Every month we watch & recap a children’s movie with the Earthquakes and unpack the sneaky media tropes that reinforce bigotry, supremacy, and problematic devices.
Family Movie Night Recap
Minions: Rise of Gru (2022)
Family Movie Night
PROBLEMATIC TROPES TO UNPACK AS A FAMILY
Welcome to the Family Movie Night Series
Less than a year old and already this movie has not aged well.
Minions: Rise of Gru
Screened with R2 (age 8.5) & Q (age 10.5)
Rise of Gru (afflink)
Spoilers Ahead!
Ashia R:
Hey friends! It’s family movie night again – and we’re catching up on the Minions franchise with the latest Minions movie: Rise of Gru.
We open with a badass Foxy-Brown-style villain confidently cruising on a motorcycle and evading…vans or whatever (standard action movie cold open with a chase-scene on city streets). She’s a vision in a perfectly spherical afro bobbing in the breeze, backlit by the sun.
So I guess the Minions folks are finally adding Black and brown folks to the cast. Very exciting. Let’s see how far along we get on the representation scale of tokenism —> ground-breaking.
(As we’ve learned from watching the rest of the Minions franchise – Let’s not get our hopes too high.)
She joins a league of other villains, and this is moving too fast for me to follow but it’s like 15 seconds into the movie and I guess they’re all taking a field trip to Asia?
We immediately swipe to… a…cave…thing, protected with a magical dragon gate in generic South East Asian jungle.
Enter: an older villain with mutton chops and a ‘biker lite’ white dude aesthetic. He Indian-Jones-es his way through the magical gate and booby traps, into the cave to steal a magical/rare/expensive zodiac stone.
Stealing is bad! He’s clearly a villain. But he might as well be a heroic American museum collector, amirite?! HONESTLY WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE?
After daring feats and a narrow escape, he brings the zodiac stone to his fellow villains and they immediately betray him and leave him behind. Because they are villains and it’s important to stay on brand.
Ahh yes, our pre-requisite 12-animal zodiac, inlaid with gold and jade, complete with vaguely orientalist gibberish and nonsense.
End of the cold open – now it’s time to figure out what’s going on!
Cue the opening credits, featuring a Mandarin rendition of ‘Bang Bang My Baby Shot Me Down’ which honestly I am loving.
The family is like “Is this in Mandarin or is this in a Mandarin dialect of Minion babbling?” and I’ll be honest my Mandarin is so bad I had to listen to it twice to figure it out, because I have the Chinese language skills of a 1-year old.
Nathan: Do they dub the minions language into other languages [in non-westernized countries]?
Ashia: That is such a good question and I want to believe the answer is YES, so I’m not going to google it and risk disappointment. (But we all know the answer is no.)
In the American English version of the Minions, as far as I know, they speak a mishmash of Latin-based languages: Spanish, English, French, and Italian. So I *want to believe* there are Minions dialects that expand beyond the languages of western colonialism.
This opening music is set against a bunch of 70’s orientalist designs, which I am… hesitantly nervous about.
We haven’t gone too far yet but… this aesthetic is giving… Suburban American Chinese Restaurant circa 1989.
For a movie with this budget, appropriating an East-Asianish aesthetic, they could have tried a little harder on designing that stone? It’s not like character-based langues are trademarked. Or hard to look up.
I mean look at all the white people with East-Asian gibberish tattoos they can’t read.
Everyone can google! Do better, Minions artists!
I still have hopes though! Because the Minions are funny and I want to enjoy this and end orientalism from uining everything for us!
FOCUS! Back to the movie.
Now I’m not sure where that group of new villains are in the Minion timeline, but we’re back with Little Gru As a Child, having a blast with his minion friends, breaking into movie theaters, spraying everyone with a canned cheese, and eating ice cream in front of folks trying to get in their cardio. Standard villain stuff.
Oh! Okay I know what’s going on now. The Supervillain Team that stole the Zodiac Stone is called the Vicious 6, and Little Gru is applying to join them.
Little Gru appears to be like… 8-12 years old? And he and his mom live in Generic American Suburb in 1975, although it kind of feels more like… I dunno, pre-industrial-decline-Detroit?
I know it’s silly to nitpick this ridiculous movie – but if Gru has lived in America for almost his entire life, why is Adult Gru’s vaguely Eastern European accent still so thick?
