'A Minecraft Movie' gets saved at the box office by meme culture

If I had a nickel for every egregious movie that just barely missed being punished at the box office due to an influx of teenage boys ironically flocking to theaters to watch two hours of slop . . . I'd actually have a few nickels at this point.

That's not a good thing. When the trailer for "A Minecraft Movie" was released, the internet had come to the consensusthis movie was going to be absolutely horrid. The SFX were off, the writing and deliveries were bad and the narrative was bland and overused.

Instead of bullying the studio and boycotting the movie until they made changes, just like fans did when the original "Sonic: The Hedgehog Movie" was announced, Minecraft fans decided they'd take anything they could get at this point.

They decided to make the most of what they got, using the terrible writing to push the 'it's so unfunny that it's funny' narrative and justify buying a ticket. We've seen the exact same thing with several movies in the past few years that all had similar outcomes.

There was "Morbius," where online meme culture took over any kind of promotional material and declared it to be as intricate and beautiful compositionally as "The Godfather" or other movie classics. The movie itself was atrocious, but people tricked themselves into packing the theaters and actually turning it into a very profitable release, doubling the film's budget.

There was also "Minions: The Rise of Gru," where teenage boys pretended that this nightmare of a movie was a spectacle to behold and dressed to the ninth in their local AMC, accompanied by a steak dinner. That movie ended up making just short of a billion dollars in the end.

Now we have "A Minecraft Movie," where people are once again selling out theaters to over-exaggerate the comedy of the movie's worst line: Chicken Jockey. There are countless videos now where people begin screaming when he says it, launching popcorn in the air, creating mosh pits and even bringing in items to throw and destroy in the theater.

Am I against a good time? No. I think it's fine to make the best of a bad situation and enjoy your time no matter what. It says a lot about the human spirit that even in the worst times, we can still find joy. There are just two issues I have:

The people that have to clean all of that up. It started with people yelling about the line. Then, it became people yelling and jumping up and down. Then, it became hyperbolized: 'I am so shocked, I must throw my popcorn out of sheer reaction'. And then, it became degenerate. Do it in the comfort of your own home. Don't destroy the theater chairs and aisles, then make the underpaid workers clean it up for upwards of an hour. That ends up delaying the next showing.

These movie studios are getting no comeuppance for making this slop. If they're making money, they don't care how good the script is. If people continue to buy tickets and put butts in seats, they're not going to change how trashy their product is. The only way to make these companies listen to us is to not give them our money. Please stop buying tickets to these movies. It's just going to make them worse in the future.

Yes, "A Minecraft Movie" is awful, but we'll never see that looking at the box office numbers. If you're like me and are genuinely curious to see how bad it is firsthand, go buy a ticket, get some friends to go with you and go laugh at how bad it is to have a good night out. If you go in with an ironic mindset, you'll get so much more out of it.