The Mega Minions have been a long time coming.
The filmmakers behind Universal and Illumination’s “Despicable Me 4“– which has grossed more than $400 million at the global box office — had been having conversations about giving the minions superpowers since the second film in the animated franchise. Instead, they instead opted to transform the yellow pill-shaped scene stealers into mutated purple evil minions for 2013’s “Despicable Me 2.”
The latest installment introduces a “Fantastic Four”-like band of minions with superpowers that create their own minion-estic brand of chaotic comedy.
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As a starting point for the Mega Minions, the filmmakers looked as early designs from when they were developing the second movie, for some inspiration.
“We pulled out some of those old drawings by Eric Guillon to look at what what those conversations and designs looked looked like,” said director Chris Renaud, who co-created the minions with Guillon and Pierre Coffin. He also wanted to keep them fairly simple and archetypal, “not just for the comedy we needed, but also just the amount of screen time that Mega Minions actually had.”
Renaud did additional sketches and talked with the character designers. In the end, the five Mega Minions include Jerry, who is shaped like a round rock and has great strength; Dave, who is top heavy and muscular but with small arms; and Tim, a tall Minion with uncontrollable stretchable arms. Mel is a one-eyed minion, so he became “a sort of Cyclops with heat vision coming out of that single eye.” And finally, Renaud says of Gus, “all he can do really is fly but he’s got a cape, like Superman and an aerodynamic head like a human bullet, which just is kind of ridiculous, but also it kind of reinforces the idea that he flies through the air.”
One of the challenges in creating these characters, Renaud admits, “was trying to find fresh expressions of superheroes” as there are so many in pop culture today, as well as comedic takes on superheroes, in movies and TV, both in live action and animation.
“Ultimately, we found the place to look as always is the fact that they’re minions, which was the way to give them a little bit of a distinction, even though there’s such a breadth of superhero material that’s been done,” he said. “Part of what we were looking for with the Mega Minions was that they weren’t really good at using their powers, just to kind of get comedy out of them.”
This weekend, the “Despicable Me” movies became the first animated franchise to cross $5 billion at the box office. The series began in 2010 with a voice cast that included Steve Carell, Jason Segel, Russell Brand, Kristen Wiig and Mirando Cosgrove.