I chose to believe adult Gru made a conscious choice to reject the assimilation of an American accent, because he’s proud of his birth culture. Power on.
Oh hey – a minion I’ve never seen before. Our new friend Otto is particularly plump, wears adult(?) braces, and he makes Gail the Snail sounds.
I love him immediately and hope nothing terrible happens to him. But also – WHERE IS OTTO in all of the other Minions movies?
I guess I’m way too invested in this but – Otto isn’t in any of the prequels of sequels on the Minions timeline. Is he okay? Does he die or become estranged by the end of this movie? Why was he demoted to non-speaking parts after his braces were removed and he switched to a night retainer?
Where has he been this whole time? It’s a confusing enough question that frankly I’m nervous about WHAT IS GONNA HAPPEN TO MY NEW FRIEND OTTO?!
He must be protected. The next hour of my life will be dedicated to thoughts & prayers for his safety.
According to the Vicious 6, when the clock strikes midnight and the Chinese New Year begins… yadda yadda… villain threats… you get the idea.
Wait. WAIT. Did we FINALLY FIND A FAMILY MOVIE FOR THE CHINESE NEW YEAR?!?!?!
I mean we’ve been settling for *any* Chinese movie. Turning Red, random Monkey King movies – but there isn’t much available for English speakers that we can really rally around every winter for the holiday.
*I am hesitantly excited*
**But also CHRISTMAS ON A CRACKER, do our options really have to be THIS limited?!**
And yes I am so desperate for even ONE movie that acknowledges our most major holiday among a sea of Christmas stories that I am willing to settle for an American mass-marketed movie written by white folks and one French-born Indonesian guy who is definitely the Affable Asian Best Friend Token at all of his white friends’ parties.
REMINDER – the director of this franchise is of Indonesian descent, from France, and between the BIPOC erasure in previous movies and …this …? This is how he’s representing South East & East Asian culture in America? With all the power he holds as the creator of minions and all the money and clout that entails?!
(I am 70% confuse, 30% secondary cringe, and seriously this man is a mystery to me- but also not because internalized white nonsense is so common among API folks).
Anyway – Little Gru (turns out he’s 11 and three-quarters) is utterly adorable. His relationship with the Minions is sweet and loving, and his nervous introduction to the Vicious 6 team makes me want to knit him a scarf and read him bedtime stories.
Unfortunately (but also very reasonably) The Vicious 6 immediately reject him and his application. They were okay with him being a Little person, but not a child. I mean… reasonable!
Which is +1 for disability inclusion
but since Gru is clearly competent, -1 for childism,
and subtract another -1 for ageism against their eldest member from that earlier betrayal.
Poor little buddy. Never meet your heroes.
So Gru swipes the zodiac stone, activating a bicycle / roller-skate chase scene in which we must trust that my friend Otto will keep the Zodiac stone safe!
I’m on the edge of my seat.
Yup. Okay. Otto fucked up. We all saw this coming, he’s a minion! But I’m still pulling for Otto to make a comeback.
But also WHAT IF HE DOESN’T?! He doesn’t show up in the movies later in the timeline even though minions are immortal and can’t be killed – I AM SO NERVOUS.
Anyway, through a series of entertaining but relatively unimportant events, the Minions end up getting chased through San Francisco’s Chinatown during the prep week for the Lunar New Year.
An Auntie doing acupuncture nearby sees the villains beating up on the little minions and she goes Shaolin on them and it’s great, because she is voiced by Michelle Yeoh, and it’s 2022 and after 30 years we’ve finally realized that the Queen of our Heroic Trios deserves to be in ALL THE MOVIES.
The minions decide they want to learn kung fu from Auntie, and in exchange, they offer her kisses. When she refuses, they break out the puppy dog eyes and YES, Auntie, give them everything!!!
‘Ai-ya,’ Auntie Sifu gives in, ‘I will teach you.’
This is holding up for a great new year movie!!! IF Auntie takes over the rest of the movie and it turns into an #OwnVoices Lunar New Year Kung Fu movie.
Hopes!
Cue standard movie kung-fu learning scene where they leap right into weapons and breaking wood wearing… Adidas track suits.
…Okay. Sure.
