Essay 2 draft

ESSAY TWO

Minions: An Analysis

In 2010, Illumination entertainment released “Despicable me” which offered a fun, family adventure starring Steve Carell as “Gru”, a criminal mastermind attempting to pull off the ultimate crime. This movie introduced the cutsie little sidekicks “Minions”, little yellow blobs in dungarees and goggles who speak their own language, pulling practical jokes on each other. The Minions existed in the original movie to offer some comedy relief, however they quickly became a favourite of the masses and were featured much more prominently in the 2013 sequel “Despicable me 2”.

The general feel of the 2 movies was fun, family, with well written character’s shown growing throughout the movie. However, in 2015, Illumination Entertainment released “Minions”, putting the sidekick character in their own movie. The movie is supposed to give the character’s a backstory, and expand on the world that was created in the 2 “Despicable me” movie’s, which it does, but the movie falls short in many ways. The story of the movie explains that the minions follow the biggest villain there is at the current time and name them their master. When they go years without a new master, 3 set off to find a new villain to become their master, with the film being a prequel to the “Despicable me” movie’s, obviously, everyone knows who they eventually end up with. There are many flaws with this movie, and it was clearly made to cash in on the popularity of the movie, rather than being a movie with a good story which builds upon the character’s and to expand the story of the created world.

The movie is supposed to be a family comedy, so the target audience is children. This becomes very obvious very quickly as the humour of the movie revolves around animated slapstick, fart jokes and the character’s obsession with bananas. Although humour is something subjective, it falls short, it shows through in this movie that there is a reason why in the original “Despicable me” they were used in such moderation, because as their own characters, the humour becomes repetitive and dry. There is only so many times which you can say the word “banana” in a cute voice and still have it be funny on the 2nd hour of a feature animated movie. It is displayed throughout the entire movie just how different this movie is to “Despicable me” as there is not as much attention to detail and character emotions are clearly not thought about as much.

Nowadays 3d animated movies tend to dominate, and the animation in this movie is incredible for what it is. It is always very clean and smooth, and is pleasant to look at throughout. The designs that were used are somewhat different and less exaggerated than those used in “Despicable me” which gives the film less of a feel. The designs lack the charm and humour of the designs of the 2010 and 2013 films, which takes away from the films overall feel. It feels forced, which we know because the movie was made to cash in on the success of the first 2 movies.

“The truth that they are just business is made into an ideology in order to justify the rubbish they deliberately produce” (The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception, Adorno, 1944). I believe this quote by Adorno perfectly sums up the making of this movie. This movie proves that there is no need to make a good film nowadays, filmmaking in this sense has become a standard business which reflects on mindless masses to produce monetised garbage over and over regardless of whether it is an actual good movie or not. People flock to these kind of movies, which lets down the animation industry as a whole because there is legitimate creators with original, creative and often humorous ideas and cannot put them into practice because of lack of funding from large studios. The same large studios that funded Illumination Entertainment, which is capable of making decent, well written animated features, however choose to cash in on their success’ rather than making more original ideas, like they did with “Despicable me” and its sequel. There is a severe lack of character in the movie, there is no empathetic connection with any of the character’s like there were in the original movies. Purely a forced humour which comes from the same joke a few times every 10 minutes, which quickly becomes unfunny out of its source.

The question becomes, why are these character’s not funny on their own? And the answer is clear, that they have no available back and forth with the character’s which cause the other movies to hold up, characters with a legitimate empathetic connection with the audience at this point because we have seen them grow and develop. However, these characters existed to be sidekicks, and sidekicks alone, so trying to take them out of this role, where they are used sparingly for humorous effect, does not work when you try and force them into the spotlight without any real development or emotion. And that is what these characters, the minions, lack. Emotion. Because we cannot understand all of what they are saying, and they are usually obsessing over 1 thing, trying to force another joke, there is no time to empathise with them, which causes our minds to wander and lose interest in what is going on on-screen.  

This was an unnecessary sequel to well made, well thought out movies.