‘Minions: Rise of Gru’ Is the Meme-Fueled Success Sony Thought ‘Morbius’ Would Be

The fifth movie featuring the criminal mastermind Gru and his army of sassy two-and-a-half-feet-tall jelly beans released this past weekend, breaking a July 4 box office record. Next week, it will have to compete with Marvel and Taiki Waititi’s Thor: Love and Thunder. While the MCU movie may overtake it, Minions: Rise of Gru is certainly putting up a fight as scores of young people, seemingly fueled by memes, came cosplaying in large groups, eager to see the Illumination and Universal Pictures flick.

When not dressed in recently dry-cleaned graduation attire, young fans donned outfits to look like minions, Gru, and a number of other popular characters.

Its popularity collided with the current Barbie movie ticket meme. (Itself a spinoff of the Joker ticket meme.)

This wasn’t just a few people at a few theaters. The people who were going to see it unironically combined with the people seeing it for the meme is what resulted in that box office smash. Transformers: Dark of Moon (2011) previously held the record for best box office release on a Fourth of July weekend, at $115.9 million. Minions: Rise of Gru passed that by raking in $125.1 million between Friday and Monday.

This film stars Steve Carell as Gru once again and introduces Taraji P. Henson (as Belle Bottom) and Michelle Yeoh to the series. Yeoh was already riding high on the best film of the year (Everything Everywhere All At Once) and now is in one of the most financially successful films of the summer.

Why this movie?

There’s probably a bunch of compounding factors as to why this all came together. The bigger question is probably … why this and not a movie made for older audiences. The answer lies in the memefication of minions. Unlike the Morbius memes that came to just make fun of the movie and tricked Sony into a failed rereleased, minions are actually loved by people—not by me, but by people, either people who always loved the meme, or people who made fun of minion memes so much they unironically began to grow an attachment to it.

For years, minion memes have been a scourge on any social media site our elders inhabit. Minion memes with quotes became something like Garfield or Dilbert, except those started as comics and not as jokes that became so cringy that people made ironic shitposts about them. The day Minions: The Rise of Gru came out, Polygon released an excellent article diving into (and rating) the world of Facebook Minions meme pages. I wouldn’t be surprised if the meme-ified turnout at the movie itself was partly planned in these groups, even with the demographic of those showing up in person looking so young.

If this weren’t a meme, and older kids (many of the videos feature people that look between the ages of 14 and 22) were dragged to see this movie with their families, the hype wouldn’t be here. Because it’s the internet, these memes continue into cursed photoshop images.

Cops, firefighters, and theater staff start shutting it down

Like any funny internet trend, it got out of hand rather quickly. While the official Minions TikTok account is dropping love in the comments of some of the videos, theaters are starting to be proactive about refunding tickets and not allowing people in dressed up. Why? In addition to crowds posing a fire hazard risk, disruptive whooping, flash photography during the movie, and (in some cases) bananas being thrown in the theater were too much.

There are several videos of this just on TikTok alone, let alone other social media sites.

As someone who worked at a movie theater for six months and that person who will be that person if someone is on their phone during the movie, I understand these precautions. I absolutely do. However, some theaters could offer special screenings similar to the Rocky Horror Picture show fan community where it’s just those that want to be extra during the movie. As for the bananas, that’s much messier, so maybe selling plushy bananas to keep/throw and offering banana pudding (for those that can adjust their menu) to eat would be a better alternative.

No matter what movie you’re watching, please clean up after yourselves and put your garbage in the actual trashcan, not in the seats and on the floor.

(via PhilipDeFranco Show, image: Illumination/Universal Pictures and Royal Anwar via Pexels.)

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