The latest IP to be mined into a Hollywood blockbuster is appropriately a video game that celebrates digging: “A Minecraft Movie.”
Like “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” and “Jumanji” before it, “A Minecraft Movie” centers on four misfits who enter a mysterious portal that pulls them into a strange land, this time cubic, like Lego only on shrooms.
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Jason Momoa, right and Adria Arjona pose for photographers upon arrival at the World premiere of A Minecraft Movie on Sunday, March 30, 2025, in London. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)
Jason Momoa pose for photographers upon arrival at the World premiere of A Minecraft Movie on Sunday, March 30, 2025, in London. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)
Jason Momoa, right, hugs Jack Black as they pose for photographers upon arrival at the World premiere of A Minecraft Movie on Sunday, March 30, 2025, in London. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)
Danielle Brooks, from left, Emma Myers, Sebastian Hansen, Jennifer Coolidge, Jack Black and Jason Momoa pose for photographers upon arrival at the World premiere of A Minecraft Movie on Sunday, March 30, 2025, in London. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)
The Jared Hess-directed action-adventure artfully straddles the line between delighting preteen gamers and keeping their parents awake. It's an often-bananas adaptation, with bizarre digressions into turquoise blouses and tater tot pizzas. It has Jennifer Coolidge being very Jennifer Coolidge. Need we say more?
If you’ve never heard of “Minecraft” — or its denizens like Creepers, Piglins, Villagers and Endermen — you are in big trouble. Consult with the closest 10-year-old immediately. (I have one and he noticed a sweet nod to the late YouTuber Technoblade, an Easter egg of sorts.)
The movie is faithful to the world of the game, while adding some things — orbs and crystals — to aid the plot. But if you come in cold and spot pandas and folks punching through earth, you'll likely side with one human character who says: “This place makes no sense.”
Our travelers — a sweet brother and sister (Emma Myers and Sebastian Eugene Hansen), their nutty real estate agent (Danielle Brooks) and a deeply dumb, washed-up pro video game player (Jason Momoa) — are guided by Jack Black, playing an expert crafter named Steve stranded in the world.
If it does anything, “A Minecraft Movie” marks the comedic coming of age of Momoa, who has shown glimpses of his chops in the “Aquaman” and “Fast X” movies. But when he’s not on screen in this one, it leaves the movie slack, which is saying a lot when you have Black being his full-force, over-the-top Black.
“There’s no ‘i’ in ‘team’ but there are two ‘i’s in ‘winning,’” Momoa says as Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison, who is fond of fingerless gloves and a Barbie-pink leather jacket with a fringe. In another scene, he notes: “Paper doesn’t grow on trees.”
The screenplay written by Chris Bowman, Hubbel Palmer, Neil Widener, Gavin James and Chris Galletta is as loosey-goosey as you'd expect from five different voices, with a traditional Marvel-style battle at the end fueled by plenty of “Let's do this!” declarations but with a surprisingly goofball first half.
Like countless films before it, “A Minecraft Movie” is all about the quest to go home, which in this case means navigating zombies, skeletons shooting fire-tipped arrows and a place called The Nether, a perpetually dark hell where horrible creatures mine for gold. For some reason, the ruler there, a piglike witch, has glowing eyes and a British accent.
The writers make some “America’s Got Talent” jokes, Black has a few songs — including a bizarre “Steve’s Lava Chicken” — and we spend an inordinate of time focused on Momoa’s butt, but it all ends in a dance party. The movie has a “Dark Crystal”-meets-“Transformers” vibe, a too-subtle message about financial failure and something about friendship.
The filmmakers do have characters throw eggs — at these prices, is that smart? — but they don't lean enough into the celebration of creativity this movie seemed to promise when it started.
Hollywood’s embrace of gaming has been yielding hits such as HBO’s “The Last of Us” and Amazon Prime Video’s series adaptation of the Microsoft-owned “Fallout.” More adaptations are on the horizon this year: “Until Dawn,” “Mortal Kombat 2” and “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2.”
As for “A Minecraft Movie,” the advice is this: Come for the Piglins, stay for Momoa, whom you will see spectacularly failing at being bilingual and jujutsu-ing opponents dressed like a member of Skid Row. It's everything you ever needed.
“A Minecraft Movie,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release that's in theaters Friday, is rated PG for “violence/action, language, suggestive/rude humor and some scary images.” Running time: 101 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.
Jason Momoa, right and Adria Arjona pose for photographers upon arrival at the World premiere of A Minecraft Movie on Sunday, March 30, 2025, in London. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)
Jason Momoa pose for photographers upon arrival at the World premiere of A Minecraft Movie on Sunday, March 30, 2025, in London. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)
Jason Momoa, right, hugs Jack Black as they pose for photographers upon arrival at the World premiere of A Minecraft Movie on Sunday, March 30, 2025, in London. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)
Danielle Brooks, from left, Emma Myers, Sebastian Hansen, Jennifer Coolidge, Jack Black and Jason Momoa pose for photographers upon arrival at the World premiere of A Minecraft Movie on Sunday, March 30, 2025, in London. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)
HAMIMA, Syria (AP) — A trickle of civilians left a contested area east of Aleppo on Thursday after a warning by the Syrian military to evacuate ahead of an anticipated government military offensive against Kurdish-led forces.
