ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke to Despicable Me 4 director Chris Renaud about the latest film in Illumination’s signature franchise. To celebrate it now being available on digital, Renaud discussed keeping the franchise fresh, differentiating it from the Minions movies, and more.
“The world’s favorite supervillain-turned-Anti-Villain-League-agent returns for a bold new era of Minions mayhem in Illumination’s Despicable Me 4, now with 2 mini-movies. Gru, Lucy, and their girls welcome a new member to the family – Gru Jr. – who is intent on tormenting his dad, as a new nemesis shows up and forces the family to go on the run. This latest blockbuster chapter in the biggest global animated franchise in history is packed with nonstop action and filled with Illumination’s signature subversive humor,” says the official description.
Tyler Treese: The fourth film in a series is always very tricky. What was the key to kind of keeping it fresh and making sure it wasn’t too much of a retread? Obviously, Gru Jr. adds a whole new dynamic, and you have a lot of fun with that as well.
Chris Renaud: Yeah, I think it’s just what you just mentioned, it’s like trying to find the elements that will feel like they’re delivering something new to the characters in the world. We looked in several places, obviously seeing aspects of Gru’s high school experience. That was something we hadn’t seen before. Also, taking the characters to a completely new neighborhood when they have to almost go into a witness relocation program. Then even a character like Poppy, his next-door neighbor, who ends up being a bit of a thorn in his side, just gave us a new opportunity to [show] this other aspect of the world.
Then as always, we have to think about what do we do with the minions. In this one, of course, we came up with the idea of giving them superpowers and making them the mega minions. Because we always have to deal with what’s a massive character group, a hundred or so. We’ve had different ideas over the films, going to jail, becoming evil minions, and so this one we kind of settled on the AVL, and then by extension, the AVL giving them superpowers. So it’s just like finding those different elements that don’t feel like a retread but still deliver what the audience finds appealing about the world and the characters.
You pointed out so many different aspects, and that leads to my next question, which was, how is it just balancing all these different storylines in Despicable Me 4? Because a few of those, you could have done whole films based on them, and kids’ attention spans aren’t always the greatest. So how is it roping in all these different ideas into one cohesive film?
You know, weirdly, I’ll start with the kids’ attention span. I actually think that the way that these movies are structured, which is like very fast-paced and bouncing from idea to idea. For better or worse, I actually think that leans into how kids think these days by watching two-minute YouTube clips or TikTok, whatever, you know what I mean? So there’s something about the breakneck pace. We do our best to manage it because we obviously want to try to appeal to as broad an audience as possible. I think that to the first part of your question, what we end up trying to do is we preview these films. So we do test them, but we also look at like what’s delivering and what isn’t.
One big aspect of the original script was the neighbor, Perry Prescott being a big antagonist for Gru. What ended up happening was it was just too many antagonists. We had Maxime Le Mal, we had the baby, we had Perry, and we had Poppy. So something had to give. So, the amount of screen time that that particular story just had to greatly reduce. While there was some fun dialogue, it wasn’t as visual in some ways as some of the other storylines that we had, particularly Maxime, Poppy, and the Mega Minions. So it’s just finding that balance and thinking about what’s really delivering for the film. That’s the way you sort of make your decisions.
Will Ferrell joins the voice cast for Despicable Me 4, and what I love about both Steve Carrell and Will Ferrell is that you have these iconic actors doing voices, but they’re actually doing voices rather than their regular voices. They’re having fun, and they’re playing these characters. How special is it when you really get to have them fully act and do a goofy role rather than just walking into the studio and doing their normal voice?
It’s great. I also think it’s one of the distinctive ideas in the Despicable Me world that we really try to pursue with, if not every actor, a lot of them. When we started with Steve Carrell’s Gru, our early conversations were about Peter Sellers and Inspector Clouseau, and Sellers always did a lot of accents anyway. Carell had the same thought. So, immediately with that character, while we very quickly landed on the voice that you hear. Steve tried a few things.
With Will, the character was named MMaxime Le Mal, so seemed to be French. Will came in with a French accent, which was great right off the bat. But we did try a couple of things just to make sure that was the best version of the character. If Will had come in and said, “Oh, you know, I’ve got this great Swedish voice,” whatever, we could have easily changed the name because it was early days.
So, the first session is always like kind of a workshop, you know what I mean? Like, let’s figure it out. Even Joey King with the character of Poppy. She did do a version with her voice, but then she added that lisp. Then what we did is we went back to the character design and added braces to support that. So it’s always fun finding these bigger than life kind of cartoon voices to support these characters. I really think it’s one of the main ingredients of how we develop characters for the Despicable Me world.
We don’t see a ton of the three main minions, Kevin, Stuart, and Bob, involved in Despicable Me 4. Is that a key point of differentiating the franchise? It feels like it would be really easy to kind of just throw them into every Despicable Me, but then what’s the difference between the two?
Well, I’ll tell you a few things. First off, at the very last scene, look closely, and you might see Kevin, Stuart, and Bob. So, I threw them in there. There was even a time with the Mega Minions we talked about, “Would it be Kevin, Stuart, and Bob that would get the superpowers in addition to maybe a couple [others]?” I can’t remember if we had three or five back then.
So, we did talk about them at that moment, but again, we ultimately came back to as a way to differentiate a Minions movie from a Despicable Me movie that we would not do that, and we’d use new characters to get the mega minion powers. I just think it’s what you’ve already said, I think it’s just a way to differentiate. Certainly, they coexist to some degree, even though we don’t focus on them.
I think the fun thing about the Minions is because there’s so many of them, some of them could be anywhere, you know what I mean? There’s a pliability to those characters because there’s so many. So we don’t know, maybe those guys are off on a mission, you know what I mean? Even in this film where, we’ve got three minions that go with Gru and the family, inexplicably, and then the rest of them go with the AVL, and then five of those become mega minions. So, we always kind of play with it that way. Because there’s such a massive group of them, we can sort of put them anywhere we want.
Thanks to Chris Renaud for taking the time to talk about the franchise in our Despicable Me 4 interview.
