Minecraft’s Meme Culture: How the Internet Creates Cult-Classics

Memes have been around for years, but it often feels like the internet moves too quickly in order to fully take advantage of the online world for marketing a film. Getting others to talk about your film online can be a great way to promote it, and many studios are starting to use meme culture as a major aspect of their social media marketing campaigns. The success of A Minecraft Movie (2025) is telling of the way that memes have begun altering the landscape of film altogether.

Can Memes Bring People to Theaters?

The short answer is: yes, they can. A Minecraft Movie (2025) is the perfect example of how catering marketing materials such as trailers or promotional interviews towards meme-worthy moments has the ability to drive people to theaters. The content of the film is very branded, with iconic moments and phrases from the game highlighted in the trailer, creating large audiences eagerly awaiting these scenes at the theater. A Minecraft Movie surpassed all box office expectations, earning $163 million domestically and $313 million globally. Not only was it the biggest film debut of 2025 at the time of release, but it is the largest video game adaptation in box office history.

It is not the cinematic quality of the movie that draws audiences in, but the meme-worthy moments. The film’s main character, Steve, played by Jack Black, provides the perfect delivery on all iconic Minecraft phrases, from his expositional monologue to catchy songs. Audiences are flocking to theaters, but instead of watching the film, they are treating it more like a sing-along, shouting alongside the characters as they say lines such as “flint and steel,” “I am Steve,” or the song “Lava Chicken”. As audiences film their theater and post it online, it almost creates a natural social media marketing campaign, urging others to go see it to hear those iconic lines.  

Memes do not have to be fully integrated into a film in order to use them for marketing purposes. Social media campaigns are obviously a large part of marketing campaigns nowadays, and popular TikTok creators, audios, or meme formats are often the most successful elements of a social media campaign. Popular creators like TikTok’s @guywithamoviecamera are suddenly found both on set and red carpets, promoting films like Scream or A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Popular TikTok sounds will be used to create trendy videos, or meme-worthy moments will be captured behind the scenes that become iconic marketing pieces later on.

Older Films and Meme Culture

Although meme culture is being fully embraced in modern marketing campaigns, old films are not exempt from becoming memes. Gifs, memes, and reaction images can sometimes cause iconic old films to be remembered for their most meme-able stills or scenes. For certain genres, like comedy or animated films, creating iconic one-liners has always been a productive marketing strategy, and meme formats on social media have only helped spread these further along. A movie like Austin Powers, for example, which focuses more on longstanding bits, crazy characters, and one-liner comedy, translates well to our current era of meme culture. In fact, there’s even an entire subreddit dedicated to Austin Powers Memes, which has over three thousand followers. 

Sometimes, films can become memes in their entirety, to the point where films are remembered more as memes than movies. The Bee Movie (2007) is probably the most prevalent example of this. When it came out, it had subpar reviews and became the third-least profitable animated film in Dreamworks’ history. In 2012, the internet began blowing up on Tumblr as memes began to gain popularity, and people began copying and pasting the film’s entire script into the comment section of anything. In 2016, people began remixing the film, making the audio faster or slower every time they said “bee,” for example, and this cemented its place as more of a meme than a movie. In 2016, you truly could not go anywhere on the internet without seeing the iconic “Ya like jazz?” meme. After their initial release, films do still have the potential to end up as memes. 

Does Meme Culture Devalue Film?

The big question that we are left with is: should filmmakers be embracing meme culture? Or avoiding it? Many would argue that meme culture devalues film for three reasons. Firstly, it puts an emphasis on the success of a film’s marketing campaign, which can often come across as inauthentic. Most films will go into their social media campaign with a plan for how they want to market the film, and this can devalue the authenticity of the content. The second reason is that meme formats really only work well with comedy films, so meme-ification will never work for every genre. The third reason is that by emphasizing the marketing campaign or meme-ability of a film, studio executives might start to devalue authentic storytelling in favor of the easiest laugh or heavily branded content, which A Minecraft Movie is a great example of. Seth Rogen’s Apple TV series The Studio toys with this question through the fictional creation of a Kool-Aid movie. The series touches on the tension between filmmakers who want to create meaningful art, and executives who would rather focus on brand deals and easy, quick, cheap concepts; many filmmakers want to protect the medium from the heavy push towards branded content. Ultimately, meme culture has proven to be a great way to sell a film, whether or not it is fully integrated into the film’s identity. 

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