By Emmanuel Gundran
Illumination Entertainment is the newest animation studio to step up to compete with the big two studios, Disney and Dreamworks, in the animated film industry. Despite Illumination being so new compared to Disney and Dreamworks, they have risen to popularity in the animated film industry in such a short amount of time.
The company started in 2007 after Chris Meledandri left his former position as president of 20th Century Fox’s animation branch so he could start his own animation studio. While he was with Fox, he was executive producer over animated features such as Ice Age (Wedge and Saldanha, 2002), Ice Age: The Meltdown (Saldanha, 2006), and Horton Hears a Who (Hayward and Martino, 2008). His new studio, Illumination Entertainment, would produce one to two animated films a year starting on 2010 for Universal Studios. Illumination’s first film Despicable Me (Coffin and Renaud, 2010) was an instant hit and placed the fledgling studio on the map. It tells the story of an arrogant, genius super villain who tries to use three orphaned girls in his latest evil plot but slowly becomes more attached to them and wants to take care of them. Throughout the film, Gru (Steve Carell) struggles with the importance of the three girls as his adopted daughters and of his career as a supervillain, all the while competing against a newer, younger super villain. It grossed $543 million worldwide, critics praised it as “fresh, sincere, often lovely and a great deal of fun” (O’Hehir, 2010) and “thoroughly adorable” (Mondello, 2010), and it became the start of the studio’s first franchise. This includes a sequel, Despicable Me 2 (Coffin and Renaud, 2013), a spin-off featuring the Illuminations’s mascot characters, Minions (Coffin and Balda, 2015), and another sequel, Despicable Me 3 (Coffin and Renaud), to be released this year. Despicable Me was a good sign for Illumination that they could create solid animated films, and establish themselves in the industry.
Illumination Entertainment is the newest animation studio to step up to compete with the big two studios, Disney and Dreamworks, in the animated film industry. Despite Illumination being so new compared to Disney and Dreamworks, they have risen to popularity in the animated film industry in such a short amount of time.
The company started in 2007 after Chris Meledandri left his former position as president of 20th Century Fox’s animation branch so he could start his own animation studio. While he was with Fox, he was executive producer over animated features such as Ice Age (Wedge and Saldanha, 2002), Ice Age: The Meltdown (Saldanha, 2006), and Horton Hears a Who (Hayward and Martino, 2008). His new studio, Illumination Entertainment, would produce one to two animated films a year starting on 2010 for Universal Studios. Illumination’s first film Despicable Me (Coffin and Renaud, 2010) was an instant hit and placed the fledgling studio on the map. It tells the story of an arrogant, genius super villain who tries to use three orphaned girls in his latest evil plot but slowly becomes more attached to them and wants to take care of them. Throughout the film, Gru (Steve Carell) struggles with the importance of the three girls as his adopted daughters and of his career as a supervillain, all the while competing against a newer, younger super villain. It grossed $543 million worldwide, critics praised it as “fresh, sincere, often lovely and a great deal of fun” (O’Hehir, 2010) and “thoroughly adorable” (Mondello, 2010), and it became the start of the studio’s first franchise. This includes a sequel, Despicable Me 2 (Coffin and Renaud, 2013), a spin-off featuring the Illuminations’s mascot characters, Minions (Coffin and Balda, 2015), and another sequel, Despicable Me 3 (Coffin and Renaud), to be released this year. Despicable Me was a good sign for Illumination that they could create solid animated films, and establish themselves in the industry.
Despicable Me was Illumination's first successful film and begun the studio's first franchise.
After Despicable Me film, Illumination quickly got to work on even more animated films. Their first film after Despicable Me was Hop (Hill, 2011), a film about the son of the Easter Bunny who wants to be a drummer instead of become the new Easter Bunny. Unfortunately, it was neither a box office nor critical hit, making less than half of what Despicable Me made and currently ranking at 25% on Rotten Tomatoes and 41% on Metacritic. A.O. Scott, film critic for the New York Times, watched the film with his son and all his son could offer in favor of it was that it “was better than Alvin and the Chipmunks.” (2011) Additionally, Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a “D”, describing it as “Alvin and the Chipmunks with only one chipmunk” and criticized the writing for not giving Russell Brand, who stars in the film, any good material. However, after Hop, Illumination’s other films would perform better than it with varying levels of success. While Minions is Illumination’s top grossing film made so far, making $1.159 billion in the US alone, it had overall bad and mediocre critical reviews. Lukewarm or negative reviews wouldn’t stop Illumination from making more box office money, as Despicable Me 2, The Secret Life of Pets (Renaud, 2016), and Sing (Jennings and Lourdelet, 2016) would achieve higher box office results than the first Despicable Me despite having lower critical reception than it. Illumination films, in general, may not always receive stellar reviews compared to Disney or Dreamworks’ films, yet they manage to receive as much money in the theaters as them.
