Chicken Jockey and the Death Of Cinema | The Deight Night Feature

                                                                                               

After a long period of apparent anticipation, A Minecraft Movie has released in cinemas across the globe to a lukewarm response from critics but a seemingly enthusiastic response from general audiences with the film having one of the biggest opening weekends of any video game adaptation. Obviously, whenever a film does well at the box office, it's a win for cinema lovers, whether or not it's a film they approve of. It's bringing in the money to keep the lights on in Hollywood for a few more years and maybe some more auteur driven projects can be greenlit along the way(...for now).  

However, with A Minecraft Movie's success has come a trend of obnoxious cinema audience responses.  Online, on most forms of social media, it won't be hard for you to see videos of audiences exploding whenever certain moments in the film occur. These moments are usually lines delivered by the film's star, Jack Black, which audiences will shout back at the screen almost in sync, the most famous (or rather infamous) being "Chicken Jockey!". The level of these explosive reactions varies from simply loud shouting to behaviour akin to a mosh pit at a metal concert with some instances leading to a Police response. These scenes in the film are no doubt funny, so a laugh wouldn’t be unwelcome, but do they warrant this sort of behaviour? Absolutely not. 

The 2020s and the latter half of the 2010s has seen no shortage of audiences being enthralled in the films and collectively reacting to big, emotional or significant moments. Avengers: Endgame, releasing in 2019, saw cinema goers cheer as Captain America caught Thor's hammer and when Iron Man snapped away Thanos' army to the line "I am...Iron Man". Similarly in 2021, Spider-Man: No Way Home gave audiences the same response when previous Spider-Man actors Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield put on their red and blue spandex once again to help the current web-head Tom Holland defeat a variety of villains from their respective rogues galleries. Behind the cheers and screams of these moments came a decades long anticipation of climactic moments and the return of fan favourite actors and characters. Police were never called to a cinema to take out audience members for starting a riot after Charlie Cox came on the screen. 

Why is A Minecraft Movie getting an arguably bigger (or at least, more bombastic) response than some of the biggest Marvel movies of the past decade? The video game on which the film is based released in 2011, which is only three years after the start of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Iron Man in 2008. So, there will be fans who have been waiting for this film for a long time - a similar length in fact to that of Avengers: Endgame for instance - and seeing things like Creepers and mining tables on the big screen for the first time will be exciting for some for sure. Add to that cameos and subtle references to things only true fans will understand, like a nod to a famous deceased Minecraft YouTuber and you have a film that will certainly garner an enthusiastic response from those who care. Ultimately then, surely this is a positive? Surely this will make going to the cinema more of an event and give people more of a reason to go there rather than wait a few weeks for streaming? In theory, yes, but like so many good things, they have to be ruined by idiots. 

What may have started as an enthusiastic response to finally seeing Minecraft on the big screen has turned into outright thuggery with audience members, usually young men, screaming, throwing popcorn, drinks and sometimes even wrestling in the screen when cued by Jack Black's dialogue. It's safe to assume that the people perpetrating this behaviour are not fans of the game and have simply found an excuse to be antisocial in a setting where it's seemingly encouraged with videos circulating online, along with not much condemnation from the cast and crew and even being endorsed with videos of the likes Mr. Beast recreating these acts. What's not included online though, is the cinema ushers who have to come in after the film's finished and have to clean up the immense mess that's created and the other audience members who aren't getting involved, maybe parents just trying to take their child to the cinema for a day out, terrorised by thugs and having their film and day ruined. 

This behaviour is the ultimate climax of the downfall of cinema and theatre etiquette and one of the unspoken reasons why films just aren't doing as well anymore. It all started with the Covid-19 Pandemic which saw millions of people confined to their homes for endless amounts of time due to the lockdowns enforced by governments the world over. While these lockdowns protected people from the infectious disease spreading outside their walls, it did not protect them from the mental health issues that would come with the consequences of elongated isolation and having nothing to do besides watch TV and read. Now people are so used to watching media from the comfort of their living rooms, where they're able to chat to each other and not have other people to disturb that they extend that behaviour to wherever they are. Film goers now avoid the cinema and even the theatre for fear of others who are so ignorant that they don't realise they're disturbing people by discussing the film or play, or even just talking about what's for dinner tonight. Of course, if someone were to tell these people to stop talking, be it a fellow audience member or an usher, it's likely that the built up anxiety and embarrassment they've collected over a long period of isolation will result in a violent response in the form of either loud swearing or even throwing a punch rather than "oh sorry!". Add to that the usual violent behaviour that so often comes with being a teenage boy, not having much to do and online videos basically giving you permission to be an idiot with no condemnation and the result is the behaviour we’ve been seeing.

But where does this end? As mentioned before, cast and crew are not coming out to condemn this behaviour because it ultimately benefits them. People come in big groups to act like this and that's a lot of ticket sales and once a ticket is bought the studios and even cinema chains don't really care what happens once they get their money. What's more, if people act like this in response to a film like A Minecraft Movie, what's stopping them reacting like this when Amy Rose comes on screen for the first time in Sonic The Hedgehog 4 or obnoxiously singing along to songs from Wicked: For Good? It's unlikely that these people will ever go to see films like The Brutalist or I'm Still Here but if bigger groups attend films that have more reactive moments then studios and cinemas alike are going to invest more in those films than the former. It's hard to see a future where event films don't take over cinemas leaving more director driven films to be placed straight on streaming services. People who go to the cinema to actually watch films rather than hang out will be further put off going for fear of falling victim to obnoxious, ignorant audiences. You can see this in the box office failures of Mickey 17 and Black Bag this year and it's only going to get worse thanks to the "Chicken Jockey" trend. 

The solution is obvious and it's something that no one wants to admit for a variety of reasons, the biggest of all being money. Cinemas need to be stricter; tighter security, stringent screen checks or even a dedicated usher per screen and clear, set consequences for those who misbehave. Cinema chains don't want to invest in this sort of thing because it's more expensive in the short term and stricter rules can put people off going places (usually the kind of people who want to break the rules), but if they don't, then in the long term we may see the death of cinema as we've known it.