
it has been eight days later Minions: Rise of Gru Premiere, U.S. movie theaters have yet to resume. Gru– Thousands of spectators came, many in formal suits, cheering loudly and occasionally throwing bananas at the screen to celebrate the most unlikely box office hit of the year. In the past week, the only thing that has probably had more views than the movie itself has been the hundreds of TikToks and tweets about it.
Rise of Gru is the fifth film in the Minions series, from despicable Me In 2010. The plot focuses on Gru, an 11-year-old with a vague Russian accent who hires a team of minions on a quest to become a supervillain.Gru is the protagonist, but in reality, the film is about the Minions – a soft yellow speck whose origins were explored in 2015 minions, The third part of the franchise. They speak bubbly gibberish (a random mix of French, English, Spanish, and Italian), dress almost entirely in denim, and infuse the film with a slapstick comedy that has kept them popular with kids for a decade. welcome.
Minion mania, then, is nothing new. The first four films have grossed more than $3.5 billion worldwide, making them the highest-grossing animated film series of all time.But even those movies don’t compare The rise of Gru, That pushed the series past the $4 billion mark at the global box office and hyped the internet so much that even people who had never seen it despicable Me Has become part of #minionscult.
For some, it’s pure random chaos. One video explained #minionscult as a viral challenge to “take over TikTok” with a banana emoji and matching profile picture. Of course, random chaos is exactly what minions do best. In one movie, they used their vast laboratory resources to create a fart gun. Because why not!Trend-setting TikToker, @HutchBucketz, just wanted to see if Universal would invite him to the premiere Rise of Gru If he generates enough hype. (Sadly, the studio didn’t.)
Others, many of them young adults who grew up with the franchise, have banded together around another trend. It includes group appearances at the cinema, wearing formal attire, and greeting each other with Gru’s gentlemanly demeanor. The presence of these #GentleMinions became so visible over the weekend that at least one theatre in the UK put up a sign warning it would not allow customers in suits and ties to enter.At the same time, GM released a tweet To everyone who shows up to @Minions in a suit: we see you and we love you.
Ryan Broderick, who writes the Garbage Day newsletter on Substack, says #GentleMinions may have become a reference to the early memes of the 2019 movie clown, There people posted pictures of men like incel with the caption “Two tickets clown, Please. “Young people in suits ask for “30 million tickets” minions“It felt like a riff on an old trend.