Minor spoilers ahead for A Minecraft Movie.
The team behind A Minecraft Movie revealed to IGN that one of the funniest moments in the video game adaptation was actually inspired by The NeverEnding Story.
There is a certain scene in A Minecraft Movie where Jack Black’s Steve has to fly on Jason Momoa’s Garrett because he only had enough Elytra wings for Garrett and Sebastian Hansen’s Henry. It’s a great moment of physical comedy where Steve has to climb all around him to save himself from falling hundreds of feet to the ground. And as it turns out, this was much more than an attempt at laughs.
“We definitely wanted a Falkor moment from The Neverending Story that was both majestic and beautiful, but also one that goes south pretty quickly,” A Minecraft Movie director Jared Hess said.
“It was so funny in between takes when they cut,” producer Torfi Frans Ólafsson added. “Jack is sitting on top of Jason and they’re in this complicated rig… and Jack starts singing, because he does that in between scenes, but he starts singing the words to The NeverEnding Story and riding him like he’s riding Falkor.”
It’s a funny call-back because Jack Black actually played Slip in The NeverEnding Story 3. And for Momoa, it was great because he was integral in bringing this scene to life.
“I got to participate in writing that, and this big guy [Jack Black] wanted to do it too,” Momoa shared with a laugh. “This was after Top Gun: Maverick came out, so I also wanted to be able to go into into it and then hit the brakes and then have them slide down and I switcheroo on them. We were sitting there at the hotel dying about this idea of Jack and I doing this stunt and it made it [into the movie] and it’s phenomenal.”
“I don’t know if it made it in the final cut because there were different versions of that scene, but it could have gone hard rated R,” Jack Black noted. “In the end, I think we made it family-friendly!”
Momoa also hilariously went into a recreation of the two of them on set (watch the video to see this firsthand!).
“Let my hips guide you! You can’t just ride me like I’m majestic,” Momoa said. “I was dying, man. I was dying.”
For more, check out our A Minecraft Movie review, how the team had a private server they played on while making the movie, and our explainer of the film’s ending and post-credits scene.
Adam Bankhurst is a writer for IGN. You can follow him on X/Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on TikTok.
