‘Minions 2’ And ‘Stranger Things’ Show The Power Of Original Franchises

Despicable Me was a new IP aimed at “today’s kids,” while Stranger Things works for young audiences who couldn’t care less about its pop-culture inspirations.

I don’t think that the various Tik-Tok kids who showed up to theatrical showings of Minions: The Rise of Gru wearing suits made the difference between an $85 million Fri-Mon opening (on par with Despicable Me 3) and a $125 million Fri-Mon opening (akin to Minions). This online meme/call-to-action was successful because it was directed at a film that the young participants wanted to see. The tongue may have been as much in cheek with #GentleMinions as it was with #MorbiusSweep. Still, participants either already wanted to see the Minions sequel in theaters or had a casual interest in a movie they expected to enjoy, which was pushed into “ticket sold” status by participating in this specific online game. Simply put, audiences showed up this weekend in droves because Minions: The Rise of Gru looked like a lot of fun. Of course, that’s a vast simplification, or is it?

Despicable Me was a new franchise aimed at kids and not their parents.

Why did Minions: The Rise of Gru break a record for an Independence Day holiday opening weekend? It’s partially for the same reason that Stranger Things has become the first English-language Netflix release to top 1.1 billion global hours viewed in the first 28 days. The middle school and high school-aged teens who showed up in theaters this weekend would have been young children when Despicable Me opened theatrically in 2010, and the kids who stumbled onto Stranger Things are now six years older. At the time, Illumination’s Despicable Me was an original animated feature from an upstart studio (Illumination) aimed at kids of that moment in time. It wasn’t a reboot, revamp or relaunch of a formerly successful IP from generations past. It was a new kid-targeted IP aimed at “today’s kids,” which created new marquee characters (Gru, the Minions, etc.) and pop culture icons.

The Universal-released Despicable Me opened a week before Chris Nolan’s Inception, on the tail-end of when the mere idea of a big-budget animated fantasy, be it from DreamWorks, Pixar or Blue Sky, was an almost automatic theatrical event. Despicable Me grossed $251 million domestic from a $56 million debut and $543 million worldwide on a $69 million budget. It was also a leggy and crowd-pleasing performer in theaters and at home. Despicable Me 2 was not the result of franchise plans or cinematic universe aspirations but because moviegoers saw and liked the first film. Despicable Me 2 earned $368 million domestic in July 2013 from a $143 million holiday debut and $975 million global on a $76 million budget, more than any prior animated release ever at the time. Minions grossed $1.1 billion in July 2015, while Despicable Me 3 earned $1 billion in July 2017.

Minions: The Rise of Gru was supposed to open in July 2020, five years after Minions and three years after Despicable Me 3. It has now been five years since the respective last installment. Absence did make the heart grow fonder. Those young kids who grew up on the series aged to tweens, teens and young adults who never stopped at least somewhat enjoying the anarchic and comparatively non-sentimental antics of the mad scientist and his bizarre, yellow-skinned henchmen. It was, alongside DreamWorks Animation’s How to Train Your Dragon (2010, 2014 and 2019), the definitive animated franchise of the 2010s. It was aimed at kids instead of nostalgic adults. In 2022, Minions is “still cool” in that semi-ironic Shrek fashion. It also serves as a grim piece of pre-Covid nostalgia for kids who have spent much of their lives suffering through a Trump presidency and a global pandemic.

Merely ripping off Point Break or Flash Gordon gets you The Fast and the Furious or Star Wars.

Meanwhile, Netflix’s Stranger Things was a comparative underdog when it debuted in the summer of 2016. It wore its references and inspirations on its sleeve. Still, the Duffer brothers.-created 80’s-set supernatural thriller was an original story with new characters who, by the show’s relative quality and appeal to kids entirely unaware of the references, became themselves marquee characters. Audiences who watched the fourth season didn’t care as much about the pop culture homages or needle drops. They wanted to see what happened next to Eleven, Steve, Nancy, Max, Mike, June (Winona Ryder in a shrewd casting) and Hopper. Kids who loved Star Wars didn’t know or care about John Ford westerns, Flash Gordon serials or Akira Kurosawa actioners. Stranger Things has become a massive hit with kids who don’t have Pavlovian responses to 80’s pop culture callbacks. It’s a defining “rip-off, don’t remake” triumph.

It stinks that the decade since The Amazing Spider-Man has seen a total normalization of reboots. A 2007 movie like Disturbia, which ripped off Rear Window (quite well, natch), is now downright aspirational. Hollywood would now remake Rear Window (possibly as a six-hour eight-part Peacock miniseries). This is partially because corporate consolidation has led to big companies getting the rights to make the genuine article. Amazon doesn’t need to make their own Robocop (which was itself a resurrection fable by way of The Wraith) when they can just reboot the existing MGM-owned IP. To be fair, Sony and Universal showed with Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and Jurassic World that you can make something old feel new again. However, when you merely rip off Point Break, you get The Fast and the Furious and pop culture icons (Dom, Letty, Brian, Han, Hobbs, etc.) from that $6.6 billion-grossing franchise.

When you mix James Bond with Alan Quarterman, you get Indiana Jones. When you “rip off” Poltergeist with a modern sensibility, you get Insidious, which is currently developing its fifth installment. Does anyone remember the 2015 remakes of Poltergeist or Point Break? The Child’s Play remake did its own thing alongside Don Mancini’s previous Chucky flicks and the ongoing Syfy television series. But it’s a one-and-done, like most remakes. Meanwhile, Annabelle was a blockbuster spin-off trilogy of evil doll chillers that helped push the Conjuring Universe past $2 billion global. Stranger Things remains Netflix’s crowning achievement regarding worldwide viewership and IP viability. It’s become so successful that actual 80’s-set properties and revamps like It and Ghostbusters: Afterlife have essentially tried to crib its style. It didn’t invent 80’s pop culture nostalgia (see also: The Wedding Singer and Super 8), but it arguably perfected it.

Minions: The Rise of Gru and Stranger Things season four were generational coronations.

We’ve been dissecting the terrible performance of Pixar’s Lightyear for the last three weeks, and I’d be inclined to say, “Whoops, Solo: A Star Wars Story again!” and leave it at that save for the consequences of its failure. The entire theatrical future of Disney’s animated films is now at stake. We now must deal with alt-right political actors proclaiming Lightyear’s failure as tied to online controversy over A) a same-sex kiss between two married grandmothers and B) Chris Evans replacing Tim Allen as Buzz Lightyear. Meanwhile, those same demos declare the triumph of Minions 2 as an “anti-woke” victory even as Minions are asexual and occasionally dress in drag. The same folks crowing about Top Gun: Maverick being a victory for conservative entertainment would be the same ones pointing out its multiple minority characters (including… gasp, a lady pilot) had it tanked.

Top Gun: Maverick and Transformers are a testament to the potential for adult-skewing nostalgia. Concurrently, Minions and Stranger Things are examples of “new franchises” aimed at “today’s kids” being successful enough to become iconic and pop culture-shaping regardless of the homages, references or past-tense inspirations. Following years of Covid-caused delay, these new installments acted as generational coronations for both respective franchises. Their reception celebrated the triumph of the (comparatively) new amid a near-constant flow of refurbished, recycled and relaunched hand-me-downs with huge box office and viewership partially driven by the demographics which helped make them successful in the first place. The #GentleMinions meme and the record-crushing Stranger Things ratings are prime examples of what can still happen when you create new kid-friendly entertainment for “today’s kids.” After all, you make more money from “the first” Harry Potter than trying to discover “the next Harry Potter.”