At least one major movie theater chain is banning fans from seeing the new Minions movie in nice clothes because of—what else?—a TikTok trend gone too far.
The trend, provenance unclear, involves groups of young, mostly male fans dressed up in suits to watch the very unserious Despicable Me spinoff Minions: The Rise of Gru.
Part ironic and part sincere, the stunt has taken off across the U.S., where the film sits at No. 1 at the box office. Videos with the hashtag #GentleMinions have racked up nearly 30 million views on TikTok. Some show throngs of clean-cut young men filing into movie theaters and the malls that house them, an equally eerie and compelling sight. Universal Pictures even acknowledged the trend on opening day, hinting at fans to keep it up.
“To everyone showing up to @Minions in suits: we see you and we love you,” the studio tweeted Friday.
Most theater managers contacted by The Daily Beast have run into few issues with the spiffy patrons.
“Nothing really happened. We just had people show up in suits on Friday,” said Brian Muñoz, manager of the Orlando Premiere 14 cinemas in Orlando, Florida.
But across the pond, Odeon Cinemas in the U.K. has barred “any group of guests in formal attire” from seeing their favorite gibberish-spewing yellow creatures on the silver screen, according to signs posted in some of the chain’s 290 movie houses and shared on social media. The company’s been quiet on what these dapper delinquents are actually doing, with a spokeswoman only telling The Daily Beast that a “small number of incidents in our cinemas over the weekend” led the chain to “restrict access in some circumstances.”
One video, posted by TikTok user and Odeon employee Abdullah Asim, shows popcorn strewn all over the floor and seats of an empty auditorium.
Asim says the mess came from a group of disruptive suited-up teens. They were so obnoxious that other moviegoers asked for refunds, he said.
“Whilst checking the screenings, many people in suits were either told to be quiet or stop causing disruptions as they were ruining the experience for the customers who didn’t go there for a trend and actually wanted to enjoy the movie,” he told The Daily Beast on Wednesday.
Things have quieted down since Odeon introduced the suit ban, but he says he continues to get hate online from Minions fans who felt called-out by his post.
“Some users also decided to be racist towards me and other people who agreed that behaving in the way that they did for the trend was not good or suitable,” Asim added. (All this, and the movie isn’t even in the top six releases in the U.K. this week.)
Some fans are dead-set on jumping on the trend, especially now that it’s under threat.
On Tuesday, British TikToker James Normandy posted a video of himself cleverly bypassing the Odeon’s warning sign by wearing his suit underneath a hoodie and sweatpants, complete with a banana—the Minions’ fruit of choice—tucked into his waistband in a sign of defiance.
Whether the fans are really rowdy or not depends on who you talk to, but the #GentleMinions trend has clearly left social media confused for the past few days.
“Bro what is going on with the minion movie,” read one tweet on Saturday alongside a video of teens in blazers and slacks marching toward a showing.
Part of the trend’s allure is how easy it is to join in on the fun.
Bill Hirst, who lives in Sydney, Australia, told Variety that he and his friends hopped on the trend pretty quickly after hearing about it.
“My mate saw one of the first videos that was quite small at the time. We wanted to do it just for fun,” the teenager said. “We just chucked on our suits and went straight to the cinemas…It was very spontaneous. We had our formal literally a couple days before that. We had all had our suits ready.”
Whatever it is, it’s working. The movie has broken several records, becoming the highest-grossing family film since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and attracting an unusually large percentage of 13- to 17-year-olds for a kids movie, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
