Why we love the Minions

7-20-22

We love minions and can't seem to help being lured in by their antics and silly ways. For the record, Minions are fictional yellow creatures that appear in Illumination's Despicable Me franchise. They are characterized by their childlike behavior and their language, which is largely unintelligible. Minions are taking the movie world by storm again with signs of a follow up again in the works. Ok, we're going to admit it. Minions is a winner.

That big family film from last week continued to make money this week though not nearly as much. Minions: The Rise of Gru fell 57% in its second week down to $45.6 million. That brings its total to $210 million, the eighth-best for a July release after 10 days, ranking just behind its predecessor, Minions, which had $215.7 million. That film also had a $49.2 million second weekend, so The Rise of Gru is trending slightly below but still pretty close to the first film, which ultimately finished with $336 million. In other words, it’s very possible for this sequel to get itself over $320 million. Minions’ third weekend fell over 53%, and it was barely beaten by newcomer Pixels. The Rise of Gru’s third weekend will have a new animated challenger, but it may have a window to make up a little ground at the box office.

The animated film, which is the fifth in the Despicable Me franchise from the animation company Illumination, follows 11-year-old Gru (Steve Carell) as he tries to become villainous enough to join a group known as the Vicious 6. The Minions have been a part of our lives since 2010's Despicable Me. From there, they became beloved by boomers in sincere Facebook memes. And in no small part thanks to that, they became fodder for ironic memes from millennials and gen z.

The minions are adorable little creatures that are also quite mischieveous and there are 10,400 minions that work for Gru. They may seem young and carefree but their quite old. They've existed for at least 60 million years, making them one of the oldest surviving complex organisms on the planet. Throughout history, they've served different masters including ancient Egyptians and vampires.

So we beg to ask the question; why do some of them have one eye and others have two? The more obvious reason why they have one or two eyes is that it is used as a plot device so that the Minions can be distinct to movie viewers. Another popular question about minions is their stylish goggles. What's that about? Without glasses, minion's vision is blurry. When because of, a purple minion, one of the minions lost his goggles, he was not able to see properly. So that appear to be reason behind wearing goggle.

What about the cute jibberish that minions speak - some of which sounds like spanish, and some of it sounds like.....nothing we can identify. Minionese, the language of the Minions, is not a real-world language but rather it is a borrowed one from existing languages that have been mashed up together to create the gibberish that these cute, lovable creatures speak.

The Minions are small, yellow henchmen shaped like pill capsules or yellow tic tacs. They are depicted as being roughly one-third to one-half the height of humans but they were later revealed to be two and a half feet tall. That might be about knee-high give or take a few inches.

In closing, here's another factoid that you can toss at your friends about minions: Minions are physically invincible and immortal. In the film Minions, when Stuart, Bob and Kevin were tortured on the rack, their bodies were able to stretch easily; throughout all three films, they've been hit by various objects on their bodies, got their head stuck in a jar, and etc., without any ill effect. They've been blown up, sent into space without a helmet and literally abused and pulverized by one another without much damage except a bit of embarassment. How can you not love that?