Let Girls be Whimsical: How the Minecraft Movie and the Entertainment Industry Fail Women

A few weeks ago, I saw the Minecraft movie at long last.

Was it a good movie? No.

Did I enjoy it? Absolutely.

I watched the movie in a local theatre with my best friend and 4 other people. It was great! We cheered every time there was an iconic line from the trailer, like “Flint and Steel”, or “I am Steve”, or even the infamous “Chicken Jockey”. (We did not throw popcorn at the screen because we are CIVILIZED!) Say what you will about the writing of the movie, but you have to admit it created a great theatre experience.

After the movie, I was scrolling on TikTok, trying to see the memes and everyone else's opinions of the movie. After my 7th Lava Chicken edit, I came across a TikTok that really made me stop and think.

This TikTok by @bunny.bee.cosplays is captioned: “Younger me would be so disappointed knowing that the only thing the female protagonists did in the Minecraft movie was build a house.” They then show their ankle tattoo of a line from the famous Minecraft End Poem, a scrolling text that features in the closing credits of the game once the player defeats the Ender Dragon. It reads, “And the universe said, ‘I love you.’"

Damn.

This post really made me think. As much as I had enjoyed the film, I couldn't disagree that the movie had sidelined its female characters. The main female characters, Dawn and Natalie (whose name I honestly forgot until I searched it up just now, which says a lot), get a minority of the screen time compared to the male characters, Steve, Garrett and Henry. I saw this coming as soon as a conflict early in the movie caused the characters to split up, the boys headed one way and the girls headed another. “Here we go again,” I sighed, as I shoved more popcorn into my mouth.

According to The Conversation, 32% of Minecraft's fanbase was female in 2018, which is not insignificant considering the game is estimated to have over 200 million active players (Not to mention those like me who haven't touched the game in years but still care about it deeply). Yet the female leads in the movie do not pass the Bechdel test, which is crazy in Big 2025!

At least Dawn is given something to do with her animal whispering abilities. Though I would argue she could fall into some bizarro combination of the black best friend trope and the magical negro trope because her main purpose is to give advice to Natalie. Natalie could honestly be replaced by a cardboard box, and the story wouldn't change much. It would have been cool if they had done something interesting with her fighting abilities, but she basically disappears until the final fight. Her backstory is that her mom died and she was left to take care of her younger brother Henry, whom she has conflicts with because he wants to make inventions while she just wants him to fit in and not destroy the whole town with his faulty rocket. Which is sad and all, but it feels overdone. Lilo and Stitch called: they want their premise back. The whole story, she's stuck worrying about Henry and being a worrywart every time something bad happens, while Dawn advises her, a conflict that doesn't culminate into anything. The whole time, I don't remember them talking about anything that didn't have to do with Henry, and in most of their scenes with the boys were just reacting to their strange antics.

After the characters are split up, Steve, Garret and Henry go on their mission, trying to get to the locations to get their McGuffins, guiding each other with their hips (it's exactly like it sounds), fighting against a Chicken Jockey and experiencing the writers' idea of ‘character development’. Meanwhile, what were Dawn and Natalie doing the whole time? Building…a house offscreen apparently? As a retired girl gamer, I feel this feeds into the stereotype of girl gamers playing in a way that emphasizes aesthetic quality and focuses on creation rather than fighting or the other mechanics of the game. Which isn't bad, as that is a valid way to play, but is an overgeneralization often used to claim girls are not ‘real gamers’. The boys get to have the quirky meme moments while the girls are left fretting about the boys and doing all the boring stuff.

I fear this phenomenon is not unique to the Minecraft Movie. Part of the problem is that there is just a lack of female characters in general. According to a study at San Diego State University, only 38% of movies in 2023 had female characters in major roles, only 35% of characters with speaking roles were women (down from 37% in 2022), and only 28% had female characters as main characters (down from 33% in 2022). This is crazy to me, since the last time I checked, we were over 50% of the population. Yet we are treated like a minority in films. Women are actively being silenced and excluded when it comes to the media.

Yet I always sensed this difference, even as a young girl. Shows that were supposed to have ensemble casts would almost always have more male characters in the ensemble, often in a ratio of 3:2. Oddly enough, this also happens to be the male-to-female ratio of the Minecraft Movie. Male characters were allowed to be wacky and adventurous, but female characters of the same age would always be the ones trying to wrangle them or shaking their head at their antics. Female characters were far more likely to be ‘buzzkills’ than male characters. I saw this reflected in how I was treated at school, where girls were always expected to be calm and responsible, while there was also a ‘boys will be boys' attitude, and girls were implicitly tasked with managing their behaviour. The only shows I saw where girls got to be free, wacky and goofy were the minority of shows specifically marketed to girls, like ‘My Little Pony’ or ‘Totally Spies’, which boys would often turn up their noses at.

(Or would at least pretend to. I see you, bronies.)

What I'm asking is why we are teaching girls from a young age that they need to be more mature and take care of their male peers? Why are we teaching them that they are so insignificant that only 35% of them deserve to have a voice? Why can't female characters be fun and spontaneous in the same way male characters are, and be afforded the same quirks and funny moments? Looking at all this, can we be surprised that some men have trouble relating to women when the movies and shows they watched as young boys don't feature them prominently? The media doesn't even give them a chance to.

The film and TV industries need to do a better job when it comes to the portrayal of girls and women. I'm not saying that every movie needs to have a certain number of female characters, or that serious female characters are bad. But we need a variety of female characters simply because there are a variety of women, both serious and goofy. And it's hard to do this when women are pushed to the sidelines. The Minecraft Movie is fundamentally about play, and girls have as much of a right to this as anyone.