a different life?
Suddenly, the clatter of screaming whirling electrical sparks, sharp objects, screens, garish colors and amphetamines is too much and the spell is broken. Every character is screaming, flickering spastic parasitic color impulses surround me. The kids scroll faster and faster on TikTok twerking videos. I try to scream but I can’t hear it even in my own head. It’s madness – IT’S ALL MADNESSSSSSESESSSESESES!!!!
Then the movie was over.
I looked down. I had no body.
I tried to talk to Dylan.
“gabohhaha”. The sense of shaking, emanating from nowhere, crystalizes into mute gushes of primal rage. From behind the madness I feel corporeal form, the shaking now a thrashing of my body as I retched and vomited. Tears formed and streamed, giving shape to the outside of my face. I look down as my hands are materializing, incarnating, forming back into the living room of life. I feel sad and grateful; I cry and I don’t know why. As my heart rate drops below 200 and time-consciousness returns, I will myself towards the exit.
There are no characters, there is no plot, it’s all wannabe gyrating max speed TikTok viral marketing clickbait microtransactions. It’s insane. The visuals are actually quite nice, it’s just that they whiz past so fast that your eyes cannot detect that they existed. If you want to go see this movie, make sure you have enough good veins in your arms for the amount of drugs you’ll be taking.
The movie itself is completely forgettable yet the *experience* of it will stay with you forever. It’s a fever dream. Minecraft is actually a fairly slow and peaceful game with a contemplative soundtrack. What happened? Should I even talk about specifics? Were those lines of dialogue from the evil lady references to Star Wars? Why? Was the children yearn for the mines not already a joke? Should I say something about the actual movie? Like that all the actors, aside from Jack Black and Jason Mamoa, cannot act. Does that even matter?
Am I just really old and out of touch and so utterly not cool that this is actually normal and I’m just brain damaged and slow? Is the human race so totally devoid of attention span that this is the new normal and I’m just catching up? Help me here, what happened?
Overall, I give Minecraft a 3/10. It has nice visuals but will catapult you into a 4-D grinding prison of strobing insanity and may provide a mystical vision of your forefather.