A Minecraft Movie is causing chaos in cinemas around the world — even here in Fredrikstad, our local cinema has experienced the special TikTok trend which has developed around the new blockbuster.
The cinema in our twin city Sarpsborg has taken special measures in connection with the trend, according to Sarpsborg Arbeiderblad ["nonpartisan" newspaper owned by Amedia] which covered the situation on Friday.
Jumping, screaming, and throwing popcorn
The trend involves moviegoers going completely wild in the auditorium when the character Steve says "chicken jockey".
The room becomes violently lively. People jump, scream, and throw popcorn and drinks in every direction.
TikTok abunds with videos of this phenomenon.
[embedded TikTok video]
And although those participating in the trend are apparently enjoying themselves, there are certainly others who see the stunt differently.
Someone must, after all, clean up the mess the trend creates.
[Embedded TikTok video: ⚠️WORKERS ENCOURAGED US TO DO IT GIVING US FREE REFILLS AND RECORDING US DOING IT, WE OFFERED TO HELP CLEAN UP BUT THEY WOULDNT LET US⚠️]
The noise has been high
Cinema manager Jørgen Søderberg Jansen explains that the "wildest scenes" are from select venues in the USA and England.
Things have not been nearly as bad in Norway. Nevertheless, cinemas in our country have noticed that A Minecraft Movie is causing problems.
—"Not so much throwing things, but there's been some extreme noise with shouting and cheering," Søderberg Jansen says before quickly adding,
—"Some people think it's fun to have so much noise, while others just want to see the movie in peace and quiet."
There have accordingly been some dissatisfied moviegoers. Søderberg Jansen emphasizes that showings of A Minecraft Movie have still generally gone fine.
—"We've gotten maybe 10 complaints from customers, compared to over 5,000 people who watched the movie, so it's not so many who have complained."
—"Have you taken any measures in connection with this phenomenon?"
—"Yes, we have more employees visible in the hall," Søderberg Jansen replies.
More interest
Søderberg Jansen explains furthermore that the cinema has noticed that interest in A Minecraft Movie increased after the TikTok trend took off.
—"We show the movie in both Norwegian and English. In the beginning we were mainly seeing families interested in watching the Norwegian dub, but after the TikTok videos [started showing up], more youth have shown an interest in watching the English-language version," Søderberg Jansen says.
—"So the trend has absolutely contributed to more people discovering the movie," he adds.
I hate It too. My sibling forced me to go because of the memes. I offered to acquire It in a totally legal way over the internet so we can watch It at home but they persisted. So we went to the theater. It was entertaining yet boring and pretty awful overall. I was just rolling my eyes throughout the whole thing. The kids were thankfully quiet and pretty nice in the hall we were in. So I guess the chaos is more of a US oriented thing.
Safe to say I was disappointed as one of the Gen Z users on here who grew up with Minecraft. Wish we could have gotten something like this instead. It genuinely looked AI generated half the time.
Anyways, I fucking hate corporate memes. If I wasn't one of my org's social media managers, I would have quit Instagam and the like a long ass time ago.
A similar thing happened to me. My partner and their family bought tickets, and I didn't want to commit, so they bought me one anyway and I felt guilty about wasting it. They had a "omg this is gonna be so bad, can't wait" attitude that I can normally respect — I love trashy films — but it wasn't The Room bad, it was just big milk-the-franchise blockbuster bad, and I knew that going in.
The entire thing is just reference humour. The acting is pretty shit too: Jack Black is playing himself (he always does, but on top of that there's no character TO play), Jason Momoa was really annoying, and the kids are completely forgettable.
Yeah you def deserved better.