The Chaser Report - ★★★★★ For The Minecraft Movie

Episode Date: April 10, 2025

Charles experienced a cultural phenomenon unlike any other when he saw the Minecraft Movie with his teenage son. Has the world really finally together over one piece of art? Is this the enlightening masterpiece that finally took away his cynical sarcastic worldview? The only way to find out is by listening to this podcast.Watch OPTICS on ABC iview here:https://iview.abc.net.au/show/opticsCheck out more Chaser headlines here:https://www.instagram.com/chaserwar/?hl=enGive us money:https://chaser.com.au/support/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello, and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Hello, Charles. It is very nice to be with you, particularly as I don't know what we're talking about today. We got a little bit carried away last time we chatted with the election. Can we have an election-free pod today? Oh, thank you. So today we are talking about the greatest cultural phenomenon of our era.

Oh, God, what's this? The Minecraft movie. Movie. Suddenly I want to talk about the election. Okay, let's have some ads. And then this is huge. This is the biggest, this is the biggest cultural phenomenon ever. I watched the trailer for this.

And all I can say is we think it's hilarious for blocky Minecraft items to be rendered in real life. You're in for a trick. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore. FIS is 100% online, so you can make the switch in minutes. Mobile plans start at $15 a month. Certain conditions apply.

Details at fizz.ca. Okay, so on the weekend, my, well, actually, the day the Minecraft movie came out, my 16-year-old and all his school friends went and saw the Minecraft movie, right? And they came home going, oh, yeah, it was the worst movie ever. That was so shit. That was just, like, ridiculous. That's what I'm expected. You know, like, there's this meme going around that it gets 200% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Isn't that stupid? Because it's like, so shit, right? I'm impressed that your 16-year-old knows that you can't have more than 100% on a review site. Yeah, I know. He goes to a public school and everything, I don't know. Well, done. Well, it's a lot of education department. Look, I think it's all the private tutoring we get him, actually, to be honest.

But then I took my 14-year-old and one of his friends on Saturday because, like, and let's just Now, the thing, no kid ever goes to a movie nowadays. Like, everyone's glued to their phones. Attending an actual cinema. Your boys wouldn't have done that in five. They wouldn't have done that since COVID, would that? Exactly. No, not even under COVID.

It's phones or cones nowadays. If you've got teenage kids, they're either stuck to... Fones or cones. Hey. But the thing is, it was the most extraordinary movie experience I have ever been in, right? So the cinema was packed, right? First of all, this is on a Saturday afternoon. And so just imagine the scene hundreds of snotty-nosed 14-year-old boys, basically.

Right. And what was clear is that every single person in the cinema, except for me and my wife, had seen all the trailers to the movie. Of course they had. And so every time anything vaguely memeable came on, during the entire movie, the entire cinema would erupt like saying the line

as the line came up on screen. Because they'd seen all the good bits in the trailer. Because they'd seen all the good bits in the trailer. So when Jack Black, who does an extremely good job playing the character of Steve, who's the hero, says in this sort of amazing sort of heroic introduction,

he goes, I am Steve. I I am Steve right the entire cinema repeats like has that line says it in unison

and then everyone cheers and applauds who are you I am Steve and then throughout the rest of the movie every time anything happened that was even vaguely notable the entire audience would cheer

and applaud right right and it got to the point where it was a little bit sarcastic like there were clearly a whole lot of 14 year olds who thought oh wow this is my chance to shine oh with some brilliant calls with some brilliant calls and most of them fell very very flat especially at the point where there's this scene between a sister and a brother and they're like it's in the final act and they sort of they haven't seen each other for a while and it's all like they're all worried about each other and somebody goes kiss kiss and then it's like oh what do you think this is white lotus and then it's like and then somebody else feels no

they're their sister and brother and it's like oh at any point charles does someone go because this is minecraft is that the level of obviousness that we're at i don't know whether was that one of the i don't know i don't much i'm oh i can't remember like it was but it was just it gave me this sense of hope for the future dom oh cinema's not dead as long as they get jack black to make a video game movie but also culture is not dead like it it's very different to what it was in our days you would sit silently and you wouldn't quite enjoy yourself right oh okay and then you wouldn't be allowed to go back to the cinema ever again because you only got to see one movie every three years yeah yeah

And you weren't ever allowed. That's why VHS was such a great thing because you could watch the same. So this is interesting, Charles. So you're saying that the key to movies in 2025 is to release all the good bits in advance. Yes. But, you know,

because the question was how will cinema survive in an era of portable screens and all the attention spans with 30 second content? Yes. And the answer is making them wait for the highlights that they've already seen. Yes, that's right. So should we, for the podcast,

release 30 second clips that are very, very memeable? Yes. And then people will want to listen to the context. Or even better than that, maybe every podcast we release should only be 30 seconds long, which will get the kids involved with our lovers. And then stitch them together once a year into a movie. Yeah, and get Jack Black.

Chase of the Report, the movie. Because I think that's actually the key ingredient. I mean, Jack Black somehow, because he did this with the Mario Brothers movie, right? So he's amazing at making video game movies work, which they really do. But he straddles the whole thing of kids think he's funny because he's sort of over the top. And adults love him because he's Jack Black and we've watched him his whole career and whatever and we know tenacious D and all that stuff. But also, and I know that this is a word that wouldn't usually be used in reference to a video game movie.

