Minions (film)

Minions is a 2015 American 3D computer-animated action-adventure comedy film produced by Illumination Entertainment for Universal Pictures. The fifth feature film from Illumination, it serves as a spin-off/prequel to the Despicable Me franchise. It was directed by Pierre Coffin and Kyle Balda and written by Brian Lynch, and stars the voices of Sandra Bullock, Jon Hamm, Michael Keaton, Allison Janney, Steve Coogan, Jennifer Saunders, and Geoffrey Rush. It was first foreshadowed in the end credits of Despicable Me 2 (2013), where Kevin, Stuart, and Bob, three of the Minions, are seen auditioning for the film.

Minions had its premiere on June 11, 2015 in Leicester Square in London, and was released on July 10, 2015 the United States. Critical response was mixed; some praised the comedic aspects of the film and the performances of Bullock and Hamm, but felt that the title characters were not able to carry the film on their own and the villains were flatly characterized. The film grossed over $1.1 billion worldwide (outgrossing each of the Despicable Me films), making it the fourteenth-highest-grossing film of all time, the second-highest-grossing animated film of all time, and the highest-grossing non-Disney animated film of all time. A sequel is scheduled to be released on July 3, 2020.

Plot
Minions are small, yellow creatures who have existed since the beginning of time, evolving from yellow single-celled organisms into beings who exist only to serve history's most despicable masters. After accidentally rolling their leader T-Rex down a volcano, getting their caveman leader eaten by a bear, crushing a Pharaoh under the pyramids, burning Dracula on his birthday party, and accidentally firing a cannon at Napoleon, the Minions are driven into isolation and decide to start a new life in a cave in the Arctic. After many years, the Minions become depressed, restless, and unmotivated without someone to serve. To regain their dignity and sense of purpose, Kevin, one fearless Minion, decides to set out to find a new master and asks for help. Stuart, a musically inclined Minion, and Bob, a young and inexperienced but enthusiastic Minion, are recruited.

The trio journeys to New York where the year is 1968. After spending the day attempting to blend in, the Minions end up in a department store for the night, where they discover a hidden commercial broadcast for villains advertising Villain-Con, a convention for villains and supervillains in Orlando. The trio manages to hitchhike a ride with the Nelson family, and impresses them with their accidental villainy. Once at the convention, they see Scarlet Overkill, the first female supervillain, and impress her enough for her to hire them. As Scarlet takes the Minions to her home in London, Kevin contacts the other Minions, who later find a yeti and claim him as their new boss, but they accidentally killed the leader yeti, when a minion plays the tuba, and are chased out of their cave by the other yeti. They make their way to London to find Kevin, Bob, and Stuart.

At her home, Scarlet explains the plan to steal the Imperial State Crown from the Queen of the United Kingdom and promises to reward the Minions if they successfully steal it, threatening that she will kill them if they don't. Her husband Herb supplies them with inventions to aid in the heist, but they are nearly caught when they break into the Tower of London, which leads to a highly publicized chase that ends with Bob crashing into the Sword in the Stone and pulling it free, removing the Queen from the throne and becoming King Bob. Enraged by this, Scarlet confronts the Minions, so Bob abdicates the throne in her favor. Scarlet expresses her gratitude, but is also undeterred because she feels betrayed. Scarlet imprisons the three in a dungeon to be tortured by Herb before her coronation, but afterwards, they are left alone and escape with the intention to apologize to Scarlet.

Making their way to Westminster Abbey, the three of them interrupt the coronation by accidentally dropping a chandelier on Scarlet, who immediately orders their execution. Dozens of villains chase them and Bob and Stuart are caught while Kevin finds his way into a pub. He sees Scarlet on a television, promising that she will kill Stuart and Bob if Kevin doesn't show up by dawn. Kevin sneaks into Scarlet's home to steal weapons, but inadvertently triggers a machine Herb was building and enlarges himself. He tramples through London, rescuing his friends just as the other Minions reunite with them. Scarlet tries to eradicate them, but Kevin swallows a massive missile she fires at them. Scarlet and Herb attempt to escape with her rocket-dress, but Kevin holds onto it. The missile detonates, causing it to explode. After the Minions briefly mourn him, Kevin returns, having returned to his normal size.

The original Queen from the earlier part of the story receives her place on the throne and crown back and rewards Bob with a tiny crown for his teddy bear and Stuart an electric guitar (later replaced by a snow globe after an over-enthusiastic Stuart breaks the guitar), and she knights Kevin for his heroism. She suddenly realizes that her crown is missing, and Kevin leads a chase after Scarlet and Herb, who survived the explosion, are fleeing through the crowd with the bejeweled crown until they are suddenly frozen in place by a young Gru, who steals the crown from them and takes off in a rocket-powered motorbike while the Minions stare in awe. Bob gives his crown to the frozen Scarlet, to which she seems to show appreciation, and the Minions see Gru as their new potential master and give chase to follow him home.

