Before there was A Minecraft Movie, there was the Minecraft movie. Er … movies.
Over a decade ago, David R.B.—the creator behind the YouTube channel Squared Media—began uploading his Minecraft animations to YouTube. The videos featured recurring characters, plot lines and a whole bunch of epic fights. And though they were originally released episodically, many series were eventually stitched together into giant, movie-length features.
The channel boasts some impressive numbers for its long-form content. As of posting, Squared Media’s most popular video, a near-hour-long animation called “Animation Life,” has amassed 250 million views. “Song of War,” a two-hour series, sits at 64 million views. “Worlds Apart” (45 minutes) has amassed 41 million watches.
Chances are, if your child likes Minecraft, they may have stumbled across Squared Media’s videos. So, what can you expect?
Note: Squared Media was requested by a reader of Plugged In. Do you have a YouTube channel you’d like us to review? Submit your request by sending it to letters@pluggedin.com, or contact us via Facebook or Instagram so we can check it out!
The channel offers hours of skillfully crafted animations, each with their own storylines and detailed fight scenes. The animation is impressive, and it’s clear a lot of time and effort went into making the videos as fluid and entertaining as possible. Additionally, over the years, Squared Media’s animations have only gotten better.
Storylines are easy to follow—despite most videos not containing any dialogue. Characters sacrifice themselves for others, and people fight against evil.
R.B. offers five tutorials that teach viewers how to use his animation software of choice, Blender. Through the series, he explains the process of creating a scene, including animating and lighting it. The videos are great introductions for those hoping to dive into animation themselves.
Violence is frequent in the videos, though blood is kept to a minimum (in the videos we watched, we only saw the occasional pixel of blood). Still, characters are stabbed and die in other ways—we even see the death of a man’s pet wolf.
We encounter some magical elements, too: Minecraft characters drink potions, and protagonists fight illusionists and necromancers. One enemy drains a villager’s life force to power his Totem of Undying (an object from the game that prevents lethal damage from killing the wielder). One enemy is dubbed the “angel of death.”
A guard in one series staggers in a groggy stupor after drinking a large amount of an unknown brewed liquid.
While we found most videos to be clean, R.B.’s first Halo animation (the oldest series on the channel and the only one not in the Minecraft style) contains the s-word, “d–n” and “h—.”
Squared Media offers engaging stories within the world of Minecraft. Parents should expect some violence, death and darker moments within these tales; but content scarcely shows blood and is more in line with the action found in shows like Ninjago. While the channel’s older Halo series contains some language, we didn’t hear any crudities while watching the Minecraft content.
Kennedy Unthank studied journalism at the University of Missouri. He knew he wanted to write for a living when he won a contest for “best fantasy story” while in the 4th grade. What he didn’t know at the time, however, was that he was the only person to submit a story. Regardless, the seed was planted. Kennedy collects and plays board games in his free time, and he loves to talk about biblical apologetics. He’s also an avid cook. He thinks the ending of Lost “wasn’t that bad.”