Hop has fallen to the wayside after the success of Illumination's later films.
With the overwhelming amount of money that Minions received at the box office, one might ask how has Illumination accomplished a feat such as this: making a film that receives lukewarm to negative reviews yet makes loads of box office money. One factor that may have lead to this could be how the Minion characters have diffused into all kinds of products from mobile games, to children’s clothes, food, bedsheets, “backpacks, Tic Tacs and Amazon delivery boxes.” (Faughnder, 2015) One need only walk into any given store and find a plethora of Minions-themed merchandise. This was also the case for other films that crossed $1 billion threshold such as Frozen (Buck and Lee, 2013) and The Avengers (Whedon, 2012). The wider the audience that’s reached through merchandising, the more people who will go to see the film. Another factor could be the style of its humor and how it is easy to entertain children. Because the Minions do not speak English, the film relies on their gibberish, frequent slapstick antics, and their occasional banana references to carry most of the humor. For casual movie-goers, especially families with children, this type of humor works.
One can find Minions plastered on almost anything imaginable in stores.
Max being introduced to his new housemate If Disney and Pixar’s strength is telling compelling stories with moral lessons then Illumination’s strength is making simple but humorous and sometimes heartwarming romps. The Secret Lift of Pets, for example, has a simple premise and plot. When pet owners are not around, their pets will take over the house or go on adventures outside. The film focuses on Max (Louis C.K.) who is forced to live with another dog named Duke (Eric Stonestreet) when his owner (Ellie Kemper) adopts him Duke from the pound. What follows is the two of them escaping the clutches of the city’s dog-catchers through the streets of New York while slowly becoming closer companions. The premise of non-sentient beings gaining sentience when their “owners” are not around can be easily compared to Toy Story (Lasseter, 1995), yet it doesn't hold the film back from being an overall solid and entertaining experience. Some might also say that it tried to capitalized on having anthropomorphic animals in animated films since Disney’s Zootopia (Howard and Moore, 2016) had come out earlier the same year. But the stories and themes for each of these films are different enough from each other that it would not be fair to draw the comparison. While Zootopia is a buddy-cop action-comedy that discusses societal and workplace racism, The Secret Life of Pets is an adventure-comedy that deals with friendship and getting along with everyday people you don’t like.
For Illumination’s overall simple story-telling and forced Minion marketing, it has a solid sense of identity that is evident throughout its films and what makes a competent contender with Disney and Dreamworks.
For Illumination’s overall simple story-telling and forced Minion marketing, it has a solid sense of identity that is evident throughout its films and what makes a competent contender with Disney and Dreamworks.
Works Cited:
Faughnder, Ryan. “Universal’s ‘Minions’ hits $1 billion worldwide box office.” Los Angeles Times. 28 Aug, 2013.
Gleiberman, Owen. “Hop.” Entertainment Weekly. 28 July, 2012.
Mondello, Bob. “‘Despicable Me’: Oddly Adorable.’ NPR. 2010 9 Jul, 2010.
O’Hehir, Andrew. “‘Despicable Me’: Steve Carell’s adorable supervillain." Salon.com. 9 Jul, 2010.
Scott, A.O. “Bunny Doesn’t Want to Work, Just Wants to Bang the Drum All Day.” The New York Times. 31 Mar, 2011.
Faughnder, Ryan. “Universal’s ‘Minions’ hits $1 billion worldwide box office.” Los Angeles Times. 28 Aug, 2013.
Gleiberman, Owen. “Hop.” Entertainment Weekly. 28 July, 2012.
Mondello, Bob. “‘Despicable Me’: Oddly Adorable.’ NPR. 2010 9 Jul, 2010.
O’Hehir, Andrew. “‘Despicable Me’: Steve Carell’s adorable supervillain." Salon.com. 9 Jul, 2010.
Scott, A.O. “Bunny Doesn’t Want to Work, Just Wants to Bang the Drum All Day.” The New York Times. 31 Mar, 2011.
