'Minions: The Rise Of Gru' Is Leading Us Into A New Era Of Bad Memes

It seems like lots of people are excited now that Minions: The Rise of Gru has been released. Really, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Any appreciation for the movie is ironic, aside from those who go for the sole sake of seeing the minions out of a genuine love for them, which is certainly not healthy. For all the middle-aged moms out there, please, I'm begging you, don't make more minion memes. They're not "in" right now. They never were in, honestly. They're some of the worst content the internet has to offer, and that's saying something.

The movie is deeply flawed for a number of reasons. First of all, look at the title. The real star of this movie isn't Gru, it's the minions. And if you've ever seen the movie Minions, you know just how poorly this goes. Despicable Me is a beloved franchise for the story of Gru and his adopted daughters, but over the years, it's been shifting its focus toward the minions, and this is probably just because the studio perceives that we enjoy minions more than any part of the movies because of all of those awful memes. A lot of people love minions, but why? They have no lines, they look identical, and they had a mysterious hiatus between the years of 1933 and 1945 during their mission to serve "the most evil man in the world."

With that being said, critics are not exactly loving the latest minions movie. I don't really know what kind of critics are willingly subjecting themselves to reviewing this movie (except for me, but that's because I have no dignity). They report that the plot is a bit incoherent and cliche, and any adult moviegoer seems to view it similarly to the way we view shows like Cocomelon and Caillou. It's kind of just static that plays on the TV to make kids smile and laugh. Well, at least they're enjoying it, because the rest of us aren’t.

Even the ironic memes about the movie have gotten out of hand. A trend called "gentleminions" has started up, which involves groups of teens who insist on wearing full suits to the theater to watch the movie. They always show up in a group, and apparently they’ve been so loud and obnoxious during screenings that they’ve been banned by several theaters, and anyone who shows up wearing a suit for the movie will be denied a ticket and told to leave. Of course, people are still trying to find their way around this, but the trend has become so unhealthy that theater workers have reported being harassed by these people. And that’s not exactly in the gentleminions spirit.

We've seen our share of bad movies this year. But we loved them nonetheless, like the infinitely mediocre and somewhat nonsensical Morbius. But even though we're joking about showing up in theaters wearing suits for the occasion, I'm pretty sure no one of meme-making age will be going to see it aside from the small handful that got kicked out of the theaters for starting mosh pits to "Rich Minion". Except for a few moms who really want to make some more minion memes, which will certainly have some unfortunate repercussions on the internet.

In a few weeks, this movie will be all but forgotten, and the only thing we’ll have left is a bunch of popcorn-stained suits and some regrettably unfunny memes. It’s not exactly an ideal picture of online humor, and it’s not something we can enjoy the same way as Morbius and other below-average movies, because we know that there are so many people with genuine intentions and a love of bad memes with little yellow one-eyed men making “silly” faces with a bad mom joke next to them. We don’t want our bad sense of online humor regressing further. So please, think twice before you post that minion meme. Do it for the greater good.