‘Chicken jockey!’ Viral trend causes chaos at ‘Minecraft’ screenings
In the U.S. and U.K., moviegoers are going wild when Jack Black shouts, “Chicken jockey!” during “A Minecraft Movie.”
Sure, we are no spring chickens, but the latest bout of bad theater etiquette is rightfully ruffling feathers.
Unruly youngsters are flocking to cinemas to see Jack Black’s “A Minecraft Movie,” a lightly unhinged video-game adaptation teeming with porcine witches, flame-throwing skeletons and baby monsters riding poultry. The PG-rated comedy adventure squawked to a staggering $163 million last weekend, the highest opening ever for a video-game film.
But “Minecraft” mania has been fueled by a series of disruptive TikTok trends, with audience members filming themselves as they clap, cheer, scream, jump on seats, and throw popcorn at the screen. One particular scene has become an instant meme, as Black proclaims, “Chicken jockey!” while a pint-sized zombie mounts a bird inside a boxing ring. Adolescent moviegoers frequently shout along with that and other popular lines, including “I am Steve!”
Police have been called to ‘A Minecraft Movie,’ after complaints of vandalism and live chickens
Footage has circulated on social media of police being called to attend to rowdy filmgoers, some of whom have started bringing live chickens to the movie with them. Multiple U.K. theater chains have issued warnings about kicking out disorderly patrons, while one theater in Washington Township, New Jersey, has announced a ban on unaccompanied minors seeing the blockbuster without a parent or guardian.
“Large groups of unsupervised boys engaged in completely unacceptable behavior, including vandalism,” the Township Theatre management team wrote in a Facebook post. “If your son was at Township Theatre last night, we strongly encourage you to have a conversation with him about his behavior.”
For theater owners, the “Minecraft” phenomenon is a double-edged sword. On one hand, the film has single-handedly reignited a sluggish box-office year, with new movies including “Snow White,” “Mickey 17” and “Captain America: Brave New World” all vastly underperforming in recent months. The success of “Minecraft” has been driven almost entirely by the hard-to-reach young adult demographic, many of whom grew up with the 2011 video game. Eighteen to 24-year-olds accounted for 43% of the film’s audience, followed by 13 to 17-year-olds at 35%, according to PostTrak exit polls.
Jennifer Grygiel, an associate professor of communications at Syracuse University, spoke to NPR earlier this week about why “Minecraft” has resonated so strongly with Gen Z moviegoers in particular, saying that it’s an opportunity for them to congregate and connect offline.
“Maybe some of it is there just isn’t enough that’s bringing them together in the real world,” Grygiel told NPR. “They do want to be analog. They do want to find fun. They do want some entertainment in the terrestrial space.”
Phone use in theaters has become increasingly common after ‘Barbenheimer’
But at some point, theater owners will need to draw a line in the sand on where they come down on appropriate theater behavior. Although cineplexes have long struggled with people talking and texting during movies, audience phone use reached a fever pitch in 2023, thanks to the social media-propelled double feature of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” and Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour” concert film, as young patrons filmed themselves singing and dancing along to her songs.
The worrying trend has only become even more prevalent this past year, with audiences filming much-discussed moments from “Wicked,” “Babygirl,” “Nosferatu” and “Deadpool & Wolverine” on opening weekend and sharing clips to social media.
Interactive screenings are not out of the norm. (After all, who hasn’t enjoyed a rambunctious showing of “The Room” or “The Rocky Horror Picture Show?”) But recent incidents continue to inspire “debates about what level of participation with other audience members, or on the phone, is appropriate without being distracting to others,” says Shawn Robbins, founder and owner of Box Office Theory, a movie industry analysis site.
“Should there be screenings specifically made available and eventized as interactive events?” Robbins asks. “It’s an ongoing discussion in the industry as younger generations have different consumer expectations in a media-dominated world than their elder counterparts.”
Major chains such as AMC offer movie fans the chance to rent out theaters for a steep price, allowing them to belt their hearts out to “Wicked” as loudly as they please. Alamo Drafthouse, meanwhile, will sometimes host “rowdy” screenings of recent cult classics including “Cats” and “Fifty Shades Freed,” where theatergoers are free to hoot and holler throughout.
But for the time being, it seems unlikely that theater owners will take any meaningful action against your average rude patron. So please, folks, we politely beg: Be respectful, turn off your phones and leave the chicken at home.
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