But he's got integrity. Like he brings an artistry to the whole thing. Yeah. Which it's quite funny too because it's also, yes, he has integrity at being like lowest common denominator fart humor kind of guy. Yeah, yeah. And he's had that brand. His personal brand is very consistent, Charles. Yes.

But it's the first movie also where my kids, I think, violently disagreed on whether it was a good thing or a bad thing. Because the older one was too cool for school and the young ones still young enough to go. Amazing. That said, it is absolutely true that the older one did go and see it with all his friends. So I'm not sure the subtlety of his sort of retro ironic. I don't really like it. Oh, so that was the thing that allowed him to go and see it with the veneer of, oh, this is, let's go and see that it should together. Although Charles.

This is all a bit. like what we did two years ago when we were young. Yeah, right. I did Charles, at one point, arrange with a group of friends. I don't think we used, sadly. But the group of friends, we did get together and watch the movie Juice Bigelow, European Gigolo in La Premiere reclining seats with champagne. Oh, I would have loved that.

I think you were over in America. But no, it was genuinely a great experience seeing a truly shit movie with friends and champagne. But what I would say is. this was not a truly shit movie. There were tons of laugh-out-loud moments. Do you have to be a fan of Minecraft? I've played Minecraft. I think you have to have played Minecraft.

It's one of those things though. It's one of those games where... Yeah, everywhere. I've probably played it for 10 hours. I don't know anything about it really. No, you don't need to know much about it, but it is useful to know what a villager is like and stuff like, just for some of the jobs.

And when the sun goes down, zombies emerge. Yeah, yeah. But they sort of, like, it's a Hollywood movie. They're not going to exclude anyone. No, no, no. I mean, the Mario movie was like that. There are lots of little in-jokes if you played the games, but it was pretty nice common denominator.

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Chaser report, more news, less often. So the point is, I think we're going to look back at 2025, and no one's going to remember the Trump tariffs. No one's going to remember the Australian bloody election. Well, that's, that much we can safely predict. The one thing that everyone's going to remember, and it's a little bit like 1945, like what do you remember about 1945? No, I wasn't around, but, yeah.

It didn't your war end? Yeah, you don't remember that. No, okay. You remember that's the year that Casablanca was released. Was it? I don't know. Probably. It would have been set during the war.

You'd imagine that, yeah? Yeah. Actually, I might just fact-checked back. The one thing you remember about 1945. Yeah. You don't remember any war ending. I don't remember that of it. No.

No, what you remember is that Casablanca, I'll come in 42. It's like 1942, right? You know, what do you remember about 1942? Do you remember that there was a war on? No. it. Like then I so hope you haven't edited to run into this. Please leave it. You remember, you remember,

the only thing you remember is Casablanca was released. Great movie of all time. And I think, I think we've sort of fallen down into this trap that just because narcissists run the world and everything, you know, is terrible at some sort of public political level that actually that means anything. No, no, no. It's about the creation of great art. That's what you actually remember.

I don't want to be that guy, Charles. I don't want to be that guy. But the analogy between Casablanca and original story with great emotional pathos, brilliant performances. I once went and watched that. Who's that guy, the Robert McKee? I went to the Robert McKee's story seminar. We watched the whole of Casablanca and you broke it down.

Oh, wow. All the incredible visuals and all these visual symbols in it and so on. Like that on the same level as a basically, let's cynically turn one of the world's biggest pieces of IP, Minecraft, into a movie. But Dom, Casablanca was based on existing IP. Was it based on a video game? Yeah, it was based on the Casablanca video game.

Didn't you know that? You always rely on the kindness of nighttime zombies. Craft it again, Sam. So the point is, I think we just need to reorient ourselves. And I think everyone should go and see the Minecraft movie because it's going to be the great unifying thing that gets us through till the next. Minecraft movie, which inevitably will be released in about 18 months time.

So, and the next Minecraft movie, and the next one, and the next one, until they finally get so shit by about four or five that, you know, it's like Kung Fu Panda and they've sort of weakened the franchise. So to summarize this entire episode. And they've squeezed the... Charles found a brief moment of connection with his teenage sons by going to a movie that was a cynically fabricated recrafting a Minecraft style of IP. But in fairness to my 16-year-old,

I think that that was part of his problem, right? It was like, this is such a cynical remake, you know, by Hollywood. You know, God, I hate these Hollywood studio executives just coming in and making an entertaining movie out of this. Something we all love. Yeah, this thing that we all love that's all sacred. And it just gave me this perspective because, like, you know, to me, Minecraft itself,

this hideously commercial thing that's owned by Microsoft and, you know, drains you of any connection or imagination or, you know, like, you know, it stops you from going outside and experiencing the real world. But in their world, like, their world is, like, that's just, that's just what an old person thinks. Like, this is their outside. Yeah. And they've all spent countless, like, it's literally their leisure, right? Like, they've created and wandered around Minecraft world, arguing more than they've spent in the real world wandering around. It's their Lego, right? I mean, you know what they should make next?

A Lego movie. I think that would work. We're part of the Icona class network. Charles said we couldn't get a whole episode out of the Minecraft movie, and we didn't. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore. FIS is 100% online, so you can make the switch in minutes.

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