1.“A Minecraft Movie,” based on the hit video game, opened in theaters this weekend and became a surprise smash, eclipsing the box office openings of hits like “Barbie”—but disruptive behavior by theatergoers has alarmed some cinemas, prompting them to put out warnings against causing a disturbance.
2.Many videos on TikTok show audiences standing up and erupting into shouts during one scene, in which Black and Momoa’s characters are in a boxing ring. During the scene, a zombie character mounts a chicken, prompting Black’s character to say: “Chicken jockey.” Disruptive audiences typically yell the “chicken jockey” line in sync with Black’s character, and videos depicting the raucous audience reactions have garnered millions of likes on TikTok.
3.In one video liked 2 million times, audiences yelled Black’s line while erupting into applause. In another video liked 3 million times, some audience members jumped out of their chairs during the scene. One video, with 2 million likes, depicts theatergoers throwing buckets full of popcorn during the scene, and later in the video, police are seen escorting several attendees out of the theater.
How do you define acceptable behavior in a movie theater, and do those standards shift depending on the type of film?
4.Some videos have depicted other bizarre behavior during the film. In one TikTok with nearly 500,000 likes, a theatergoer stood up in front of the screen before the movie started, announcing to theatergoers: “This movie is going to change our lives,” to cheers from the audience.
5.Some theaters have warned attendees against disrupting “A Minecraft Movie” screenings. One movie theater in Washington Township, New Jersey, banned unaccompanied minors from watching the movie without adult supervision, the theater said in a Facebook post.
6.The theater cited a group of unsupervised boys engaging in “completely unacceptable behavior, including vandalism.” A Cineworld theater in Oxfordshire, United Kingdom, posted a sign inside the theater warning audiences they will be removed without a refund if they disturb “Minecraft” screenings. The Cineworld chain told the BBC in a statement it has created “special Chicken Jockey 4DX screenings” for fans who want to be loud during the film
7.The “Minecraft” film has a critics score of 48% on Rotten Tomatoes, indicating mostly negative reviews, though the audience score is much higher at 88%. The Hollywood Reporter critic Lovia Gyarkye said the movie “fails to spark the imagination, betraying a core tenet of the game on which it’s based.” San Francisco Chronicle critic Zaki Hasan criticized it as the latest example of Hollywood “shoving a beloved property into the factory mold,” relying on name recognition instead of quality.
8. In a more positive review, Los Angeles Times critic Amy Nicholson called it “big dumb fun” and hopes it “hooks kids on the habit of going to the movies.” Films based on video games have historically struggled to please critics, who say the large volume of story and content in a game is difficult to translate to a two-hour film.
9. “Minecraft” has sold more than 300 million copies since its launch in 2011, according to developer Mojang Studios, and it is considered the best-selling video game of all time, —though some publications, like GameSpot, consider Tetris to be the best-selling game, while others have disputed this because Tetris is a series instead of a single game. Minecraft is a single or multi-player open-world game in which users can find building materials and tools to construct buildings and other structures.
