Fans Wonder Why Minion Memes Generated Big Bucks While Morbius Flopped

It's hard for anyone to predict meme cycles, but movie studios seem to have a particularly tough time doing it. A movie can do everything possible to try and make itself a meme, but the films that gets memed the most tend to be popular commercial movies from major studios. It makes sense that there were a lot of memes about Encanto, for instance, because millions of people saw that movie. This reality begs the question: can a film that has been memed to death before it has even been released help its marketing? Yes and no.

Posted by Emmy Ward

This weekend, the newest flick in the Despicable Me franchise, Minions: The Rise of Gru, did exceptionally well at the box office, especially among the teenage demographic.

For anyone who has been online for the past week, this might not come as a surprise, as minion memes have had a significant increase in popularity anticipating the film's release. Many young minions fans went to the theater in formal attire to celebrate the minions with the reverence they deserve.

The minion memes' success coincided with the movie's commercial success, making people wonder: why did this work for Minions: The Rise of Gru but not the recent Sony flop, Morbius, which was similarly the subject of ironic fan memes.

Fellow Twitter users had different opinions on the cause of this discrepancy, including nostalgia, the nature of the memes, and the minion's status as cultural icons.

These factors are good arguments for why Minions soared while Morbius sank. I also might add that while both memes were drenched in irony, minions have much more joy than Jared Leto's Morbius could ever muster. If the proliferation of memes like these is any indication of success, Greta Gerwig's Barbie is sure to be a hit.