Minecraft Mayhem Explained (by a 15-Year-Old)
Unless you recently graduated middle school, a lot of this isn’t going to make much sense. But at one point in A Minecraft Movie, a baby zombie falls onto the back of a cartoon chicken, prompting Jack Black to shout out the words “chicken jockey,” which for some reason is encouraging teenagers around the country to scream wildly, throw their popcorn and sodas at the screen, squirt some sort of lotion onto seats and, in one instance that’s become a viral meme, unleash live poultry into the theater. Not surprisingly, theater owners haven’t been thrilled with the behavior — police were called to one multiplex in Alaska to remove rambunctious teens, while another theater in New Jersey is banning teenagers from screenings unless accompanied by an adult — even though the live-action, PG-rated adaptation of the hugely popular computer game is making theater owners and Warner Bros. a bundle; it grossed $163 million its opening April 4 weekend, the biggest debut of the year. What’s behind the mayhem? To some degree, you can blame TikTok, which has been hatching these sorts of Gen Z happenings for a while now, though none quite as rowdy (like wearing Minion costumes to theaters during screenings of 2022’s The Rise of Gru). But there’s also, surprisingly, an element of nostalgia propelling the Minecraft mischief. “A lot of kids played a ton of Minecraft during the pandemic,” explains one 15-year-old who attended an opening-weekend screening in Santa Monica (where nobody was arrested and no live chickens released). “So, when they hear words like ‘chicken jockey,’ it reminds them of something fun from their past, and they go a little crazy. That’s basically all that’s going on. It’s nothing to worry about.”
How Stephen A. Smith Could Literally Become the Law & Order Candidate
At some point, Stephen A. Smith will have to make up his mind. Is he going to remain an ESPN commentator? That gig has clearly been working out pretty well for him; he just signed a $100 million deal with the sports network. But he could also pivot to acting. He has some chops in that department, too, with an upcoming guest spot on Law & Order — “I can’t tell you the storyline,” he teases about the May 8 episode — as well as a long story arc on General Hospital, where he’s been playing Brick, a surveillance expert, since 2016. “A lot of people call me a natural,” he says of his acting abilities. “I don’t feel that way. I’m just trying to memorize my lines so I don’t embarrass myself.” Then again, the 57-year-old multihyphenate could always end up running for president, a possibility he continues to publicly contemplate. In fact, given a choice between winning an Oscar or the White House, it sounds like he’s tipping in the direction of Pennsylvania Avenue, at least for the moment. “I want to win an Oscar,” he tells Rambling Reporter. “But I pride myself in never thinking about myself. We need to think about the state of America right now.”
Remember When Lisa Simpson Predicted Trump Would Tank the Economy?
We’ve reported on the eerie prescience of old Simpsons episodes before, but here we go again: It turns out that 25 years ago, Lisa Simpson predicted that a Donald Trump presidency would wreck the U.S. economy. In “Bart to the Future,” which originally aired March 19, 2000, the show flashed forward several decades to when Lisa is elected America’s “first straight female president” and “inherits quite the budget crunch” from her predecessor, “President Trump.” There aren’t any mentions of tariffs or trade wars — just that the country was so broke it couldn’t even afford to fulfill Lisa’s campaign pledge to “build the world’s largest bookmobile.” According to Simpsons scribe Mike Scully, there wasn’t any deliberate prophesying going on in the writers room back then. They were just throwing “crazy names” around the table, trying to figure out “who would be the stupidest person that America could elect. And somebody said Donald Trump.”
This story appeared in the April 16 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
