Behold, Hollywood has a huge hit -- for boys

This silly, some say sloppy, movie is raking in $$$, while it's fans go wild

If you have followed mainstream news for the past decade or two, you may have seen plenty of headlines based on the sobering information in Peg Tyre’s 2008 bestseller, “The Trouble with Boys: A Surprising Report Card on Our Sons, Their Problems at School, and What Parents and Educators Must Do.”

If you know anything about higher education, you also know that college and university leaders are doing everything they can to pull males to their campuses while striving to avoid the dreaded 60% female to 40% male ratio that warps recruiting numbers and campus life. That includes quietly discriminating against many qualified females.

Meanwhile, Hollywood executives have been working hard to turn giant, profitable entertainment franchises like “Star Wars” and the Marvel Cinematic Universe into female-friendly projects that will appeal to “modern audiences.” When these efforts have crashed, insiders have blamed the industry’s woes on “toxic” male fans.

Can you say “Snow White”? I knew that you could.

This is the context, of course, for the current headlines about “A Minecraft Movie” and the legions of young male fans who have — marking this flashback into a computer-game cornerstone of their childhoods — trashed theaters with their over-the-top celebrations. It’s like a digital-screens culture version of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” (OK, Boomers).

Oh, these popcorn-tossing, chicken-waving Minecraft males have also purchased — over and over — truckloads of movie tickets. Follow the stunning numbers at Box Office Mojo. As I type, the current global gross is $557,665,094.

Should cultural conservatives be celebrating this fascinating twist in Hollywood history? That depends. Is “A Minecraft Movie” a good product or merely a popular one?

This Variety feature — “5 Reasons ‘A Minecraft Movie’ Became a Record-Breaking Box Office Success” — paints the big picture in the mildest, most industry friendly terms. Check out this chunk of that:

All-audience appeal

Is Jack Black the secret sauce for game-to-screen adaptations? After all, he played professor Shelly Obero in 2017’s “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” and 2019’s “Jumanji the Next Level” and voiced Bowser in “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” before channeling the expert crafter called Steve in “Minecraft.” (He was also Claptrap in last year’s flop “Borderlands,” so maybe don’t give this theory too much weight.) Whatever the driving force, it wasn’t just video game buffs, but general audiences too, who turned out in force for “A Minecraft Movie.” Making a film that’s so universally appealing was the difference between mere success and unmitigated sensation. With sustained excitement and repeat viewings, “Minecraft” could be the year’s first billion-dollar blockbuster.

“The film is drawing like a coveted five-quadrant movie, appealing broadly to everyone — younger and older adults, as well as young teens and kids,” says David A. Gross, who runs the FranchiseRe movie consulting firm. “When a release catches fire like this, it generates its own momentum and you can set aside all projections.”

Note the code words — “general audiences,” “video games buffs” and, finally, “younger and older adults, as well as young teens and kids.”

Here are two crucial words missing from this report — “boys” and “males.”