The appearance of Minecraft on the big screen has apparently unbalanced the humors of the world's youths, whose ecstatic outbursts at screenings are showering audiences with popcorn and cries of "chicken jockey!" At least two incidents have even ended with police intervention.
A chicken jockey is a baby zombie riding a chicken, a rare occurrence in Minecraft. Thanks to TikTok and whatever it is that compels humans to engage in weird collective behavior, the part of where Jack Black sees a chicken [[link]] jockey and shouts "chicken jockey!" has become a thing, and over the weekend kids in some theaters went wild for the line, shouting, recording with their phones, and launching popcorn into the airspace above the other theater goers.
At the end of the video above, police are seen escorting a group of kids out of the theater. It's unclear what they did that the others didn't.
As actor Roger Clark—voice of Arthur Morgan in Red Dead Redemption 2—, we're not yet a week into A Minecraft Movie's theater run and it's already developed a Rocky Horror Picture Show-style audience participation tradition.
"High school kids and adolescents alike screaming random Jack Black lines because of YouTube shorts and TikToks," the actor said on X. "Never seen anything like that before."
I saw Minecraft in the theater with my kids last night and am still processing what I saw. The only cinematic experience I can compare the audience participation to is Rocky Horror, except it’s with teenagers and their phones and the movie is not even a weekend old.
Looks like the teens have decided to remind Millennials and Gen X that while we might've pioneered a life of ironic-yet-obsessive pop culture appreciation, they were born into it. And they were raised on Minecraft, too, so it's no surprise that A Minecraft Movie had the for a videogame adaptation.
The video above shows one of the more dramatic Minecraft Movie eruptions, but they were all over social media feeds this past weekend, and it isn't just the chicken jockey scene getting a reaction.
In [[link]] another video with police involvement, embedded below, an officer says that a group "body slammed" a theater employee. (Theater employees are understandably not loving the situation.)
Here are a few more videos of the weekend's Minecraft frenzy:
the minecraft movie is truly one of the worst movies i’ve ever seen but the universal reaction to “chicken jockey” im seeing made it all worth it. pic.twitter.com/0mxgliSYEp
I need to know, are there people who actually enjoy watching a movie like this? pic.twitter.com/v9NSSe0sqd