There’s a place for audience participation, but ‘chicken jockey’ chaos takes it too far

The ‘chicken jockey’ moment in A Minecraft Movie has become a cue for audiences to throw popcorn. Photograph: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures/AP

‘Chicken jockey!” If you know what this phrase means, you’re either a preteen boy or have accompanied one to a recent cinema screening of A Minecraft Movie.

Warner Bros’ latest money-spinner is a movie adaptation of the Swedish game Minecraft, a prerequisite in the social lives of children between the age of eight and 12. The game enables children to explore and reconfigure a creative digital environment, accumulating resources in a world built from blocks. The movie enables children to explore and reconfigure the codes of basic decency in a cinema environment, testing the limits of any hapless usher left to supervise.