Illumination (2007-2015, 2022-present)

**Illumination** is an American film and animation studio founded by Chris Meledandri in 2007 and owned by Universal Pictures.

## Movies

### Upcoming

***Co-director:***Patrick Delage

## Why They Proudly Say "ILLUMINATION!"

1. They are very good at animating in all of their films, as their films are inspired by the Popeye shorts, which is very noticeable in many of their films, especially *Despicable Me*.
2. They have made many good films, such as the *Despicable Me* trilogy, *The Secret Life of Pets*, *Sing* along with its sequel, and *Minions: The Rise of Gru*.
3. All three of the mainline *Despicable Me* films were great, however the third one wasn't quite as good as the first two, as they actually had a very original idea.
4. As well as them being good at animating, they are also decent script writers and are really great at picking actors for their films, except maybe the 2023 Mario movie, where they "replaced" most of the cast with celebrities and reduced Charles Martinet to cameo roles (most likely as Wario and Waluigi) for no other reason than to increase profits.
	* However, the Mario movie (nor any footage, for that matter) isn't out yet as we still need to see how the voice acting is gonna go. Even then, some of the choices for some characters were praised (Jack Black, Charlie Day, and Seth Rogen in this case) while others are more mixed (Chris Pratt is notable in this one).
5. Some of their films have some really good use of humor, even though some of them mostly consists of toilet humor (though thankfully they're starting to tone down the toilet humor nowadays).
6. Their films generally have likable characters, such as:
	* Despicable Me franchise: Gru, Lucy, Margo, Edith, Agnes, the Minions (including Otto, Kevin, Stewart, & Bob), Dr. Nefario, Dru, & Wild Knuckles
		+ Gru, in particular, was a sympathetic character that became a villain due to being neglected by his parents (who revealed to have divorced in the third film, and was separated from his twin brother) and friends during childhood (although every installment after Despicable Me 2 retconned it by confirming that Gru was always a villain or that he was interested in villainy since his childhood).
	* Dr. Suess characters: Granny Norma, Pipsqueak, the O'Hare's guards, Cy the O'Hare delivery guy, the Lorax, the Grinch, Max & Cindy-Lou Who
	* The Secret Life of Pets franchise: Max, Gidget, Duke, Snowball, Katie, Mel, Chloe, Buddy, Tiberius, Pops, Norman, Sweetpea, Molly, Peanut, Daisy & Hu the White Tiger
	* Sing franchise: Buster, Rosita, Mike, Ash, Eddie, Johnny, Miss Crawly, Big Daddy, Gunter, Meena (in the 2nd film, where she redeems herself), Porsha, Nooshy & Clay
7. Their films also have many memorable villains, such as:
	* Despicable Me franchise: Vector, El Macho/Eduardo, the Nelsons, Balthazar Bratt, Belle Bottom, Stronghold, Svengeance, Jean Clawed, & Nunchuck
	* Hop: Carlos
	* The Secret Life of Pets franchise: Ozone, Tattoo & Viper
8. They have a pretty good relationship with Nintendo, as they announced a Mario movie which is scheduled to be released on April 7, 2023. In fact, it even led to the point that Chris Meledandri, the producer of every single film from Illumination and CEO and became the Outside Director of Nintendo. If this goes well (and this movie really was a hit at the box office), they may consider having them make movies about Nintendo's other properties (like *Pikmin*, *Splatoon*, *Kirby*, *Wario*, *Star Fox*, *Metroid*, *The Legend of Zelda*, *Yoshi*, etc), with rumors speculating a Mario movie spinoff in development centered around Donkey Kong. Heck, even Charlie Day expressed interest in wanting to do a *Luigi's Mansion* movie.
9. Most like many other great iconic animation studios, including someone who went defunct in 2021, their animation is now starting to improve a lot, as the new *Sing 2* has much better animation that is comparable to that of a live-action film.
10. Their songs are really catchy and cool, such as *Happy* by Pharrell Williams, on the topic of that, they have a good relationship with them, to the point that a film from him is in development.
11. Before *Minions* made the characters unfunny, the minions themselves were somewhat clever and had some pretty good albeit uncanny character designs that fits their weirdness very well.
12. Their CEO, Chris Meledandri, is a very good person in real life, although he was responsible for many of the flaws in most of their films.Template:Citation needed
13. They mocked NFTs on their official Minions account since NFTs are harmful to the environment.
14. Their opening logos are pretty funny. The best variation was used in *Sing 2*, where the Minions sing the company's name as the camera slowly zooms out to reveal the text above them.
15. They treat their employees really good unlike most animation studios, except for the *Minions* movie, where the film was treated badly due to the characters' success and hint in the post credits scene of *Despicable Me 2*.

## Bad Qualities

*Note'*: Most of these qualities mainly apply to the company from the mid-2010s to the early-2020s, specifically when *mh:awfulmovies:Minions* came out in 2015 and lasted until *Sing 2* came out in 2021. Thankfully, the studio was able to recover from these after the release of *Minions: The Rise of Gru*, which thanks to the critical and commercial success of that film, managed to save the studio from further decline in quality.

