Minions and Monsters
Illumination
It is the year 2026, and movie critics are heaping praise on a Minions movie. That may sound far-fetched, but it’s what’s happening with Minions and Monsters, the seventh film in the series and supposedly its best, now setting a Rotten Tomatoes score record not just for the Minions themselves, but all of Illumination Entertainment.
As it stands, Minions and Monsters has an 88% Rotten Tomatoes score, which dipped from a 93% score yesterday, but it still remains on top of Illumination’s entire catalog. That list looks like this:
- Minions and Monsters – 88% critic score
- Despicable Me – 80% critic score
- Despicable Me 2 – 75% critic score
- Migration – 73% critic score
- Sing 2 – 72% critic score
- Sing – 71% critic score
- The Secret Life of Pets – 70% critic score
- Minions: The Rise of Gru – 70% critic score
- Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch – 60% critic score
- The Secret Life of Pets 2 – 60% critic score
- Despicable Me 3 – 58% critic score
- The Super Mario Bros. Movie – 57% critic score
- Despicable Me 4 – 56% critic score
- Minions – 55% critic score
- The Super Mario Galaxy Movie – 54% critic score
- Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax – 53% critic score
- Hop – 25% critic score
Minions and Monsters
Rotten Tomatoes
With not a single movie about a 90%, not even Minions and Monsters now, Illumination is clearly no Pixar, but that has not stopped it from making billions from its films, particularly the Despicable Me/Minions collection, and more recently, the Super Mario movies, which each made over a billion at the box office. Super Mario Galaxy is the top-grossing movie of 2026 with $1.008 billion in earnings.
Why is Minions and Monsters so good? The story here is how the Minions conquered Hollywood and became movie stars, which has charmed critics especially, with so many homages to classic Hollywood film. Here’s a sample:
RogerEbert.com – “It’s a genuine triumph, not just in terms of its construction as a kid’s movie comedy sequence but as a distillation of all the cinematic pioneers who paved the way for something like the Minions to exist, much less succeed.”
Minions and Monsters is out today, Wednesday, July 1, which is not great news for the already underperforming Supergirl. 2022’s Minions: The Rise of Gru made $940 million globally and Despicable Me 4 in 2024 made $972 million. Now, we have a Minions movie that also has great reviews, and we’ll see if that boosts its fortunes further.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.