Did you know that in the first Minions spin-off film released back in 2015, the movie explained why the loud and obnoxious characters who love to help evil people didn’t lend a hand to any leaders during World War I or World War 2? It’s true. But the latest entry in the franchise, Minions & Monsters, is apparently retconning all of this, and now I have questions.
This isn’t breaking news. Instead, it’s sort of been known for a bit now and was fully confirmed by Universal and Illumination during last week’s CinemaCon. But I missed that, so when I saw a social media post claiming that the new Minions movie showed off footage set during the 1920s and featuring the Minions becoming Classic Hollywood stars, my reaction was: Excuse me, what?
You can see some of this Hollywood action in this previously released trailer.
As I mentioned, the first Minions movie spends its opening minutes explaining the origin of the Minions and their role in history. They always helped out the baddest, most despicable people around, right up to Napoleon Bonaparte in 1812. While helping the French general, they screwed up badly and angered him. So they fled to the snowy north of Russia to hide out and build their own mini-civilization.
And they all stayed there until 1968, conveniently not leaving the cave until well after two of the biggest, bloodiest, and most horrific wars in human history had ended. Fans have long joked about how the creators made sure to canonically hide away the Minions for more than a century to sidestep the Hitler question. Because, yeah, if these Minions truly did try to help the worst, baddest villains around and they were hanging out in the 1930s, well…that would be awkward.
And yet, Minions & Monsters is retconning the ice cave and telling us that at least some of the Minions ventured out well before the 1960s. Now, it is possible that Minions & Monsters will have a solution for this problem. Perhaps the movie will end with the Minions returning to their ice cave after a fun adventure with a baby monster, and they stay there for another 40 years or so. That would make this less a retcon and more a tiny tweak to the timeline. I think the funnier way to solve this would be to have some background dialogue or a newspaper imply that, in the films’ universe, WW1 didn’t happen. It wouldn’t be the first time the Minions franchise has had a massive lore retcon.
Anyway, this was supposed to be a 250-word blog, and now I’m closing in on 450, so I’m going to stop thinking about this and move on. Minions & Monsters arrives in theaters on July 1.