1. They have made some mediocre-to-average films (all depending on your view), such as:
	* *Hop* (the only animated/live-action hybrid film from the studio)
	* *the 2012 animated adaptation of Dr. Seuss' The Lorax*
	* *Minions* (with many fans agreeing to be the studio's weakest film)
	* *the 2018 animated adaptation of Dr. Seuss' The Grinch*
	* *The Secret Life of Pets 2*
2. **Quantity over quality:** Similar to Blue Sky Studios with their *Ice Age* film franchise, they sometimes rely too much on their main *Despicable Me* franchise, which only served to cash in.
	* Although most of the films in the franchise are good/decent, the same can't be said for *Minions* (but its sequel *Rise of Gru* was a massive improvement).
3. They not only postponed *Minions: The Rise of Gru* to 2021, but postponed it again to 2022 which doesn't make any sense at all and made many people upset. Even it was justified with many countries eventually getting COVID-19 cases again amid new mutations. Also, there is currently merchandise for the movie planned for several years like Lego (as long as 2019 in fact), so it further explains why this business strategy makes no sense and was done just to maximize profits.
4. They overuse several backgrounds and assets for every movie. For example, *mh:awfulmoviesMinions* reused the mall from *Despicable Me 2*.
5. They don't seem to have the best track record when it comes to their artstyles as some of their films (whether good or bad) have the same or similar character designs. This isn't necessarily bad, but it can get repetitive (with *Sing* being the worst offender of this) although the films based on Dr. Seuss have designs somewhat similar to the original books.
	* Still, even with *The Grinch* and *The Lorax* kind of using Dr. Seuss's art style, they still mostly retain Illumination's art style unlike Blue Sky's adaptation of *Horton Hears a Who!*, which does a better job adapting Dr. Seuss' art style.
6. Their humor in most of their films, while sometimes decent, sometimes tend to fall flat such as the Minions' main humor mostly consists of potty humor, which can be very commonly found in the 2015 *Minions* film (most notably the infamous scene where Stuart hypnotizes the three London guards to **strip down to their underwear** while singing "Hair" from the musical of the same name in Minionese), where it is used as the main source of humor. This is pretty sad because the earlier films had way less toilet humor. Thankfully though, the humor is now toned less in recent films and the humor consists of the Minions' shenanigans although it's still a mixed bag at times.
	* In almost every Illumination film, a character is seen in their underwear.
7. Some of their films can be rehashes of other films. For instance, *mh:awfulmovies:Hop* uses a similar premise to *mh:awfulmoviesThe Smurfs* and *mh:awfulmovies:Alvin and the Chipmunks* of a human character(s) meeting a creature that they have never met before and they allow them to stay over in their house.
	* It should also be worth noting that Tim Hill is also the director of the movie, and he also directed *mh:awfulmovies:Alvin and the Chipmunks*, and that could explain some of the similarities.
8. White the casting choices are good (or okay) overall, some of the choices feels rather off and incorrect. An example would be in *The Lorax*. Zac Efron and Taylor Swift are miscast as Ted and Audrey to the point where they sound way too old for their ages. Not to mention despite them being well-known singers, they happen to be the **only two characters in the film who do not sing**. This makes their casting seem pointless and only made to somewhat cash in.
9. The infamously **laughable** controversy where they replaced most of the current cast members from the Super Mario video game franchise with celebrities as the characters in the 2023 Mario movie back in the Nintendo Direct for September 23, 2021. While the choices (especially Black, Rogen, Joy, and Day) were praised, Chris Pratt's casting as Mario was heavily questioned. Though fortunately, Charles Martinet is still involved in the film via at least one cameo from an undisclosed character (likely Wario, Waluigi or Toadsworth) but not as Mario or Luigi themselves. This also lead to many internet memes surrounding the casting choices that Illumination had made for this film.
	* Besides Charles Martinet, Kevin Michael Richardson is the only other professional voice actor, with hundreds of credits in the past 30 years.
	* A few months later, Chris Pratt was also announced to be the voice of Garfield in the upcoming Garfield film produced by Alcon Entertainment and Sony (except China), which also spawned Internet memes as a result involving Chris Pratt being (mis)cast as *any* cartoon character ever made.
	* To be fair, Donkey Kong, Kamek, Cranky Kong and Bowser never talked in any of the Mario games aside from text dialogue in certain games (though Bowser actually spoke in *Super Mario Sunshine*) so this is one of the few media where the said characters legitimately talk via voice acting. This is also the first time that the obscure character Foreman Spike gets to have a speaking voice because he comes from an old-school game (*Wrecking Crew*).
10. In around 2013, they canceled some of their planned property-based film adaptations that were in development for hardly any discernible reason at all other than losing their rights and overstating their *Despicable Me* franchise and giving the film rights to other companies only for them to be both in mh:awfulmovies:development hell and having executive meddling for the films. This makes *The Lorax*, *The Grinch* and the upcoming Mario film to be the only films from the company that are based on properties. Here are some examples:Template:Citation needed
