YMMV / Minions: The Rise of Gru

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• Adorkable: Otto, the new Minion in the film, is quite dorky with his braces, making him come across as a nerdy Minion.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: The biker that takes Otto to San Francisco and bonds with him along the way. Being voiced by the legendary RZA helps.
• Harsher in Hindsight: At the end of the film, it's revealed that Wild Knuckles faked his death in order to escape jail and become both Gru's mentor for his future villainous career and a grandfather figure to him. Yet, he was the last character played by Alan Arkin, who died in 2023.
  • Also, it's implied he died for real before the events of the Despicable Me movie series.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In the climax, Belle Bottom takes advantage of the zodiac stone to transform herself into a dragon in order to get her revenge on Gru and defeat the anti-villainy league. In 2023 there was another Illumination movie whose main villain is a reptile.
• Magnificent Bastard: Wild Knuckles is the elderly founder of the Vicious 6, and shows that despite his age, he's still one of the world's greatest villains. Having lead the 6 to successful crime for decades, Knuckles survives the betrayal by his team and begins scheming to pay them back dearly for their treachery. Knuckles kidnaps Gru in an attempt to claim the Zodiac Stone, and though this fails, Knuckles takes on a mentorship role to Gru and the two's first outing is ripping off the Bank of Evil, and succeeding! After seemingly sacrificing himself to help Gru take down the Vicious 6, Knuckles reveals he faked his demise and escapes to continue being a mentor to Gru.
• Memetic Mutation: See this film's section on the franchise's meme page.
• Nightmare Fuel: Despite all the slapstick that occurs in the climax, it's when the Vicious 5 transform into Zodiac animals when the gloves come off. In fact, Belle demonstrates her incredible power by demolishing the AVL's equipment and vehicles, causing them to flee. And when Gru tries to escape, she catches him and ties him to the hands of a clock tower that will rip him in two when it strikes a certain minute, but Otto saves him in the nick of time. Thank goodness for Wild Knuckles, Gru, Kevin, Stuart and Bob combining their forces to stop them for good.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: Continuity errors aside, the film is considered to be a massive improvement from its predecessor, as it focuses more on Gru, tones down the Toilet Humour, and redeems the Minions themselves.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: The Vicious 6 are regarded as the movie's weakest points by movie goers. The issue is that many of them (barring their leader Belle Bottom) receive very little screentime and don't display significant characterization or in-depth interactions with each other, thus making them come off as Flat Characters. It also doesn't help that they have an All-Star Cast voicing them but have very few lines, leaving them underutilized.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: As expected for an Illumination film, despite the low budget, the animation looks gorgeous and is a massive step-up from the first film due to being extremely colorful and bright.
• Win Back the Crowd: After the mixed reception of Minions and Despicable Me 3, it seemed like the Despicable Me franchise was starting to be on its last legs, with the possibility that Minions: The Rise of Gru could be a Franchise Killer. Instead, a combination of being a Surprisingly Improved Sequel and the amount of mainstream publicity the "Gentleminons" meme resulted in the movie being a major hit becoming one of Illumination's biggest films period and injecting a lot of like back into the Despicable Me franchise.
• Woolseyism: The Vietnamese dub refers to the Vicious Six as Hội Sáu Xa. Sáu Xa is a pun on the word "sáu" (six) and "xấu xa" (evil), which sounds very fitting considering the fact that the Vicious Six is a six-man group of villains.

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