Is the Minecraft movie Gen-Zs Rocky Horror Picture Show?

Generation Z has found their Rocky Horror Picture Show and it is a film with mixed reviews based on a 14-year-old computer game.

Cinema screenings of A Minecraft Movie have been marked by raucous audience participation — from shouting lines at the screen and cheering the arrival of characters to spontaneous standing ovations.

Footage shared on social media has captured the exuberance which, in rare cases, has seen audience members kicked out and some fights started.

It has also started a debate about cinema etiquette, coming on the heels of a trend that saw cinemagoers filming scenes of the musical film Wicked to share on social media.

Some people have described the wild behaviour as “rude” and “disrespectful.” One cinema in the UK has put up a sign warning audience members that “loud screaming, clapping and shouting will not be tolerated.”

Others say it enhanced the experience of watching the movie, which currently has a lacklustre 48 per cent rating on film review site Rotten Tomatoes.

Actor Roger Clark shared his experience of seeing the movie with his son on social media, saying he was “still processing what I saw.”

“The only cinematic experience I can compare the audience participation to is Rocky Horror, except it’s with teenagers and their phones and the movie is not even a weekend old,” he wrote.

“I had no idea what was happening at first much to my sons’ laughter. Then I started to twig and I now know I have no idea what constitutes a hit at the box office. . . High school kids and adolescents alike screaming random Jack Black lines because of YouTube shorts and TikToks. Never seen anything like that before.”

The popularity of the film with gen z and gen alpha, many of whom would have grown up playing the game, saw it beat expectations to rake in $US300 million ($500m) on its opening weekend — the highest-ever for a video game adaptation. That beat previous record holder The Super Mario Bros, which went on to make $2.3 billion worldwide.

Minecraft was already a phenomenon before the movie, spawning a multi-billion-dollar franchise that includes books and fast-food and supermarket tie-ins. The so-called “sandbox” game encourages building and creativity in a three-dimensional universe stuffed with skeletons, giant spiders and zombie pigs.

The West Australian’s film reviewer Ben O’Shea said A Minecraft Movie would be one of the biggest hits of the year, even if it did require the audience to “check your brain” at the candy bar.

“We’re talking about an adaptation of a video game, not Shakespeare, so I don’t know how precious we should be about preserving the cinematic experience,” he said.