A Minecraft Movie’s ‘Chicken jockey!’ meme makes me miss GentleMinions

Part of the fun of cultural acceleration is that it’s now possible to feel nostalgia about things that happened as little as a few months ago. These days, fads and memes and modes of entertainment emerge in our shared zeitgeist like bubbles popping up to the surface in a boiling soup, and they pop almost as soon as they reach air. Most will be forgotten within three months. But one fad from an entire three years ago has stuck with me for its weirdly wholesome vibes, which is how I found myself looking at the big viral chicken jockey meme out of A Minecraft Movie and realizing I miss the days of GentleMinions.

Chicken jockey videos are currently going viral on TikTok. There’s a scene in A Minecraft Movie where Steve (Jack Black) and Garrett (Jason Momoa), a pair of doofuses from the real world, attempt to grab a quest item in Minecraft’s Overworld in order to get back home. They get captured by Vindicators and tossed into a makeshift boxing ring, where Steve is tied in a corner and Garrett is ordered to fight a blocky little chicken. But then the Vindicators drop a baby zombie onto the chicken, and Steve screams “CHICKEN JOCKEY!” with all the manic energy Jack Black can muster. (Which, as we all know, is quite a bit.)

The fad has audience members (and fans of the game) responding wildly to the line. In some theaters, fans just scream the words along with Steve. Other videos have viewers riding each other’s shoulders as if they’re in a chicken fight, leading sustained cheers, stomping or clapping, and throwing popcorn or drinks.

Naturally, the trend has thrown new fuel on the constantly burning online conversation around theater etiquette. As many readers have pointed out online, most people don’t want to pay first-run movie-theater prices to watch a film that gets hijacked by someone else’s showy attempt to go viral online, and no one wants a soda dumped down the back of their neck when they’re trying to watch a movie.