Who would have thought that going to see the latest Minions movie could result in a disaster, so much so that the movie theater would cancel the show due to riots? Well, that’s what a new TikTok trend alluding to the “Gentleminions” has caused in movie theaters in the United States and the United Kingdom.
What are Gentleminions? Young men, dressed in formal suits, who fill the theater. Once the movie starts, they start to mess around, throw popcorn all over the place, scream and even throw bananas (the minions’ favorite food) at the screen.
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On TikTok, the platform where this trend was born, the hashtag #Gentleminions has already accumulated more than 24 million views and one of the first videos related to the trend to date has more than 8.7 million likes.
According to the Los Angeles Times, this viral trend on TikTok helped the movie “Minion: The Rise of Gru” become the top-grossing movie of the long weekend in the United States, accumulating 125 million dollars only this 4th of July weekend.
Universal Pictures even posted a tweet congratulating all the Gentleminions for their work: “To everyone who went to see Minions in suits: we see you and we love you,” they wrote.
But this viral trend has not gone down well with everyone. Several movie theater chains in the United States have banned young people dressed in costumes from seeing the new Minions movie due to riots, as happened at one of the Odeon chain’s theaters.
“Due to recent riots stemming from the #Gentleminions trend, any group of guests in formal attire will be banned from the screening of Minions: A Villain is Born.”, reads a sign outside the movie theater.
According to a BBC report, several cinemas in the U.K. have had to cancel showings due to youth rioting inside the theaters and preventing entire families from enjoying the film.
A representative of Universal Pictures who spoke to the Los Angeles Times anonymously said that the company is aware of the TikTok trend, but so far no rules or measures have been implemented to prevent it from happening.
Story originally published in Cultura Colectiva in Spanish