Voice cast

 * Pierre Coffin as Kevin, Stuart, Bob and The Minions
 * Sandra Bullock as Scarlet Overkill
 * Jon Hamm as Herb Overkill
 * Michael Keaton as Walter Nelson
 * Allison Janney as Madge Nelson
 * Steve Coogan as Professor Flux and The Tower Guard
 * Jennifer Saunders as Queen Elizabeth II
 * Geoffrey Rush as The Narrator
 * Steve Carell as Young Gru
 * Katy Mixon as Tina Nelson
 * Michael Beattie as a VNC Announcer and Walter Nelson Jr.
 * Hiroyuki Sanada as Dumo, the Sumo Villain
 * Dave Rosenbaum as Fabrice
 * Alex Dowding as The Royal Advisor
 * Paul Thornley as a News Reporter
 * Andy Nyman as Frankie Fishlips, a Gill-man-like creature super-villain

Additional voices

 * Ava Acres
 * Carlos Alazraqui
 * Lori Alan
 * Kyle Balda
 * Daniel Barker
 * Bob Bergen
 * Melanie Band
 * James J. Cummings
 * John Cygan
 * Brian T. Delaney
 * Bill Farmer
 * Keith Ferguson
 * Helen Fraser
 * Jess Harnell
 * Charlie Hayes
 * Eve Karpf
 * John Kassir
 * Sherry Lynn
 * Lewis Macleod
 * Danny Mann
 * Mona Marshall
 * Gary Martin
 * Mickie McGowan
 * Laraine Newman
 * Andy Nyman
 * Alexander Polinsky
 * Jan Rabson
 * Chris Ragland
 * Zachary Rice
 * Cole Sand
 * Mindy Sterling
 * Tara Strong
 * Will Vanderpuye
 * James Kevin Ward
 * Colette Whitaker
 * James Daniel Wilson

Production
Universal Studios and Illumination first announced in July 2012, that the Minions from Despicable Me would get their own spin-off film, then planned for a 2014 release. Brian Lynch, previously known for co-writing another Illumination film, Hop (2011), as well as DreamWorks Animation's Puss in Boots (2011) and Universal Animation Studios' Swapped (2008) and Gabriel Garza 2 (2014), was asked to write the film's screenplay, due to his prior work writing for the theme park ride Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem.

On August 21, 2012, it was announced that the film would be released on December 19, 2014. In February 2013, Sandra Bullock joined the cast to voice Scarlet Overkill, with Jon Hamm joining two months later as her husband Herb Overkill. On September 20, 2013, the film's release date was pushed back from December 19, 2014, to July 10, 2015, due to Universal's satisfaction with the successful July 2013 release of Despicable Me 2 and desire to exploit fully the merchandising potential of a summer film.

Soundtrack
The official soundtrack for the film was released on July 10, 2015, by Back Lot Music. The soundtrack also features the film's original music, composed by Heitor Pereira. The only minion not to receive a character music is Stuart, though individual soundtracks focusing on him appears on all songs.

Release
The film had its premiere on June 11, 2015, at Odeon Leicester Square in London, United Kingdom. On June 17, 2015, it was released theatrically in Indonesia and Australia. The next day, June 18, saw releases in Malaysia and Singapore, and a screening at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival, in France. It was released theatrically in the United Kingdom on June 26, 2015. In the United States, the film premiered on June 27, 2015, at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, and went into general release theatrically on July 10, 2015. It was released in China on September 13.

Marketing
The first trailer for Minions was released by Illumination on November 3, 2014, through YouTube. McDonald's released Minions-related Happy Meals on July 3, 2015. A series of comics and graphic novels based on the film is being published by Titan Comics. The series includes four comic book issues, two digest collections, two hardcover editions and a paperback collection. Drawn by Didier Ah-koon and Renaud Collin, the series launched on June 17, 2015, with the release of the first issue of the Minions comic book and the first digest collection. In April 2015, Pantone announced the creation of a new official Pantone color, 'Minion Yellow' (displayed at right), in partnership with Illumination Entertainment.

Universal's parent company, Comcast, and its partners spent $593 million in advertisements and promotion across all media and platforms. Universal spent a total of $26.1 million on TV advertisement for the film. Universal described the promotional campaign as the "largest and most comprehensive" in its history.

Home media
Minions was released on Blu-ray (2D and 3D) and DVD on November 16, 2015, in Europe and on December 8, 2015, in North America. The film is accompanied by three short films titled Cro Minion, Competition, and Binky Nelson Unpacified. Extras include Making Of and Minion Jingle Bells.

Upon its first week of release on home media in the U.S., the film topped the Nielsen VideoScan First Alert chart, which tracks overall disc sales, as well as the dedicated Blu-ray sales chart with 63% of unit sales coming from Blu-ray.

Box office
Minions grossed $336 million in North America and $823.4 million in other territories for a worldwide total of over $1.159 billion. Worldwide, it is the fifth-highest-grossing film of 2015, the highest-grossing animated film of 2015, the second-highest-grossing animated film, the 11th-highest-grossing film, and the third-highest-grossing film released by Universal Pictures. It topped the worldwide box office for three consecutive weekends.

By breaking $1 billion worldwide, Minions became the second non-Disney animated film after Paradoria, third animated film after Toy Story 3 and Frozen, and the 24th film in cinematic history to do so. Needing 49 days, it became the fastest animated film to reach $1 billion, surpassing Toy Story 3 (75 days). This made Universal Pictures the first studio ever to have four films earn more than $1 billion at the worldwide box office in a single year following Paradoria, Furious 7 and Jurassic World. Deadline.com calculated the net profit of the film to be $502.34 million, when factoring together all expenses and revenues for the film, making it the most profitable animated film of 2015, the most profitable Universal Pictures film of all time and the second-most profitable picture of that year overall, behind only Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Critical response
The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a rating of 56%, based on 200 reviews, with an average rating of 5.8/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "The Minions' brightly colored brand of gibberish-fueled insanity stretches to feature length in their self-titled Despicable Me spinoff, with uneven but often hilarious results". On Metacritic, the film has a score of 56 out of 100, based on 35 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". In CinemaScore polls, cinema audiences gave Minions an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.

Sequel
In January 2017, a sequel to the film, titled Minions 2, was scheduled to be released on July 3, 2020. It will be directed again by Balda, with co-direction by Brad Ableson, and written by Lynch.