	1. There was a planned *mh:awfulmovies:UglyDolls* film that was originally announced in 2010/11 that was going to be written by Larry Stuckey and had the creators of the dolls going to be the executive producers. Unfortunately, this was canceled and they’ve given the film rights to mh:awfulmovies:STX Entertainment and Reel FX (know for films like *mh:awfulmovies:Free Birds*, *The Book of Life* and *Rumble*) in 2015, which also caused the *UglyDolls* film to be in around 8 to 9-year development hell and the film to be negatively received by critics and bombed at the box office, but was well-received by audiences.
	2. Illumination’s version of a *Woody Woodpecker* film that was announced in 2011 and canceled in 2013 only for Universal to make it into a live-action/animated hybrid film released in 2017 to universally negative reviews without involvement from them, four years after Illumination’s planned film was canceled. This makes it 6 years in total.
	3. A animated reboot of *The Cat in the Hat* was planned in 2012 before giving the entire *Dr. Seuss* film rights to Warner Bros. Animation in 2018, following the announcement of their *Green Eggs and Ham* Netflix series 3 years prior which is somewhat justified due to the mixed reception of their adaptations of *the Lorax* and *the Grinch* and the controversy surrounding the marketing of the former.
	4. Illumination’s version of a live-action/animated hybrid *Clifford the Big Red Dog* film that was canceled in 2013 nearly a year after it was announced. They have given the film rights to Paramount in 2016, 3 years after it was canceled and in devolvement for 5 years which makes it 7 years in total. The production completed in 2019 but was released two years later due to mixed reception.
	5. A film adaptation of *Where's Waldo*, originally announced in 2009, was canceled in 2013 possibly due to MGM, Classic Media and later Point Grey announcing the film in 2011 as a live-action film, which is currently neither canceled nor in development hell. The film was likely scrapped in favor of an animated series that aired on Universal Kids.
	6. The most infamous offer of this is where they canceled the stop-motion adaption of *The Addams Family* that was supposedly going to be directed by Tim Burton in 2013 (who would later be part of the Addams Netflix series, *Wednesday*). After it was announced in 2010 without any development time given for three years prior to cancellation such as hiring a cast, screenwriter, composer (most likely Danny Elfman), or a stop-motion animation company like Laika (like Warner Bros with *Corpse Bride*) or Mackinnon & Saunders (like 20th Century Studios with *Fantastic Mr. Fox* and *Isle of Dogs*) to animate the film due to Universal and Illumination losing the rights as well as Tim Burton possibly being busy with the stop-motion remake of *Frankenweenie* with Disney at the time, in favour of giving the franchise and animated film rights back to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (the same company behind the 1964 series as well as the 90s live-action movies) and with the help of most of the *Sausage Party crew (*including both directors Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon as well as the same animation company behind that movie (Nitrogen Studios) who were known for animating Season 12 to 16 of *Thomas & Friends* and the infamous *Happily N'Ever After*) to rework the supposed stop-motion adaptation into a CGI animated cash grab franchise formed in 2019 that was unfaithful to the source material and only made to cash in on the success of the *Hotel Transylvania franchise* from Sony Pictures Animation in terms of the monster kids movie formula due to executive meddling from MGM, especially its 2021 sequel. The latter’s premise of a monstrous group going on vacation is a direct copy of the third HT film that was made to cash in on *Transformania,* which is no better and released on Amazon Prime video three months later in January 2022, which not only caused the *animated Addams Family film* to be stuck in mh:awfulmovies:development hell for an addition 6 years which makes it 9 years in total being announced in 2010 and released in 2019, but it also shows that Illumination barely gave any chance to make films in mostly different types of animation styles (aside from a few animated segments in some films like the bed time story scene where it uses stop-motion animation from *mh:awfulmovies:Minions as well as some shorts*) unlike other companies such as DreamWorks Animation, 20th Century Studios and Sony Pictures Animation, making it the only planned Illumination film to be entirely different from the final product.
	* Not only their adaptations of the six properties were canceled and given to other studios, but also a *Flanimals and Untitled Cryptozoology film, a live-action adaptation of Curious George, a Pluto film, and a Johnny Express film* were eventually planned, but were also canceled due to either the negative reception of their only live-action film, *Hop*. Given less development time than their released films they're just overstating the *Despicable Me* franchise or their executive meddling.
11. While not as bad or as much as other companies (like Mattel) they have sometimes used the "it's made for kids" excuse, such as in *mh:awfulnovies:Minions* and *mh:awfulmovies:The Secret Life of Pets 2*.

## Films with their own pages

1. *Despicable Me* (2010)
2. *The Lorax* (2012)
3. *Despicable Me 2* (2013)
4. *The Secret Life of Pets* (2016)
5. *Sing* (2016)
6. *Despicable Me 3* (2017)
7. *Sing 2* (2021)
8. *Minions: The Rise of Gru* (2022)
9. The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023)

## References

1. ↑ https://twitter.com/Minions/status/1486484121639661574