'A Minecraft Movie' Marks The End of Movie Fandom
#314: "A Minecraft Movie," "The Studio," "The Saint," "Runaway Jury"
Edition 314:
Hey movie lovers!
This week: There’s a new massive movie at the box office, but that doesn’t mean movies are back. It’s time to get existential! Then there’s the TV show that everyone in Hollywood is watching, and two older movies that I turned to in order to remember what real movies look like. In this week’s “Trailer Watch,” we’ll see if slapstick can work in 2025.
A Minecraft Movie
Movies are not back.
I know A Minecraft Movie made $300 million in its opening weekend, doubling projections, and is well on its way to being a billion dollar grosser. I know young people are flocking to theaters for the first time in a long time, and going berserk. And yes, I know the industry “really needs a win” (especially the co-heads of Warner Bros, who just earned a stay of execution from their firing).
And I’m not even here to poopoo how they don’t make ‘em like they used to. Sure, it’s true, but I made peace with the differentiation between “movies” and “branded content experiences” back in December. People don’t need to hear me add to the chorus of people saying this movie isn’t good just because it’s so clearly not for me. I never played Minecraft the videogame.
The reason movies aren’t back is because “movies,” as a broad collective category, aren’t a thing anymore. The average person isn’t a fan of “movies” as a whole — even if they say they are. They’re fans of other things, brands, IP, whether it be Marvel or Minecraft or Wicked, and then enjoy a two-hour content product of that thing.
It’s a container. That same person might enjoy an eight-hour content product of that thing (a TV show), a three-hour content product (a stage musical), a 500-page content product (a book), or a three-minute content product (clips of scenes on YouTube). There’s no differentiation in the fandom.
What I’m getting at is this — the so-called “rising tide” does not exist. If one movie does well it means nothing for the next. The people that go out to see this movie aren’t suddenly going to want to go see another movie next week.
Example: In the three months after the Barbenheimer phenomenon in July 2023, there were exactly three movies that cleared $100 million at the domestic box office. And one of those was Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour. (By the way, if you drop that threshold to $70 million domestic you only add four titles, and below that you’re talking about truly niche movies.)
Each year, a handful of releases will catch a collective wave of energy and attention and break through the daily content avalanche, like Barbie, Oppenheimer, Deadpool & Wolverine, Wicked, Super Mario, and Avatar 2. It feels like a must-see event. But everything else has to start from square one all over again.
And the movies, err I mean BCEs, are adapting to this trend creatively by playing toward super-fandom. Projects are being tailor made to please the biggest, most vocal fans of the existing property, because those are the ones that are going to amplify those huzzahs.
This was my disconnect with Wicked and Deapool &Wolverine last year, which I did not think were good from the standpoint of a “cinephile” (I feel old just saying it), but in my conversations with the many many people who really liked them, realized that I was the odd one out. The more you loved and knew about those properties going in, the more you loved those BCEs. They are the target audience.
That explains the A Minecraft Movie, which includes moments like one character shouting “chicken jockey!” as a block-headed zombie rides a chicken, and every single member of the audience under the age of 15 loses their minds screaming, jumping out of their chair, throwing popcorn, and in at least one instance even vomiting.
I’m reminded of the reenactment of the Spider-Man pointing meme in Spider-Man: Far From Home, or the appearance of Channing Tatum as Gambit in Deadpool & Wolverine. Pandemonium for those in the know. When I say in my reviews that it often seems like you need a PhD in a certain subject to understand these BCEs, this is what I mean.
Do those phrases mean anything to anyone who hasn’t played the game, read the comics, looked at the Reddit fan pages, or consumed YouTube and TikTok content about this one specific thing for the past decade? No.
Yet they feel like the primary reason for these movies to exist, and certainly the reason why they thrived.
I’m not quite sure where that leaves a newsletter like this one, which is written by an aspiring cinephile for aspiring cinephiles. I promise, that’s not meant to be snobby. I’m not here to say “you must see The Brutalist or you’re not a real movie fan.”
