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The Minecraft movie is crass, dumb, and barely coherent. It also just made almost $163 million at the domestic box office over its opening weekend. Video game adaptations have been on a hot streak in recent years. In 2023, The Super Mario Bros. Movie crossed the billion-dollar mark, nearly unseating Barbie as the years top-grossing film. Amazons Fallout shattered records with 2.5 billion viewing minutes in its debut week. And now, A Minecraft Movie stands as the highest-grossing film since Deadpool & Wolverine. Hollywoods obsession with intellectual propertyfrom comic book heroes to kids toysis nothing new. But for decades, video games were the outliers: critically panned, commercial duds. Thats no longer the case. Today, theyre becoming studios most reliable path to profit. The long history of video game movie flops While a few video game films trickled out in the late 1990s, the first major wave of studio-backed adaptations hit in the early 2000s. Many of these were helmed by German director Uwe Boll, who became notorious for a steady stream of critical and commercial failures. BloodRayne barely scraped together $3 million at the box office; Alone in the Dark grossed just over $12 million on a $20 million budget. In the Name of the King, starring Jason Statham, bizarrely carried a $60 million price tag but pulled in only $12 million. (Boll himself admitted that Alone in the Darkwith Christian Slater and Tara Reidwas not good.”) By the early 2010s, studios leaned into flashy visual effects to boost video game adaptations. These films made modest profits but often alienated audiences. Max Payne, starring Mark Wahlberg, scored just 16% on Rotten Tomatoes and earned Wahlberg a Golden Raspberry Award (better known as a Razzie). Disneys Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, fronted by Jake Gyllenhaal, was pitched as the next Pirates of the Caribbean-style franchise. That dream died quickly after the CGI-heavy film was trounced at the box office by Sex and the City 2 and Shrek Forever After. Around the same time, game developers began chasing global markets, especially in Asiaand most notably, China. That expansion opened new international audiences for video game films. The strategy peaked in 2016, when Universal released Warcraft. Though critics panned it and American audiences mostly shrugged, the film soared in China, earning more than $100 million there despite failing to reach $50 million in the U.S. Even as box office numbers climbed, video game movies still carried the stigma of cheap storytelling and poor production. The late 2010s and early 2020s saw a mix of live-action flops like Mortal Kombat and animated crowd-pleasers like Sonic the Hedgehog and Detective Pikachu. They all turned a profitbut theyre often better remembered for their internet backlash than cinematic impact. When gaming adaptations started soaring Then, almost unexpectedly, these cash-grab adaptations started getting . . . better. Or at least good enough to justify their existence beyond box office potential. The Super Mario Bros. Movie didnt just rake in $1.3 billionit also delivered a viral hit with Jack Blacks Peaches. Critics may have panned Five Nights at Freddys, but audiences embraced it, giving it an 86% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes and contributing to nearly $300 million in global revenue. Video games have also made major inroads into prestige television. HBO gave The Last of Us the coveted Sunday night slot, and the show went on to earn five Primetime Emmy nominations, including Outstanding Drama Series. Amazons Fallout became the platforms biggest premiere evereven surpassing YouTube juggernaut MrBeasts game show in viewershipand it, too, snagged a nomination for Outstanding Drama Series. Now comes A Minecraft Movie. Is it good? Not really. But its a box office magnetjust ask the legions of middle schoolers screaming Chicken jockey! and causing public disruptions in theaters. Its the clearest sign yet of the genres evolution. Video game adaptations are no longer synonymous with bad CGI and low returns. Theyve officially entered the IP big leagues.
