‘Minions: The Rise of Gru’ Is the True Cinematic Masterpiece of 2022

I didn’t choose to see Minions: The Rise of Gru—rather, it was thrust upon me. As a chronically online human being, I’ve been bombarded with a barrage of photos of minion-kinis (bikinis with minion eyes and mouths), endless Minion-themed lamentations of lost loves (“watching Minions alone because me and her Gru apart”), and suited lax bros parading through local theaters to view the summer’s hottest flick in style. After seeing the film, as I knew I must, I emerged from Cinemark like a phoenix from the ashes, stuffed with popcorn, face damp from tears, and vowed to hit up Walmart for a bald cap and a pint of yellow body paint the next day.

Minions meme culture isn’t new—if you scroll back to 2018 on my finsta, you’ll stumble across some potentially scarring Gru x Minions content—but this summer’s wave of fanaticism heralds a new era: the return to in-person theatergoing for the kids raised in a pandemic on a shared Netflix subscription. For longtime moviegoers suffering pandemic withdrawal, Minions promises a nostalgic outing, one spearheaded by a generation that can hardly remember what it’s like to kick back in front of a blaring screen with a bucket of overpriced popcorn.

It’s hard to miss the “GentleMinions” trend dominating TikTok, in which scores of teenagers wear black tie attire to see Minions in theaters, propelled by a five-year Minions drought and an undoubtedly fire soundtrack. Minions are dynamite—their round, utterly strange presence punctuated with indecipherable noises is accessible to all ages and funnily absurd. In fact, wearing formal attire to see Minions seems to be a winking form of respect for their unadulterated ability to bring audiences together. 

Since the movie’s release on July 1, videos of suited attendees have racked up tens of millions of views on TikTok. Some theaters have started to turn away hordes of well-dressed kids after groups filmed themselves throwing bananas or moshing in front of the big screen. On Twitter and Instagram, veteran Minion meme-ers (aka the ones who ran Tumblr in 2015) joined forces with the teenagers to overrun every social media channel with Minions-themed one liners and cursed images.

So does Minions’ internet fame translate to box office success? Sales say yes, probably. The Despicable Me franchise has long been a reliable moneymaker for Illumination Entertainment; even the worst-performing film of the franchise, Despicable Me 3, earned $72 million on its opening weekend. Minions: The Rise of Gru smashed box office records as the biggest 4th of July opening ever, grossing $125 million domestically over the long weekend. The film vastly overperformed expectations, beating out highly anticipated films like Lightyear and Elvis and the sixth weekend of the improbably leggy reboot Top Gun: Maverick.

I saw the original Despicable Me in theaters in 2010 when I was nine years old. I loved it. Something about having  a penchant for deviance struck a chord in me (that year, I dressed as a minion for Halloween). I returned at least once a month to catch a new movie with my family. Regal Cinemas, plopped in the middle of a mostly empty strip mall furnished with a Waffle House and a Starbucks, was my church, and the screenings schedule was my Bible. 

The nostalgia of pre-COVID moviegoing and the desire to see, like, a feel-good family movie and not have to think about the state of the world, underscores the mad dash to Minions screenings. It’s the thing that stoked the same warm feeling that I felt watching Despicable Me for the first time a decade ago.

Before the GentleMinions swept TikTok, I could hardly imagine my moviegoing experience would be worth posting about. Sure, there were grainy photos of my friends and I posed in front of movie posters (so many peace signs), shaky videos of my neighbor and I belting songs after we saw Pitch Perfect 2, and tickets tacked to the bulletin board in my bedroom of the god-awful horror movies I saw with my first boyfriend. But the theater was private—the infinite, malleable space between school and home.

Once the pandemic hit, I all but stopped watching movies, opting to lounge in bed with my laptop on my chest, tuned into whatever sitcom caught my fancy. I fell into binge-watching shows for eight hours a day, mindlessly scrolling through TikTok, and then mindlessly scrolling through Instagram Reels when I deleted TikTok for my sanity. My sisters returned to theaters with trepidation after a few years, lobbying our parents for the right to see Spider Man: No Way Home (to which my mother conceded, but emphasized no eating and leaving immediately after the movie). 

No Way Home was our first sign of what was to come, boasting the biggest opening weekend ($260 million) since the start of the pandemic en route to becoming the third-highest grossing film ever at the domestic box office (behind Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Avengers: Endgame). Audiences roared, laughed, and cried in community for the first time in two years, but the emergence of the Omicron variant and a dearth of high-profile, family-friendly releases kept audiences away from theaters for the next few months. And No Way Home lacked the essential quality that makes Minions so brilliant: endless meme-ability and the assuredness that Minions was primarily a good movie because the internet made it that way.

Prior to Minions, I hadn’t been to see a movie in theaters since before the pandemic—and I hadn’t wanted to, because cautious moviegoing today seems so far removed from the gleeful weekends of my childhood. That is, until I opened TikTok to a greasy teenage boy buying 20 tickets for his be-suited friends to see the latest Minions movie and rounded up my housemates for my glorious return to the theater. In a packed room thick with the scent of sweat, Old Spice, and extra butter, I surrendered myself to raucous cheering from a smattering of well-dressed moviegoers of all ages. It was well worth the wait.

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