How The Minions Are Changing Animation

[Music] there's a pretty good chance you've never seen this popeye short don't forget it will be coming back to it but do you remember scrap the squirrel that used to show up before every Ice Age movie and at the very end he had a couple minutes of screen time it would be funny serve a very very small narrative purpose and he'd be gone don't forget him even monsters Inc Toy Story 3 Finding Nemo Lion King Shrek all these movies have one thing in common these guys these things beep each and every one of them out in one all-important way the box-office minions released in 2015 and sits at number 3 on the top grossing animated films of all time list breaking the 1 billion gross mark as though the peep was nothing at all but this just like Scrat is probably where their movie should have ended this is mediocre animation ok maybe here this is instead 5 minutes and 40 seconds into the movie so far it's acted like a great short film of the minions bouncing from master to master and this is the most creative and interesting bit of the entire film it's also all it needed to be instead it's a short film idea dragged out across an hour and a half it's not a bad movie by any means but it is bad for the animation industry illumination the studio behind minions isn't the only offender but they will be used as a stepping stone for this conversation we've got four problems here the first is the simplest illumination represents a lot what came before but what illumination has done with Despicable Me is prioritize a dollar in a dangerous way and almost all film money doesn't equate to quality but it's also no coincidence that the top 10 best reviewed animated films of the 2000s averaged a budget of 141 million dollars great animated films require time and often money Walt Disney once said he didn't make movies to make money he made money to make movie too much of modern animation disregards this approach an illumination for their goal in the words of minions director Pierre coffin is to shorten the time it takes to make a movie as much as possible while also spending as little as possible to do this they let Studios like Pixar do the investing in the animated tech while they push to get as much out for as little as they can moving the medium well know where Despicable Me franchise averages a budget of 74 million per movie which would be fine if the approach didn't have a direct effect on quality it creates a pursuit for marketability as opposed to storytelling when the focus becomes money the product changes the film's release date was actually pushed back just to take advantage of added merchandising opportunities for animation houses like Sony and blue sky chasing the easy dollar has become the goal create something marketable for as little as possible and worry about the rest later this leads to problems like the meandering chaos of the cobbled together minions script the unoriginal 'ti of things like Secret Life of pets and things like five Ice Age films minions shows that you don't need quality to sell you just need something recognizable you can get out quickly when the goal is a dollar ideas suffer which is the second problem of modern animation that minions represents part of what has made Pixar so successful is their creation by committee approach but that is expensive and time-consuming so instead places like illumination in Sony animation take an isolated creative approach they have a select couple of higher-ups that do everything even if they fail minions is not a good movie it's heartless random and narrative ly disjointed its screenwriter also got the job after writing illuminations other random and narrative ly disjointed movie hop and writing the script for the Universal Studios minions mayhem ride yes that is genuinely a reason he got the job according to coffin their approach with Despicable Me unlike most movie studios is to create a series of vignettes and ideas and go from there they don't start with a script they start with set pieces and mash them together essentially animated films like minions are nothing more than a series of uncorrelated ideas played one after the other and this is again to cut down time and the story suffer as a result the minions were a billion dollar light bulb moment literally created based on Star Wars Ewoks and Opel Loompas they sell but they also don't speak they've never really been characterized and yet somehow these side characters got their own movie movie there is a series of ideas a collection of gags with no purpose no soul no direction as if the script was freestyled over the course of a day by the end of that film not only do you still not care enough to tell the characters apart but you also couldn't care less about them this emphasis on commercial worthy moments / storytelling hurts the film we saw this with a peg as a Madagascar into a much lesser extent puss-in-boots characters that also share something else in common that they could be almost anything else cars is fine it's sequels not so much but ask yourself why exactly do the cars need to be well cars why not people in college why do the characters are saying need to be animals in something like Toy Story the toys go through uniquely toy issues as does Remi and ratatouille the dead in Coco those stories don't work if those characters are portrayed any differently but cars would sing certainly would even secret life of pets another illumination film is a reskin version of stuart little who also doesn't need to be a mouse hell he could have even been a kid and this certainly goes for the minions their language their existence these ideas function solely because of how easy it is to manipulate their younger audience through again marketing using these surface level ideas the minions lead the pack in this way they're designed serving no purpose other than merchandising sales and cover our images acting almost functionless within the film there's been a wave of poor animated films that do nothing to present a funny idea like the minions a boss baby-talking turkeys and do so simply for the purpose of audience manipulation they don't make anything of these ideas the hook becomes far more interesting in that case in the actual film and that is what is selling and allowing franchises to swim into existence and this is problem four and one you've probably heard before but I think is actually worse than I once believed a Pixar's last ten films the Lord's wholly original studio six have been sequels five illuminations next six announced films are sequels a fifth Shrek film is on the way franchises are everywhere why the despicable Me franchise has over 850 different toy licenses around the world the minion rush app has an expected download total of 25 million and while the minions movie only cost about 80 million to make 600 million dollars was spent marketing it because franchising is good money for an animation studio and for merchandising illumination could get movies out quickly they can spend next to nothing making them because they don't have to have an original idea they don't have to have a great script they don't have to push the medium forward they just have to slap a name in a number on a poster franchising an animation is so much more degrading than live-action in my opinion because the soul of animation should be creativity animation allows for unbridled originality allows for any idea at all to be brought to life and yet what minions has shown is that repeating ideas can land you at the very top of financial charts and that's stifling the media Harshman one quest once pointed out that animation is part of what molds the minds of kids where some of their values become just that and yet it's an industry that is rewarding movies that lacked any real value at all that reward short cuts and unoriginal 'ti over creativity in heart and in turn leaves kids and adults alike with emoji movies and cars sequels but this pattern doesn't have to continue even if studios seem to want it remember that popeye short at the beginning of the video it looked awesome right it was a test for a feature film directed by the man behind Dexter's Laboratory Samurai Jack and the Powerpuff Girls it was also canceled by Sony and in its place we got the emoji movie a casualty of everything discussed here up to now there's nothing wrong with a movie that doesn't have anything to say or something that appeals to people with cash to burn and studios are going to continue to want to make their money but I think there is something inherently wrong with a movie that exists not as art but is product a movie that exists not for qualitative value but for monetary value I think it's high time I put my dollar where my mouth is and start backing the animation that does something worth my dollar to speak out for movies like Popeye I just hope what's left is it piled under a pack of minions by the time I get there [Laughter] [Music]

Channel: Nerdstalgic

Views: 1,456,827

Rating: 4.8645787 out of 5

Keywords: minions, despicable me 3, best animated movies, animated movies, animation, despicable me, minions 2, despicable me 2, nerdstalgic

Id: KG6MdNhsDhI

Length: 9min 32sec (572 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 20 2019