Minecraft: The Story of Mojang is a documentary that contains a lot of fascinating behind the scenes detail; provided you know quite a bit about Minecraft and gaming already. 2 Player Productions have created a film with some great tidbits for fans, but haven’t really done anything to help non-gamers understand what all the fuss is about. A non-fan will probably get the idea that Minecraft was a successful game, but they will constantly be asking questions like: ‘Why is that guy’s face always covered with an animation?’ ‘Who are all these people being interviewed?’ There’s some fantastic material here, but it will be lost on everyone outside of the Minecraft fan base.
There is merit to the idea of making a documentary for a limited audience, but even casual fans of the game will have a hard time diving in. One other annoyance was the number of artistic landscape shots that are littered throughout the film. They’re beautiful, don’t get me wrong – but they serve no actual purpose other than to distract from the main narrative. In a documentary where the narrative is so thin already, this is a major problem. Ultimately, even though there’s some good stuff here, I’d have a hard time recommending it to anyone who wasn’t a hardcore Minecraft fan.