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Review of A Minecraft Movie (Mark Mothersbaugh)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... for the overall soundtrack experience, the Jack Black
songs and interpolations of the game's original material serving as the
crowd-pleaser.
Avoid it... for any specific narrative satisfaction from the score by Mark Mothersbaugh and his crew, their work totally sufficient as a parody orchestral adventure outing but leaving little to remember.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
A Minecraft Movie: (Mark Mothersbaugh/Various)
Given the amount of time teenage boys have spent playing the Minecraft
video game in the 2010's and 2020's, it's amazing that the movie studios
bungled the inevitable cinematic adaptation of the concept for so long.
The 2025 adaptation, A Minecraft Movie, was long in the making,
and features four average and not-so-average people who get sucked into
the Minecraft universe of blocky virtual reality where they discover a
guy trapped there from decades before, Steve, who has mastered the land
and fights an evil ruler of the game's darker half. As Steve, Jack Black
is the comedy heart of A Minecraft Movie, and the gang of five
protagonists spend the film doing various silly things and battling the
mindless minions of the villain. All of this action happens because of
magical orbs and crystals that somehow found themselves amongst the
famous potatoes of Idaho. The plotline is so ridiculously dumb that
audiences reacted with glee at its hideousness, catapulting the film to
grosses that immediately stirred studio interest in a sequel. The
general formula of the film is familiar to anyone who has seen The
Lego Movie, and it's no surprise that veteran parody composer Mark
Mothersbaugh became involved in the project. Before he got to his part,
however, the movie employed Black to conjure a slew of original songs,
performing some of them himself. His ridiculous but funny short entry,
"Steve's Lava Chicken," became an internet sensation, prompting the
release of a longer version on album a few weeks later. These songs and
Mothersbaugh's score remain creatively separate, as do those facets and
the music that specifically carries over from the game. That popular and
easily recognizable legacy music, led by Daniel Rosenfeld using the
artist name C418, has always been helmed by surprisingly tender keyboard
identities for the topic. His colleague, Lena Raine, sees her "Pigstep"
theme reprised during the movie's "Nether's Got Talent" sequence. The
game song "Dragon Fish" also plays during a panda scene. But it's
Rosenfeld's main theme for the game that serves as the most satisfying
inclusion in this film, interpolated into the score by Mothersbaugh a
handful of times (and obviously credited in any album track with
"Minecraft" as its sole or conclusive word), but the usage is rather
token and abruptly inserted when referenced.
For purists of the game music, the inclusion of Rosenfeld's main theme over the opening credits of A Minecraft Movie will be a treat. Here, the idea opens on familiar piano in "Minecraft" and develops into a fantasy choral parody for the whole ensemble. It returns to the solo piano for a brief moment at 1:24 into "I'm Coming With/Minecraft," emerges with choral grandeur at the end of "Nitwit Crosses and Steve Finds/Minecraft," and very briefly interrupts the action of "Heroic Henry/Minecraft" near that cue's end. The mass of Mothersbaugh's score is not as easily remembered, unfortunately, and the composer is actually not credited by himself in any single cue on the main album. He was aided by a team that included co-writers Peter Bateman, Sunna Wehrmeijer, and Tim Jones, though the end result maintains enough consistency to suffice. The score is largely orchestral but infuses 1980's rock elements per Mothersbaugh's usual methodology. Electric guitar and drum kit are tastefully applied where needed. The choral element is too sparsely rendered despite its occasionally beefy mixed vocals, betraying its parody roots. Some sound effects interject in the mix, as in the vocal bouncing in "Midport Village" that reminds of Lorne Balfe's Home. Being that it's a purely comedic entry, there are regular outbursts of outright parody silliness exemplified best by the fight music in "Chicken Fight Club." In a surprisingly minimal use, 8-bit tones influence the start of "I Need a Win, Man." Western whistling and acoustic guitar flavor flashes in "Nitwit Crosses and Steve Finds" while "Day to Night" has clear homages to John Williams' Star Wars: A New Hope in its wonderment. The work is largely a two-theme construct, with the auxiliary character themes lost in the narrative. That storyline is poorly conveyed on the album because the soundtrack is chopped up in its arrangement, but even without this circumstance, the character themes are never allowed to reassert themselves at the end of the score, leaving the whole experience rather incomplete. The bulk of this character material is explored in "Mintage," a simple, cyclical, wholesome idea on piano, woodwinds, and strings at the outset of the cue slowly stewing in the middle of "I Need a Win, Man" on piano as well. A related theme introduced on flute at 0:38 into "Mintage" and developed throughout that cue offers a slightly noble, anthemic form previewed by brass near its conclusion. That theme tries to enunciate itself in "Nitwit Crosses and Steve Finds" but doesn't do it clearly. These ideas never factor much elsewhere. The two primary themes of A Minecraft Movie pit good versus evil. The adventure theme for the protagonists is a capped by robust descending phrasing, sometimes emulating Alan Menken's Beauty and the Beast when sensitive, as in "I'm Coming With." Introduced at 3:03 into "Mintage" in an ensemble and choral outburst, this main theme opens "Midport Village" lightly on woodwinds in more of an Andrew Lockington personality and presents a lovely moment on strings in the middle of that cue. The idea struggles against the villain theme in "Day to Night," turns cool in Rocky-appropriate variations throughout of "Chicken Fight Club," and vaguely informs early passages in "I'm Coming With." It builds optimistic anticipation in "Woodland Mansion Planning" with the tone of Patrick Doyle's The Emoji Movie, fights off the villain theme in "Steve vs. Malgosha" with choral triumph, and explodes with gospel-propelled vocals in "Heroic Henry." This adventure theme elongates for a heroic choral answer to the villain in "Let's Go Fight Some Pigs" and defeats the darker material for a moment at 1:48 into "Run from the Great Hog," focusing on more typical performances later. It charges to a rock conclusion during "Back in the Nether." Countering this identity is that of the villain, a fairly typical, ominously descending fantasy theme with dark vocal shading. Debuting in the last minute of "Midport Village" against the adventure theme, this obvious material is more comfortable at the outset of "Day to Night" and blasts away with layered vocals and thumping percussion in "Steve in the Nether," where it evolves into a sickly march on brass. After a passing reference in "Chicken Fight Club," the villain theme threatens against the adventure theme in "Steve vs. Malgosha," pushes its descending lines to more closely represent the piglins in "Piglins Attack," and becomes sinister at the start of "Let's Go Fight Some Pigs." It gains momentum for the story's climax, massive in the second minute of "Run from the Great Hog" with the choir and stomping on brass and percussion in "Back in the Nether." Don't expect any of these themes to truly define the score, though. As with any Mothersbaugh work, it's the style that counts more than the substance. To this end, the composer and his team provide exactly what the film needed. But without really memorable new themes and only minimal narrative cohesion, the soundtrack as a whole was always destined to be dominated by the Black songs and other related, vocalized comedy highlights. There's enough amusement in this collection to please audiences that turned the movie into a massive box office success, but it's hard to imagine film score collectors finding much inspiration to build from. ***
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 74:09
NOTES & QUOTES:
There exists no official packaging for this album.
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The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from A Minecraft Movie are Copyright © 2025, WaterTower Music and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 4/26/25 (and not updated significantly since). |
