Can ‘Minecraft’ Be Cinema? Fans of ‘Parkour Civilization’ Sure Think So

On Wednesday, YouTube commenter @santana4766 was compelled to leave a breathless review on a video uploaded last December. “[T]he storyline, the foreshadowing, the character development, the world building,” they wrote, “this is true peak cinema.” Another commenter asked how to log what they’d just watched on the movie-rating app Letterboxd. A third called it an “authentic masterpiece.”

If you didn’t know better, you might think you were reading the early notices after a premiere at Cannes. Instead, these are just a handful of the awestruck responses to a nearly two-hour saga titled “Minecraft but I survive in PARKOUR CIVILIZATION [FULL MOVIE],” typically shortened to Parkour Civilization by those who like to think of it as a feature film. It is the work of a professional Minecraft content creator who goes by Evbo. And yes, Parkour Civilization does take place on a map created within the popular sandbox building game, with a very important caveat: literally everything in this iteration of Minecraft, from work to money to food to survival itself, is predicated on the ability to make cool jumps. Hence, parkour civilization.

Evbo’s videos typically involve some inventive twist on the Minecraft format: “Minecraft if it was played backwards,” “Minecraft if there were NO RULES,” and “Minecraft but it’s in the FUTURE” are among the many concepts he has brought to life for an audience of 2.7 million YouTube subscribers. But nothing to date has matched the ambition of parkour Minecraft, something Evbo called “my greatest project on the channel” in a pinned YouTube comment. (He did not return a request for comment.) Why has Parkour Civilization proven such a hit, going extra-viral in the past month as a wider audience discovered it, amassing nearly 28 million views despite its ridiculous runtime? Because while it may have started as a gamer gimmick, the narrative that emerged is compellingly strange, hilarious, enigmatic, and maybe even profound, rich with unexpected echoes of contemporary life.

It was one year ago that Evbo uploaded the first installment of the series that he would eventually cut together as Parkour Civilization, and viewers were immediately thrust into a Kafkaesque scenario. “Let’s go, open up, it’s time for parkour,” we hear. These gruff words are directed at our protagonist — Evbo — who explains that he is a lowly “noob” in a parkour civilization of floating blocks, made to obey the rules and orders of parkour “pros” from a higher layer of society that he dreams of joining. The pros feed him barely enough to get through a day, and only after he performs a requisite parkour jump to obtain a piece of raw chicken. He could execute a more difficult jump to obtain raw beef, but as Evbo explains: “Here in Parkour Civilization, no one chooses to jump for the beef,” since missing a step means plummeting into an apparently bottomless void (as all of his former neighbors already have).

The jumping-for-beef gag is meme magic in itself — and has helped the Parkour Civilization phenomenon blow up on X (formerly Twitter) in recent days. Yet Evbo’s tale pursues this fascinating illogic of the parkour universe to even greater extremes. On the surface, you have the classic hero’s journey: Evbo’s quest to become the chosen noob who overcomes “impossible” challenges to reach the level of parkour pro. As he risks everything to rise to the top, however, he comes to understand that reality itself is not what he believed. Before you know it, Parkour Civilization has turned into an elaborate satire of the corporate state, wealth inequality (we learn that, in general, all the parkour pros are born with their special status), corruption, hustle culture, propaganda, and structures of oppression.

While it would be unfair to spoil the conspiracy that unravels, it should suffice to say that Evbo faces all kinds of vertiginous dangers, from deathtraps in the “Parkour Temple” to a stint in the diabolically cruel “Parkour Prison.” The mounting suspense as he makes progressively harder death-defying leap is undeniable — and just one more reason that fans have made the case that Parkour Civilization counts as a bona fide independent film. A work of gonzo outsider art, to be sure, but a film nonetheless. And, until earlier this week, you could review it on Letterboxd.

Alas, Letterboxd depends on metadata supplied by the Movie Database (TMDb), a collaboratively maintained movie and television database that also allows users to rate and discuss what they’re watching. The site (not to be confused with online movie database IMDb) removed Parkour Civilization from its listings after one or more supporters added it, with the result that information and reviews about the video have also disappeared from Letterboxd, to the disappointment of many who consider it genuine cinema. (TMDb did not immediately respond a request for comment on the decision.)

“Just because it’s on YouTube does not mean it’s any lesser of a high quality film,” one Letterboxd user wrote on X, in a post that has collected 5,000 likes. “It has actors, writers, and an engaging plot spanning nearly 2 hours. Please add it back.” Some speculated that the video’s latest surge in popularity, driven by posts on X, attracted TMDB’s notice and led them to delete a listing that had remained up for months.

Of course, that snub hasn’t really diminished the Parkour Civilization phenomenon. Between the admiration of its political subtext, comparisons to epic anime series and Dante’s Divine Comedy, fan art and edits, and, naturally, jokes about jumping for beef, it has firmly established its place in the internet’s canon (if not, say, Martin Scorsese‘s). And a legendary web artifact is no less an accomplishment than an Academy Award.

With all that lore and the frenzied cult following, it’s probably for the best that Evbo has already made a sequel to Parkour Civilization, uploaded to YouTube in June: “Minecraft but I survive AGAIN in PARKOUR CIVILIZATION [FULL MOVIE].” Whether he will follow Hollywood formula by rounding out a trilogy remains to be seen. “This is my goodbye to Parkour Civilization,” he wrote in his comment on the video, adding, “for now.” Stay tuned, then, and in the meantime, don’t look down.