Review: Minions & Monsters: There’s life in the old franchise yet<\/a><\/p>\n“But if George hadn\u2019t liked the general concept of the movie or he didn\u2019t like me, it would never have happened but the fact that he is in there is also a choice. We always wanted George Lucas for that scene”<\/p>\n
Lucas\u2019s cameo was also inspired by Coffin\u2019s boyhood. “I saw Star Wars as a child in Detroit,” he says. “And it was that movie that started my passion for drawing and making movies. My passion started with Star Wars.”<\/p>\n
![\"Minions](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/00249c12-614.jpg\"\/)
\nMinions & Monsters is in cinemas on 1 July<\/p>\n
59-year-old French Indonesian animator, voice artist, and director Coffin is the not remotely evil genius behind the Minions and over the past decade the misadventures of the Esperanto-spouting yellow numbskulls have become the most successful animated movie franchise of all time, having taken $5.5 billion at the global box office.<\/p>\n
Minions and Monsters is the seventh movie in the Despicable Me\/Minions series and it boasts a starry cast including Jeff Bridges, Christoph Waltz, Jesse Eisenberg, and Alison Janney.<\/p>\n
The film sees the prat-falling Minions fetch up in silent era Hollywood where they quickly become movie stars and attempt to make their own creature feature.<\/p>\n
![\"Minions](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/00249c14-614.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n
Of course, this leads to the usual carnival of chaos involving a gag every two seconds, Buster Keaton style slapstick, some eye-catching new characters – not least a nerdy robot called Dort (played by Eisenberg) – and some well-aimed satire at Hollywood itself.<\/p>\n
The Minions have become an unstoppable force over the past decade. Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons – who are also yellow – has often said that his characters are based on family members and friends but that was never the case with Coffin and the Minions.<\/p>\n
“The first concept of the Minions was that they were those big muscular thugs who were helpers of the Gru character in the first movie, Despicable Me,” he says. “They evolved into workers in overalls and became creature-like because it was weird having them as humans.<\/p>\n
![\"PARIS,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/00249c0f-614.jpg\"\/)
\nMinions and me: Pierre Coffin presents the different stages of animation and their creative process, from drawing sketches to releasing the full 3D animated film, during a Minions & Monsters presentation At Illumination Paris Photo credit: Aurore Marechal\/Getty Images for Illumination and Universal Pictures<\/p>\n
“We found that to make Gru sympathetic to the public, it would be great to have him being served by these cute, charming little creatures. it\u2019s a great contrast. There is a lot of childish humour in there, that\u2019s probably me. the Minions are for people who have kept their childhood spirit alive.”<\/p>\n
The kay to the franchise\u2019s huge success in foreign markets is that we are able to understand the Minions without really understanding them.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s all very much Coffin\u2019s creation but before Minions & Monsters, he was ready to quit the Minions altogether and move on to other work. No wonder – he does all the voices himself and he admits that it can be exhausting.<\/p>\n
“It is and that\u2019s one of the reasons I asked Chris, our producer, to stop doing these movies because I found the language of the Minions very hard to do and make it understandable,” Coffin says.<\/p>\n
“When we were making the movies, we were asking the Minions to be more understandable and carry plot points and it became a bit more complicated. I wasn\u2019t sure if I was the correct person to do all that. It took a toll on me and it took doing and re-doing . . . I didn\u2019t want to repeat myself.<\/p>\n
“Also, it\u2019s not easy. I\u2019m not an actor. I can\u2019t improvise and, weirdly enough, I need to write all the gibberish and non-sensical words I\u2019m saying. I have to rewrite and rewrite until it works and makes sense.”<\/p>\n
Minions & Monsters is in cinemas on 1 July.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Minions creator Pierre Coffin has said that he had no problems whatsoever getting George Lucas to make a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":532150,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[93,61,60,270],"class_list":["post-532149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=532149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532149\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/532150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=532149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=532149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=532149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"PARIS,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/00249c0d-614.jpg\"\/)