Chicken Jockey

Hello whoever might be out there,

I watched the Minecraft movie. And no I am not surprised that it felt like scrolling through two hours worth of Youtube shorts, all that was missing was the AI voiceover explaining everything with the piano music in the background.

I have some thoughts on it. And I know people will love to whine "but it's not that deep," but it is. It always is that deep. Because when a film gets so insanely popular to the point where cinemas have to show disclaimers at the start of the film telling people not to throw popcorn, it will be that deep.

I was having a conversation with some boys from my school before Easter and before the film was released. We were talking about Alex, who some might refer to as the female equivalent of Steve. How very naïve of me to presume that the second of two main Minecraft characters would feature in the film. I said to these boys, not that they were really listening anyways, that Alex was just as crucial to the Minecraft franchise as Steve was. That my childhood consisted of that silly coding game with Alex and Steve. That I vividly remember picking Alex the first time I loaded into Minecraft. Yet these boys were insistent that nobody thinks or cares about Alex. 

It appears the creators of the Minecraft movie had the same attitude. I forced my Mum and brother to sit through the credits just to see a backshot of my girl.

Minecraft is for everyone. I looked around the theatre before the film started and my heart melted at the sight of at least ten girls with their Minecraft shirts or plush toys. Obviously there were boys there too, but Minecraft isn't a game made just for them, it is for everyone. There is no right way to play. No right or wrong thing to do. Nearly everyone has gone into creative before to build a rollercoaster or their house. Yet the movie made it appear that Minecraft was for the men.

Five central human characters. Steve. An ex-video-game champion. A young boy. The older sister of the young boy. And their real estate agent. Between the video-game champion and the real estate agent, which would you assume was the woman? Precisely.

The women were there to be women. The men were there to be characters.

"Oh but the women built a house! The women killed all the Piglins!"

The boy built a house within the first hour of being in the overworld. The boy killed an Enderman with one swing of an axe. It's so clear that the writers did not want the women to be there. I can't even remember the real estate agent's name!

The most notable appearance by a woman in that film was the cameo by LDShadowLady. If only she had actually got to say something.

I felt disappointed on behalf of all of the young girls in that theatre who all left before the post-credit scene. Minecraft would not be what it is without women, and yet the point where we get to show this game to the world through a multi-million dollar movie, the women could've simply not been there and it wouldn't have changed a thing.

Alex needs to be our saving grace.

Yours faithfully, MD