Illumination

Illumination (formerly named Illumination Entertainment) is an American film and animation studio founded by Chris Meledandri in 2007 and owned by Universal Pictures, a division of NBCUniversal, which is itself a division of Comcast.

Bad Qualities
NOTE: Most of these qualities mainly apply to the company since the mid-2010s, specifically ever since Minions came out in 2015.
 * 1) Quantity over Quality: Similar to mh:greatestmovies:Blue Sky Studios with their Ice Age film franchise, they sometimes rely too much on their main Despicable Me franchise, which only served to cash in.
 * 2) They not only postponed Minions: The Rise of Gru to 2021, but postponed it again to 2022 which doesn't make any sense at all and made many people upset. Even it was justified with many countries eventually getting COVID-19 cases again amid new mutations. Also, there is currently merchandise for the movie planned for several years like Lego (as long as 2019 in fact), so it further explains why this business strategy makes no sense and was done just to maximize profits.
 * 3) While half of their films are good, the other half of their films (The Lorax, The Grinch, Minions and The Secret Life of Pets 2) aren't all that good, with the film Hop being arguably the weakest film from Illumination made so far.
 * 4) They overuse several backgrounds and assets for every movie. For example; Minions reused the mall from mh:greatestmovies:Despicable Me 2.
 * 5) They don't seem to have the best track record when it comes to their artstyles as some of their films have the same or similar character designs. This isn't necessarily bad, but it can get repetitive (with Sing being the worst offender of this) although the films based on Dr. Seuss have designs somewhat similar to the original books.
 * 6) * Still, even with The Grinch and The Lorax kind of using Dr. Seuss's art style, they still mostly retain Illumination's art style unlike Blue Sky's adaptation of mh:greatestmovies:Horton Hears a Who!, which does a better job adapting Dr. Seuss' art style.
 * 7) Their humor in most of their films, while great, sometimes tend to fall flat such as the Minions' main humor mostly consists of potty humor, which can be very commonly found in the 2015 Minions film (most notably the infamous scene where Stuart hypnotizes the three London guards to strip down to their underwear while singing "Hair" from the musical of the same name in Minionese), where it is used as the main source of humor. This is pretty sad because the earlier films had way less potty humor. Thankfully though, the humor is now toned less in recent films and the humor consists of the Minions' shenanigans although it's still a mixed bag at times.
 * 8) Almost every film we see underwear on people such as Gru, Minions, Grinch, Buster Moon, other Sing characters, etc. This is not only annoying, but also considered sexualization and is inappropriate for it's target audience.
 * 9) Some of their films can be rehashes of other films. For instance, Hop uses a similar premise to The Smurfs and Alvin and the Chipmunks of a human character(s) meeting a creature that they have never met before and they allow them to stay over in their house.
 * 10) * It should also be worth noting that Tim Hill is also the director of the movie, and he also directed Alvin and the Chipmunks, and that could explain some of the similarities.
 * 11) White the casting choices are good (or okay) overall, some of the choices feels rather off and incorrect. An example would be in The Lorax. Zac Efron and Taylor Swift are miscast as Ted and Audrey to the point where they sound way too old for their ages. Not to mention despite them being well-known singers, they happen to be the only two characters in the film who don't sing. This makes their casting seem pointless and only made to somewhat cash in.
 * 12) The infamously laughable controversy where they (alongside Nintendo) replaced most of the current cast members from the Super Mario video game franchise with celebrities as the characters in the 2023 Mario movie back in the Nintendo Direct for September 23, 2021. While the choices (especially Black, Rogen, Joy, and Day) were praised, Chris Pratt's casting as Mario was heavily questioned. Though fortunately, Charles Martinet is still involved in the film via at least one cameo from an undisclosed character (likely Wario, Waluigi or Toadsworth) but not as Mario or Luigi themselves. This also lead to many internet memes surrounding the casting choices that Illumination had made for this film.
 * 13) * However compared to most of the cast, Kevin Michael Richardson is by far the only voice actor that has a lot of experience with voice acting (such as in cartoons or video games) when compared to people like Pratt and Black. Just look at his filmography.
 * 14) * Just for a week and more months after the announcement happened, Chris Pratt was also announced to be the voice of Garfield in the upcoming Garfield film produced by Alcon Entertainment and Sony (except China), which also spawned internet memes as a result involving Chris Pratt being (mis)cast as any cartoon character ever made.
 * 15) * To be fair, Donkey Kong, Kamek, Cranky Kong and Bowser never talked in any of the Mario games aside from text dialogue in certain games (though Bowser actually spoke in Super Mario Sunshine) so this is one of the few media where the said characters legitimately talk via voice acting. This is also the first time that the obscure character Foreman Spike gets to have a speaking voice because he comes from an old-school game (Wrecking Crew).