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E-Commerce
Is doomscrolling on your phone unhealthy for your brain? Oxford University Presss word of the year, brain rot, seems to suggest so. It defines the condition as the supposed deterioration of a persons mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as a result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging. The key word, though, is supposed, as there is there is no such thing as mindless scrolling, says Dr. Aditi Nerurkar, the author of The 5 Resets: Rewire Your Brain and Body for Less Stress and More Resilience and a Harvard physician who specializes in stress. Brain rot is not a word or phrase that I would use as a physician, because it connotes that our brains are passively withering away, she says. Scientifically what is happening to your brain when you sit and scroll and scroll is not passive. [Scrolling] has a very active effect on your brain, and it signals all sorts of hormones and chemical cascades and neural circuits. While thats a relief, we do love our digital devicesmaybe too much. According to a recent survey by Reviews.org, Americans pick up their phones an average of 205 times a day. Eighty percent check their phones within the first 10 minutes of waking up, and 43% consider themselves to be addicted. Having a true addiction to your phone is rare, says Nerurkar. Whats common, though, is popcorn brain, a term coined by University of Wisconsin researcher David Levy. Popcorn brain is the sensation of your brain popping when you spend too much time online, explains Nerurkar. Its when you’re chronically online, overconsuming. It has an effect on your sleep, your mood, your emotional reactivity, irritability, fatigue, and in some cases, anxiety, depression, and insomnia. Finding balance If you feel popcorn-y, finding a sene of balance can help. But where do you start? Howard Lewis, author of Leave Your Phone at the Door: The Joy of OFFLINE, says its not the technology thats the problem, its a growing fear of missing out. I think there’s a fear of being irrelevant, he says. The advent of social media has made the problem much worse. People used to get their news from newspapers, and the process could take three or four days. Now, if you wait more than three or four hours, there is a sense that youre not very relevant, and I think that’s a big error of judgment. There’s a fine line between consuming and overconsuming, and the first thing to do is to cut yourself some slack about your phone habit. Doomscrolling is a primal urge, says Nerurkar. Your brain is governed by the amygdala, and the main purpose of your amygdala is survival and self-preservation, she explains. Back when we were all cave people, there would be a night watchman who would scan for danger while the others slept. In modern times, we are all our own night watchman. The modern equivalent of scanning for danger is scrolling. To find balance, you need to get your prefrontal cortex online. This is the part of the brain that governs strategic thinking, complex problem-solving, and adulting, says Nerurkar. Building healthy phone habits intentionally dials it down, she says. The goal is to become more intentional with your media use. The truth is that the environment and big tech and the news is going to continue. Your brain and body is doing exactly what it was intended to do when you’re feeling stressed. Its not about abstinence from our devices. Its about creating some digital boundaries to preserve your mental health while remaining informed to what’s happening in the world. How to build healthier habits with your phone Nerurkar teamed up with the mental health app Calm to create a five-part series called Building Healthier Phone Habits. The first step toward becoming more intentional about your media consumption is an awareness of your current state. Start by monitoring a three- to four-hour block of time. Put a pen and paper nearby and every time you have the urge to pick up your phone, create a tally mark. At the end of the time block, identify how many times you felt like reaching for your phone. Next, address the urge with a three-second brain reset exercise called Stop, Breathe, Be, which helps you strengthen your mind-body connection. Instead of giving into the impulse to reach for your phone, stop, take a deep breath in and out, and be in the moment, says Nerurkar. What it does over time is it decreases the volume of your amygdala and gets that prefrontal cortex back online. Another strategy is leveraging the grayscale of your phone. Nerurkar recommends switching your phone off color mode and into black-and-white mode. Go to your Settings page. Tap on Accessibility and then Display and Text Size. Switch your color filters to grayscale. You can easily toggle the grayscale on and off. What it does is it makes scrolling less addictive, less enticing, says Nerurkar. Good times to use grayscale are when you’re trying to focus on a task at work, but you notice that you keep reaching for your phone and you’re not able to finish that task. It’s a visual boundary that you’re creating. Building healthier phone habits is a process, so give yourself lots of grace, says Nerurkar. Compassion, and particularly self-compassion, helps rewire the brain and decrease your reliance on your devices, she says. It also decreases the volume of your amygdala. Why detachment is important Phones and applications may be enticing, but they offer less value than we think, says Lewis. They do provide a sense of comfort and belonging, which is fine, but the difficult thing is that they become a replacement for adjunct and real-life conversations, he says. Lewis regularly hosts dinner parties where guests must leave their phones at the door. He recommends breaking the cycle of dependence by putting your phoneaway wherever youre engaging with someone in person. People have certain preconceptions about the way they should look and behave around others, he says. What matters most is that you give people your time and your attention in a meaningful way. By leaving your phone at the door, you are enabled to embrace life. Give yourself permission to be different by untethering yourself from your device, urges Lewis. Being offline opens the door to randomness and serendipity, he says. Life behind a screen, in my opinion, is not real life.
