Minecraft Goes to the Movies

Teens want to smell like sugary things, March Madness comes to an end, and viewers throw their popcorn over A Minecraft Movie. To hear Evan yearn for the mines, listen to our Culture Translator Roundtable podcast here! But first:

Resource of the Week – Ask Axis

We’re launching a brand new podcast called Ask Axis that puts parents front and center. In it, we’ll answer questions about social media, mental health, gender and sexuality, technology, culture, and Christianity. The twist is that the questions come from you! Send us your questions on these topics and we’ll do our best to offer biblical advice, practical tips, and insights from experts in the field. Send your question to ask@axis.org, and look out for Ask Axis, launching in May!

And now for our three conversations…

1. On the Scent

What it is: For teenagers, the hottest trends in fragrance smell like bakery items and spice rack staples.

Why they’re selling so well: In a piece for Vox, Kyndall Cunningham outlines some basic reasons why sugary scents are selling out. First, since a lot of fragrance purchasing now happens online, a scent with notes of marshmallow, brown sugar, or vanilla is easy enough to imagine. There’s also the TikTok factor: influencers and celebrities, most of whom are being paid to shill these scents, make hefty claims about how much passers-by love the smell of these perfumes. (Singer Sabrina Carpenter also has a line of fragrance at Walmart with product names that include “Cherry Baby” and “Caramel Dream.”) And finally, young people who purchase scents like “warm vanilla sugar” are often assembling a “scent wardrobe” with choices to reflect their changing mood and environment, rather than searching for that one “signature scent” to wear everyday.

Continue the conversation: Are there any perfumes that you really like, or dislike?

2. Sheer Madness

What it is: Both the men’s and women’s March Madness competitions concluded this week, with the women’s team from UConn and the men’s team from the University of Florida winning it all.

Why they were worth watching: The men’s championship game was a nailbiter, as Florida came from behind to seal their place in history by just two points. The women’s championship featured a rich story of redemption for UConn’s star player Paige Bueckers. Playing in the Covid bubble, recovering from an ACL injury, and losing three times in the Final Four were all bumps on her road to winning the championship. As she finally crossed that threshold, her coach, Geno Auriemma, embraced her in tears, later saying, “[Bueckers’] journey has been the most incredible for any kid I’ve had.” It’s a poignant reminder of the power of determination and invested adults like coaches who walk alongside the next generations.

Continue the conversation: If you could be really good at any sport, which sport would you pick?

3. A Minecraft Movie

What it is: Teens are clapping and cheering so enthusiastically during A Minecraft Movie that theaters are requiring chaperones and/or calling the police.

Why it’s not what the internet predicted: When trailers for A Minecraft Movie first started coming out in 2024, people were horrified at the movie’s CGI renderings of sheep, villagers, and other game elements. (Plus, why was Minecraft’s main character, Steve, rendered as a human, but other game characters weren’t?) And yet between audience nostalgia (and/or an ongoing love of the game), Jack Black’s sheer ridiculousness, and so many inside jokes about game mechanics, the movie has been a big hit—at least with teen boys. In fact, the movie made more money on its opening weekend than any Warner Bros. movie since 2023. So why is A Minecraft Movie inspiring such enthusiasm?

Let’s translate this one further…

Minecraft, the game, was released in 2011, which means that many of today’s teens grew up with it. With somewhere around 300 million game sales and an estimated 219 million monthly active players, Minecraft is both the best-selling single video game of all time, and still the most-played game every month. These stats translate to a zeal that is showing up in the movie theater.

As a game, Minecraft sits at the intersection of creativity and exploration—so turning what is inherently a creative experience into a spectator experience was always going to run the risk of fundamentally altering the point. But the plotline of the movie is still essentially about the perils and promise of creative expression. For example, when, as a young piglet, the movie’s main villain Malgosha tried to show off her dance moves at a talent show, she was ridiculed—and henceforth devoted herself to the eradication of all creativity. She began to reign over a world called The Nether where, as Steve puts it, “There was no joy or creativity whatsoever—just a mindless lust for gold.”

These dynamics should sound familiar for Christians. As Augustine put it in his book Enchiridion, “What are called vices in the soul are nothing but privations of natural good.” In other words, our God is a good creator, and all evil can do is try to distort or damage that good creation. Evil is inherently uncreative. But Malgosha is also a wounded pig acting out of her woundedness. She wants to stop everyone around her from being creative because her own creative expression was ridiculed during her formative years.

None of this will explain why seeing a baby zombie riding a chicken (aka a “chicken jockey”) inspired such extreme emotion in teen viewers—and much of A Minecraft Movie is really just a silly homage to a gaming experience many teens and pre-teens have loved. But inside that silliness is a message: we were made to create. And as Christians, we can know that message ultimately comes from whose image we were created in.

For more context and nuance, check out our Roundtable podcast on Spotify, Apple, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts. In the meantime, here are three questions to spark conversation with your teens:

PS: Know someone who could use our conversation starters with their teens? Share the CT with a friend!