What Makes ‘Minions: The Rise Of Gru’ So Special

Yesterday marked the release of the sequel to prequel Minions. And it’s already breaking records just in its opening weekend.

The film follows the Minions after finding Gru in the end of the 2015 film, and utilizes the same protagonists, Bob, Kevin, and Stuart, along with adding Gru and Otto. It also introduces us to the fiercest team of villains of the time, the Vicious 6.

Some contributing factors to the film’s success can be attributed to how it reconnects with older audiences who grew up with these films, and can be seen as 34% of the viewers on opening weekend were between the ages of 13-17. It allows youths of all ages to see these beloved characters again, while introducing them to a new audience.

The other factor to this remarkable success is the one-of-a-kind social campaign that wasn’t even organized by Illumination themselves. Although the in house marketing was successful using memes like a minionified The Office intro, and ran a fantastic Tiktok presence, by creating challenges and trends with hashtags. The last factor of this was other creators creating the #GentleMinions trend, where you show up to Minions wearing formal attire. This absolutely blew up across social platforms, leading to teens in suits needing to be banned from seeing the film to due how energetic they are, but this did give the film a marketing campaign that no one could’ve ever expected.

Aside from all of this, the film itself is truly enjoyable, and will allow families with teenagers, toddlers, and anyone in between to attend. While telling a story about trust and togetherness, it also shows that people may not live up to your expectations, and they make mistakes, but most importantly that that’s okay.

Although being animated, there are solid aspects of cinematography, and overall a good story. With news of Despicable Me 4 being greenlit for a 2024 release date, we will undoubtedly keep the minions on our screen for the time being.

Simply put, this is a good movie. It’s a feel-good, fast-paced action-filled adventure, that others have said, “Was so sweet and just a happy movie and I loved it so much because it made me feel warm and fuzzy.” To miss out on this cultural anomaly would be unfortunate, so go see Minions: The Rise Of Gru in theaters now.

Our official rating is a 9/10 Cameras.