Minions: The Rise of Gru has been a hit movie already, setting records for the 4th of July weekend, despite the fact that the new Minions film reportedly isn’t all that good. The movie has also been a social media juggernaut thanks to the Gentleminions trend on TikTok that has seen teenagers attend the movie in formalwear. However, it seems that social media clout and box office success are crashing up against each other as theaters are being forced to refund tickets due to the finely dressed guests.
While one might think that teenagers dressed in their best would also be on their best behavior, and in a lot of cases that would appear to be true, but ABC reports that some of the Gentleminions are not all that gentle, as they’ve been getting quite wild inside the theater, disrupting the movie for the rest of the audience. Check out one example in the video below.
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As one might expect, the people who bought tickets actually planning to watch Minions: The Rise of Gru were not happy to see a mosh pit break out in the middle of their theater. In places where this has happened theaters have been forced to shell out refunds. One theater apparently ended up giving $1300 in refunds in a single day. Other theaters are banning the guests in formal attire from seeing that particular movie, while other theaters have apparently simply decided to stop screening the film entirely.
The people causing problems seem to be only a subset of the larger Gentleminions trend. Some, in fact most, simply enjoy the silly fun that is going to see a ridiculous movie dressed like they’re going to prom. But some are letting that fun get out of hand, as the police are getting called in some instances.
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The fact that theaters are having to issue significant refunds or even stop screening the film in order to avoid things getting out of hand in the first place is clearly a sign this whole thing is going too far. I’d hope we can all agree that interfering in another person’s enjoyment of a movie in the theater is too much. The point of movies is supposed to be enjoying a film together in a dark room full of like-minded people. If everybody wanted to dress up in suits and get a little loud, that would be one thing, but clearly that’s not what is happening here.
Whatever the issues, they likely won’t last too much longer. While Minions: The Rise of Gru was still the number two movie at the box office this past weekend, it will only continue to drop as other big summer movies come out, and social media will certainly shift its focus elsewhere.