Government officials and some residents who managed to get out said the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces prevented people from leaving via the corridor designated by the military along the main road leading west from the town of Maskana through Deir Hafer to the town of Hamima.
The SDF denied the reports that they were blocking the evacuation.
In Hamima, ambulances and government officials were gathered beginning early in the morning waiting to receive the evacuees and take them to shelters, but few arrived.
Farhat Khorto, a member of the executive office of Aleppo Governorate who was waiting there, claimed that there were "nearly two hundred civilian cars and hundreds of people who wanted to leave” the Deir Hafer area but that they were prevented by the SDF. He said the SDF was warning residents they could face “sniping operations or booby-trapped explosives” along that route.
Some families said they got out of the evacuation zone by taking back roads or going part of the distance on foot.
“We tried to leave this morning, but the SDF prevented us. So we left on foot … we walked about seven to eight kilometers until we hit the main road, and there the civil defense took us and things were good then,” said Saleh al-Othman, who said he fled Deir Hafer with more than 50 relatives.
Yasser al-Hasno, also from Deir Hafer, said he and his family left via back roads because the main routes were closed and finally crossed a small river on foot to get out of the evacuation area.
Another Deir Hafer resident who crossed the river on foot, Ahmad al-Ali, said, “We only made it here by bribing people. They still have not allowed a single person to go through the main crossing."
Farhad Shami, a spokesman for the SDF, said the allegations that the group had prevented civilians from leaving were “baseless.” He suggested that government shelling was deterring residents from moving.
The SDF later issued a statement also denying that it had blocked civilians from fleeing. It said that “any displacement of civilians under threat of force by Damascus constitutes a war crime" and called on the international community to condemn it.
“Today, the people of Deir Hafer have demonstrated their unwavering commitment to their land and homes, and no party can deprive them of their right to remain there under military pressure,” it said.
The Syrian army’s announcement late Wednesday — which said civilians would be able to evacuate through the “humanitarian corridor” from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday — appeared to signal plans for an offensive against the SDF in the area east of Aleppo. Already there have been limited exchanges of fire between the two sides.
Thursday evening, the military said it would extend the humanitarian corridor for another day.
The Syrian military called on the SDF and other armed groups to withdraw to the other side of the Euphrates River, to the east of the contested zone. The SDF controls large swaths of northeastern Syria east of the river.
The tensions in the Deir Hafer area come after several days of intense clashes last week in Aleppo city that ended with the evacuation of Kurdish fighters and government forces taking control of three contested neighborhoods.
The fighting broke out as negotiations have stalled between Damascus and the SDF over an agreement reached last March to integrate their forces and for the central government to take control of institutions including border crossings and oil fields in the northeast.
Some of the factions that make up the new Syrian army, which was formed after the fall of former President Bashar Assad in a rebel offensive in December 2024, were previously Turkey-backed insurgent groups that have a long history of clashing with Kurdish forces.
The SDF for years has been the main U.S. partner in Syria in fighting against the Islamic State group, but Turkey considers the SDF a terrorist organization because of its association with Kurdish separatist insurgents in Turkey.
Despite the long-running U.S. support for the SDF, the Trump administration has also developed close ties with the government of interim Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa and has so far avoided publicly taking sides in the clashes in Aleppo.
Ilham Ahmed, head of foreign relations for the SDF-affiliated Kurdish-led administration in northeast Syria, at a press conference Thursday said SDF officials were in contact with the United States and Turkey and had presented several initiatives for de-escalation. She said that claims by Damascus that the SDF had failed to implement the March agreement were false.
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Associated Press journalist Hogir Al Abdo in Qamishli, Syria, contributed.
Members of the Syrian military police stand at a humanitarian crossing declared by the Syrian army in the village of Hamima, in the eastern Aleppo countryside, near the front line with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in Deir Hafer, Syria, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)
Members of the Syrian Civil Defense, stand next to their vehicles at a humanitarian crossing declared by the Syrian army in the village of Hamima, in the eastern Aleppo countryside, near the front line with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in Deir Hafer, Syria, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)
A displaced Syrian family rides in the back of a truck near a humanitarian crossing declared by the Syrian army next to a river in the village of Rasm Al-Abboud, in the eastern Aleppo countryside, near the front line with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in Deir Hafer, Syria, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Omar Albam)
Displaced Syrian children and women ride in the back of a truck near a humanitarian crossing declared by the Syrian army in the village of Hamima, in the eastern Aleppo countryside, near the front line with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in Deir Hafer, Syria, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Omar Albam)
Displaced Syrians at a river crossing near the village of Jarirat al Imam, in the eastern Aleppo countryside, near the front line with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in Deir Hafer, Syria, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Omar Albam)
