Remember when Shrek first came out in 2001 and it was all about how cranky and antisocial and ugly the titular ogre was, and how all he wanted was to be left alone? And then all the sequels were about his marriage, his kids, and his life as a sentimental Wife and Family Guy? The Despicable Me movies have pretty much followed the same path, with scheming supervillain Gru (voiced by Steve Carell) turning into a sentimental softie with a trio of adopted daughters by the end of the first movie, and spending the subsequent sequels expanding and defending his new family. The trailer for Despicable Me 4 is more of the same: Now he has a wife (Lucy, voiced by Kristen Wiig) and a baby to go with his girls, and he’s once again defending them from danger, while also getting stuff accidentally stuck in his butt.
This time around, the conflict centers on the “return” of new-to-the-series villains Maxime Le Mal (Will Ferrell) and Valentina (Sofia Vergara), who are out for revenge against Gru due to a past connection. They’re presumably a big part of the story, but the trailer is mostly about slapstick family antics, particularly involving the Minions, those weird little capsule-shaped, probably-banana-flavored critters who’ve spread to every corner of pop culture since the first Despicable Me back in 2010. They’re also a little butt-obsessed in this trailer, with their own spanking scene for Minion-butt-fetishists.
Original Despicable Me director Chris Renaud is back for this sixth installment in the franchise (counting the two Minion movies) for the first time since Despicable Me 2 in 2013, and he’s sharing director credit with first-time feature director Patrick Delage, an animator on both of Renaud’s Despicable Me movies, Sing 2, WALL-E, The Secret Life of Pets 2, and a lot of other animated fare. But the more interesting new-to-the-series credit is from co-screenwriter Mike White, the creator of The White Lotus. This isn’t White’s first work on animated fare: He also has writing credits on The Emoji Movie and the recent “ducks on vacation” movie Migration, and of course, everyone’s favorite Mike White project, Thomas & Friends: All Engines Go.
Despicable Me 4 will butt up against theaters on July 3.