People who have read for a long time know I love a commercial movie as much or more than the next guy. I just don’t see us movie lovers being represented at the box office very often.
When it does happen, we have to celebrate. Next week we have a new Ryan Coogler movie, Sinners, which is supposed to be good. Go out and see it! In theaters! Then come back here on Friday and let’s talk about it.
Something New
The Studio (AppleTV+): Dropping in here again not only to remind you, sadly, that television is where the good stories are currently, but also because I had four different reporting calls this week with four different people who work in Hollywood, and every single one of them brought up “The Studio,” unprompted. And the hilarious part is that all four of them were making the same point that the farce of the show echoed some ridiculous aspect of real life Hollywood, but they each cited four completely different examples!
So I think it’s fair to say that the entire town is tuning into this show, and it’s a Rorschach test for all of them — they see what they want to see. In my experience, people who work in Hollywood are extremely good at casting themselves as the main character in the tragic dramedy of their lives.
That said, my own opinion of the show has cooled slightly. I’m still really enjoying it, but now I see that it’s much closer to “Curb Your Enthusiasm” than anything else. Each episode is a series of bumbling pratfalls and embarrassing guffaws that play up the situational comedy but leave little in the way of character development or forward story momentum. The production value is GORGEOUS and I’m hoping it can recapture the tone of that pilot episode in the season’s back half.
Something Old
The Saint (1997): All the Val Kilmer tributes last week mentioned the same handful of classics (as did I) but my parents and The Rewatchables podcast (in that order!) brought to my attention this late 90s Mission: Impossible ripoff starring Kilmer as a hacker/thief who wears no less than a dozen elaborate disguises on a globetrotting adventure to…I don’t know, something with a government coup in Russia? And the fictional invention of cold fusion?
This movie is ridiculous on the macro level but scene-to-scene completely charming, thanks to Kilmer’s charisma and his chemistry with love interest Elisabeth Shue. This is the very end of the era where action movies were all practical effects and life-sized stakes, before the 21st century brought in CGI and insane heightened craziness. It’s a lot of low speed chase scenes that are nonetheless entertaining, and within a big, dumb, fun movie like this, it’s great to see Kilmer chew up the scenery with so many different accents and looks. He is missed.
Something To Stream
Runaway Jury (Netflix): One thing I’ve resolved to stop doing is watching an old movie and saying, in this newsletter or in real life, some version of “I wish they made movies like this today!” No. A good movie is a good movie is a good movie, and every year there are good movies that get released. They do make movies we like every year, economic returns be damned. We just gotta find them!
This is one of the lesser known John Grisham book adaptations, though having now seen it I think it might be my favorite. John Cusack stars as a jury member in a massive case against the gun industry, being influenced (and tampered with to a degree that is very hard to believe) by the opposing legal teams of Gene Hackman vs. Dustin Hoffman. That’s a heavyweight bout! (Plus Rachel Weisz as love interest, Bruce McGill as judge, Jeremy Piven as a lawyer, and a handful of that-guys).
It’s a fast-paced, plot-heavy thrillride (as I always say, I’m a sucker for good plot), that produces enough twists and tension to make up for any lack of spectacle or filmmaking fizzle. There’s a couple of true actor showdowns that showcase the best of Hackman, Hoffman and Cusack (in distant third). I really really loved this movie, and in a kind of sentimental way I feel like I really needed to watch a movie like this during this week. To keep me sane!
Trailer Watch: The Naked Gun
We’ve seen everything get rebooted at this point. It’s inevitable. But the thing I like about this reintroduction of this 1980s slapstick comedy is that unlike most legacy sequels that hold the tradition of the original with great reverence, this new Naked Gun immediately middle fingers its legacy with a perfect timed O.J. Simpson joke. Liam Neeson and Paul Walter Houser (my guy!) lead a cast full of a lot of non-actors. I’m certain this movie will be stupid, and I’m fine with that as long as it’s not that winking ironic detachment kind of stupid of today and leans back into the full-commit ignorance that made 1980s comedy so enduring.