For the second weekend in a row, Warner Bros.’ A Minecraft Movie defied its original and relatively humble expectations when the film topped the box office with an impressive $80.6 million haul. That’s barely 50 percent down from its $162.7 million debut last weekend, and both figures tower above WB’s original projection for its debut of around $60 million—a lowball number commensurate with studios wanting to damper expectations, but also evidence that no one really understood how big this thing could be, even the studio that greenlighted it. It’s also remarkable for a movie which critics, including our own, have mostly torn to shreds. Yet the actual quality of the movie appears mooted at this point. Barely a week old, what’s become most interesting about A Minecraft Movie is how folks, young and old, are reacting to its success—and perhaps to one another. The definition of a boilerplate kids movie based on a popular brand that’s been shoehorned into the “hero’s journey” narrative (or: an IP movie), Minecraft has left parents and the print publications they subscribe to reeling. “Audiences Are Trashing Theaters, Causing Chaos” lamented one industry trade; “Three Zoomers Dissect How They Really Feel About the Blockbuster,” observed another with the inferred curiosity of an anthropologist studying a primitive and backward culture; and even Jack Black commented on the apparent epidemic of “kids these days” trashing theaters when he surprised an audience over the last weekend to tell them, “No throwing popcorn! And absolutely no chicken jockeys!” To be clear, we are in no way condoning the abuse of movie theaters or their staff in order to create viral social media engagement. And yet, there appears to be something deeper and more familiar going on with all the editorial pearl-clutching and side-eying directed toward young audiences jumping up and down when Black’s character says the much memeified line of “I am Steve,” or indeed utters the words “chicken jockey” onscreen: adults just don’t get what the hell their kids are seeing in this junk. This is a good thing. Indeed, there was a time, maybe not even a full generation ago, where there were movies aimed at children, and movies aimed at adults. And they were not considered one and the same. Furthermore, when adults would indulge in their nostalgia and go see something like, say, Star Wars, they were expected to pick up on the joke that George Lucas was doing a riff on Casablanca in the Mos Eisley cantina, or that Han Solo was a tropey scoundrel played to the hilt by a charismatic actor. In other words: they didn’t take it that seriously. The kids who grew up with those movies did, of course, as many of us are wont to do in our youth. But then each generation has had its own stories that leave their parents confused. In my case, it was probably the absurdly named Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Or perhaps it was Pokémon, a video game and Japanese anime property that defied physics and logic when its “pocket monsters” were transmuted inside little balls, from which they’d only be released in order to seemingly duel to the death. “Is Pikachu a boy or a girl?” I recall being asked by my folks. Pikachu is whatever Pikachu wishes to be identified as! (Rock on, Wokémon.) For the record, the first TMNT movie of 1990—and the two that came after—were loathed by critics as well. They warned fellow parents that it “will not enrich your child’s worldview” and optimistically daydreamed that “the cynicism of the motion picture industry will be apparent to any child who is exposed to the many product plugs for a nationwide pizza delivery company.” But that was high praise when compared to how The First Pokémon Movie was greeted in 1999 by the Guardian’s Peer Bradshaw: “This film is humourless, boring, impenetrable and with animation of such staggeringly low quality that it constitutes an insult to cinema goers of all ages.” None of which is to say those critics are wrong. Pokémon: The First Movie is relentlessly mediocre. The first TMNT has perhaps more going for it than middle-aged critics in 1990 gave it credit for, but that movie also features a scene of a rat puppet performing ninjutsu. There is a high degree of silliness and derivativeness to it that adults with no nostalgic attachments will be able to buy into. Nor should they. This is not to say kids movies are above criticism or reproach. Demanding more from a family film is what produces true multigenerational classics like, say, E.T. or The Lion King, versus flash in the pan fads like… ‘90s relics of the Pokémon, Powers Rangers, and TMNT variety. What is healthy, however, is the ability for kids to have their thing, and adults to feel the need to not subscribe. For all the TikTok-friendly spectacle of obnoxious audiences going nuts for a bizarre chicken wearing a mask derivative of a 90-year-old Frankenstein movie, it is important to recognize these sights are exceptions, not the rule, of how the vast majority of young audiences are watching Minecraft. And it’s a relief that they have something their parents do not understand. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! Because for going on for more than 20 years, parents in the Gen-X and Millennial brackets have generally attempted to not only show kids their favorite childhood movies and TV shows: they’ve attempted to force the next generations to relive them with an often inflated and overbearing sense of awe: Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Ghostbusters, Marvel or DC. Hell, even Ninja Turtles and Pokémon. If you grew up with it in the ‘80s and ‘90s, then some studio has almost certainly attempted to expand it into a cinematic universe at this point, and parents have attempted to relive their childhoods while watching onscreen Zoomers and Gen-Alphas stare admiringly at their old stuff. It should be noted this play is now leading to diminishing returns. Consider that as Marvel Studios struggles to hit the heights of popularity they previously knew via Captain America: Brave New World and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania that someone who was born the year the first Iron Man came out would now be high school age. If they were born the year that Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man set the tone for the modern superhero genre, they’re old enough to drink and have finished four years at university. This stuff is just getting long in the tooth. And studios attempting to scapegoat the blame for their Snow White failures on a 23-year-old star’s social media feed and not the fact that the IP they dusted off is older than most modern kids’ grandparents is… dubious. If adult audiences want to relive the glory days of their youth, perhaps a big part of that is returning to a healthier moviegoing environment where kids are free to have their own stories—no matter how mindless or creatively barren they might be—and parents can scratch their heads and then see movies meant only for adults. It’d be a nice change of pace from continuing to demand the cinematic equivalent of “kids, gather around and hear what real music sounds like…”