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E-Commerce
The Mojave Micro Mill just broke ground in the Mojave Desert about 85 miles from downtown Los Angeles. Itll be the first steel mill to open in California in more than half a century when it begins production in two years. More notable, itll do so using local sun and wind power, making it the first self-powered, net-zero steel mill in the country. Mojave Micro will make rebarthe thin rods of steel used to reinforce concrete walls and floorsout of recycled scrap steel using a net-zero manufacturing process. Eric Benson, CEO of Pacific Steel Group, which will operate the plant, said the company had started to strategize about a new facility a few years ago. Since power remains one of the most expensive inputs in the steelmaking process, he wondered whether a mill could be placed right next to one of these solar farms. Due to its remote location in the high desert, where theres plenty of land, the 174-acre Mojave Micro site will include 63 acres of dedicated solar panels, batteries, and wind turbines that will be able to meet the power needs of the plant. The plant is hooked up to the grid in case it needs backup power, but will also install a carbon capture system for times when it runs on grid power, which Pacific Steel says will net out carbon emissions. Benson estimates the plant will be able to run all of its electric arc furnaces on its own power 85% of the time. The company predicts that when its fully operational in early 2027, the mill will have the ability to produce 450,000 tons of rebar per year. Mojave Micro saves emissions in other ways, too. Most of Californias 4.3 million tons of scrap metal is shipped out of state to other mills in the Southwest, and then trucked back to big markets like Los Angeles. The transit costs of moving such heavy material can run $100 per ton. Being able to offer scrap dealers a place to recycle steel that’s just a short drive from L.A.accessible by truck instead of trainwill dramatically cut down on transportation emissions. The steel industry, which has traditionally run on fossil fuels like coal, generates about 7% of global emissions. In recent years, environmental groups and startups have pushed to develop more green methods of making steel, powered by hydropower and renewables. Startup Boston Metals recently figured out a process to make virgin steel using electricity. The Center for American Progress argues that investment in domestic green steel production can help the U.S. industry adapt to the future and grow out the nations industrial base, especially as it looks to build more microchip plants and manufacturing sites. Mojave Micro also makes a case for more self-contained industrial facilities. With the robust renewable power available in the Mojave (another massive solar farm is located just across the street from the mills future home) companies could set up their own power systems and supply everything their factories need, without worrying about grid connections or local power capacity. The current rush for data centers, for instance, has been hampered by the need to increase local power generation and transmission capacity. A plant like Mojave Micro will have all the power infrastructure it needs. The effort also shows the value of industrial recycling. With tariffs upending supply chains, a similar kind of factory and process could be used to, say, recycle lithium-ion batteries from electric vehicles. Pacific Steel, which currently supplies a quarter of Californias rebar, believes this new plant will not only enable it to sell greener steel at the same price as competitors but also to steal market share. California state law mandates that state-funded building projects use the greenest possible materials; Pacific Steels net-zero rebar will give it a big advantage, and could drive competitors to match its sustainable process. William Sonneborn, president of Generate, a green investment fund that provided $200 million to help build the plant, believes Mojave Micro is a model that will be copied. He says that some corporations concerned about their environmental footprints, like Walmart, have been looking for greener building materials, seeking to reduce what are known as Scope 3 emissions. Pacific Steels new mill aims to help them do just that, at a competitive price. We love the idea, Sonneborn said, because it sets a standard and it creates a market for the United States because of the design of the technology.
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E-Commerce
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