Everything about this abbreviated kung-fu training scene is giving Hollywood Magic Asian vibes. The only accurate piece of the minions training is the bamboo stick that Sifu Auntie whaps them with whenever they mess something up (which is constantly.)
It’s fine, I still love it. I insist on loving it.
::crossing my fingers Auntie keeps her trap shut and far, far away from ice cream koan territory:::
Meanwhile, Little Gru is bonding with his captor, the older gentleman who originally grabbed the Zodiac Stone, and it’s all very touching.
Once the Minions feel they are adequately trained in martial arts (they are definitely not), they change into yellow Bruce Lee jumpsuits and attempt to infiltrate and rescue Little Gru.
Things happen, visual gags abound, and all of this climaxes into a fight scene where the Vicious 6 use the Zodiac stone to turn into animals from the Chinese zodiac to wreak mayhem and I AM LOVING THIS.
Meanwhile our main Minions, still clad in yellow jumpsuits, run into attack and immediately get turned into three harmless zodiac animals and again, LOVING THIS.
Seven animals represented between the minions and the Vicious Villains. There’s still 5 animals left unrepresented so far.
Wait Michelle Yeoh as Auntie Sifu is the *only* Chinese actress in this whole movie and… surely she’s going to leap into this fight scene?
Like it’s San Francisco Chinatown and it’s kung fu and it’s lunar new year and…where are all of the Asians?
Also: no one in the writing room had the knowledge or sensitivity to be like “Outsiders lighting SF Chinatown on fire is a little problematic in historical context… so maybe we should leave out the background flames?”
Okay the end, I guess? Aside from the complete failure to take into account the historical context of outsiders invading Chinatown and using it as a place to do crimes – I’m… I’m still…hoping?
I mean until we find a truly awesome (or even adequate) Lunar New Year movie, this is a decent addition to our holiday movie collection.
Okay beyond that – it appears this movie is just going to roll over and fall asleep on me and I am STILL SO DEEPLY UNSATISFIED.
- Where is Otto and what happens to him to explain why he’s not in the movies later in the timeline? He is precious to me and I HAVE WORRIES!
- At some point one of the minions turns into a chicken (although it should be a Rooster) for the zodiac and pops out an egg, which hatches into a baby chicken minion. WHERE IS IT? WHAT HAPPENED TO IT? IS THE BABY OKAY?!
- WHO gets transformed into the other 5 non-represented animals of the zodiac?! Don’t they understand that KIDS ARE GOING TO BE DEVASTATED by the lack of representation? R2 is 8 – the target age range for this movie. As a horse…WTF no horses?!
- We’re just gonna leave Chinatown in flames and a Magical Asian trope for our only Asian representation. Really? REALLY? In the year of our Yeoh 2022?!
Let’s underline the fact that Michelle Yeoh is one of the most famous, recognizable, and powerful Asian women in Hollywood after clawing her way up for decades – and she STILL has to take shitty roles back-seat roles like the Magical Asian Grandma?
How far we have not come since Anna May Wong took the only shitty roles available to her. Ugh.
The Lunar New Year / Zodiac / Chinatown / Trip To Asia was so surface-level background for aesthetic purposes only, it feels like we need a new word for this beyond tokenism and orientalism and appropriation. It’s not even yellow-washing.
It’s just… like when white folks put a decapitated Buddha head in the garden. Or in the bathroom. It’s decoration. Really offensive decoration.
All of these questions, on top of the completely oblivious appropriation leave me unsatisfied and questioning my taste in movies. This movie is very funny in the way that my college romances were super duper hot but also hilariously terrible lovers with astoundingly dull personalities.
Like it’s so exciting to walk around with them on your arm, but then also afterward you’re kind of embarrassed because they truly are just a joke version of a human?
These script writers are the kind of frat house lovers who expect oral but never reciprocate and always fall asleep right after. I pity not just the co-workers but also the sexual partners of this entire writing room. We all deserve better.
The Minions franchise are to kids media what Bubble Jon Hamm was to 30 Rock.
The bar is low for Lunar New Year movies, and I guess this is the college boyfriend we keep around for booty calls until something that can string together a coherent plot comes along.
How we calculate the overall awesomeness score of kids media.
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Photographs via Unsplash & Illustrations via Storyset, used with permission.