In 2009, “Minecraft” was a bare-bones survival game with plenty of promise. Since then, it’s become the best-selling video game in history, with publisher Mojang Studios transforming the game into an incredible fantasy adventure that lets players tap into their creativity. As “Minecraft” has grown, its world has gotten quite a bit more realistic. Players can create their own buildings and towns, but villages also dot the game’s landscape, populated by NPCs (non-playable characters) that all have special roles and interact with players in different ways.
“A Minecraft Movie” tries to stuff as many of those off-the-wall villagers into its 101-minute runtime as possible, and that seems to have worked in its favor. Before its release, we were pretty worried about the “Minecraft” movie thanks to its messy production cycle and oddball art direction. But while critics have their issues with the final product, fans are in love with the film. It made $163 million in its opening weekend alone and has an 88% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. Fans even think the movie might be one of the best live-action video game adaptations ever, because it’s filled with small details even super “Minecraft” fans might miss. There’s zombies and skeletons galore, but there are also so many nods to village NPCs that you’d have to be a “Minecraft” wiki editor to recognize them all. See if you spotted every villager in “A Minecraft Movie,” and whether the missing faces give you any clues about what direction a potential sequel might take.
Villagers: The world of “A Minecraft Movie” is a place full of danger and teeming with treasure, but it’s not a place where there’s much work to do. There’s not a single person in a “Minecraft” village who’s clocking into a nine-to-five job and earning a paycheck. Sure, there are some craftspeople who will work at specific tasks that Steve (Jack Black) and his friends might need done, but most of the villagers we see aren’t gainfully employed. The unemployed villagers in the “Minecraft” game are basically default NPCs that populate towns and keep the streets feeling lively. They wander about the world doing absolutely nothing, but all that aimless walking really adds to the game’s ambiance. In the movie, the villagers basically play that exact same role: You can spot them, wearing brown robes and keeping their hands permanently folded, in the background of just about every shot in the village. They might not be working a job, but they’re an important part of society in a “Minecraft” village.
Nitwit villagers: Much like the unemployed villagers that fill up the towns in “Minecraft,” Nitwit villagers also don’t have a job to do in the game. But while an unemployed villager might wind up working as a Toolsmith or a Librarian at some point in their life, a Nitwit is destined to do nothing but wander the world for all of their days. Nitwits wear robes similar to the ones sported by unemployed villagers, but the top half of their outfit is green and stands out in a crowd. In one of the jokes in “A Minecraft Movie” that’s aimed at adults, a Nitwit villager (voiced by Matt Berry) gets to go on a pretty spectacular journey. When Henry (Sebastian Eugene Hansen) and Garrett (Jason Momoa) open the portal to the world of “Minecraft,” a Nitwit eventually stumbles through it and ends up in the real world. His voyage to Earth starts out a little rough — he gets hit by a car — but things take a turn when Vice Principal Marlene (Jennifer Coolidge) takes a liking to him. As in the games, the movie’s Nitwit can’t speak and just makes the occasional grunt, but somehow that helps him solidify a relationship with Marlene and find a place for himself among the kooky kids at the school in Chuglass.