 * 16) In around 2013, they cancel some of their planned property-based movie adaptations that were in development for hardly any discernible reason at all other than losing their rights and overstating their Despicable Me franchise and giving the film rights to other companies only for them to be both in development hell and having executive meddling for the films. This makes the Lorax, the Grinch and the upcoming Mario movie to be the only films from the company that’s based on properties.
 * 17) * There was a planned UglyDolls movie that was originally announced in 2010/11 that was going to be written by Larry Stuckey and had the creators of the dolls going to be the executive producers. Unfortunately, this was canceled and they’ve given the film rights to STX Entertainment and Reel FX (know for films like Free Birds, The Book of Life and Rumble) in 2015, which also caused the UglyDolls film to be in around 8 to 9-year development hell and the film to be negatively received by critics and bombed at the box office, but was well-received by audiences.
 * 18) * Illumination’s version of a Woody Woodpecker film that was announced in 2011 and canceled in 2013 only for Universal to make it into a live-action/animated hybrid film released in 2017 to universally negative reviews without involvement from them, four years after Illumination’s planned film was canceled. This makes it 6 years in total.
 * 19) * A animated reboot of the Cat in the Hat was planned in 2012 before giving the entire Dr. Seuss film rights to Warner Bros. Animation in 2018, following the announcement of their Green Eggs and Ham Netflix series 3 years prior which is somewhat justified due to the mixed reception of their adaptations of the Lorax and the Grinch and the controversy surrounding the marketing of the former.
 * 20) * Illumination’s version of a live-action/animated hybrid Clifford the Big Red Dog film that was canceled in 2013 nearly a year after it was announced. They have given the film rights to Paramount in 2016, 3 years after it was canceled and in devolvement for 5 years which makes it 7 years in total. The production completed in 2019 but was released two years later due to mixed reception.
 * 21) * A film adaptation of Where's Waldo, originally announced in 2009, was canceled in 2013 possibly due to MGM, Classic Media and later Point Grey announcing the film in 2011 as a live-action film, which is currently neither canceled nor in development hell. There is no news about it since 2016.
 * 22) * The most infamous offer of this is where they canceled the stop-motion adaption of the Addams Family that was supposedly going to be directed by Tim Burton in 2013 (who would later be part of the Addams Netflix series, Wednesday). After it was announced in 2010 without any development time given for three years prior to cancellation such as hiring a cast, screenwriter, composer (most likely Danny Elfman), or a stop-motion animation company like Laika (like Warner Bros with Corpse Bride) or Mackinnon & Saunders (like 20th Century Studios with Fantastic Mr. Fox and Isle of Dogs) to animate the film due to Universal and Illumination losing the rights as well as Tim Burton possibly being busy with the stop-motion remake of Frankenweenie with Disney at the time, in favour of giving the franchise and animated film rights back to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (the same company behind the 1964 series as well as the 90s live-action movies) and with the help of most of the Sausage Party crew (including both directors Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon as well as the same animation company behind that movie (Nitrogen Studios) who were known for animating Season 12 to 16 of Thomas & Friends and the infamous Happily N'Ever After) to rework the supposed stop-motion adaptation into a CGI animated cash grab franchise formed in 2019 that was unfaithful to the source material and only made to cash in on the success of the Hotel Transylvania franchise from Sony Pictures Animation in terms of the monster kids movie formula due to executive meddling from MGM, especially its 2021 sequel. The latter’s premise of a monstrous group going on vacation is a direct copy of the third HT film that was made to cash in on Transformania, which is no better and released on Amazon Prime video three months later in January 2022, which not only caused the animated Addams Family film to be stuck in development hell for an addition 6 years which makes it 9 years in total being announced in 2010 and released in 2019, but it also shows that Illumination barely gave any chance to make films in mostly different types of animation styles (aside from a few animated segments in some films like the bed time story scene where it uses stop-motion animation from Minions as well as some shorts) unlike other companies such as DreamWorks Animation, 20th Century Studios and Sony Pictures Animation, making it the only planned Illumination film to be entirely different from the final product.
 * 23) * Not only their adaptations of the six properties were canceled and given to other studios, but also a Flanimals and Untitled Cryptozoology film, a live-action adaptation of Curious George, a Pluto film, and a Johnny Express film were eventually planned, but were also canceled due to either the negative reception of their only live-action film, Hop. Given less development time than their released films they're just overstating the Despicable Me franchise or their executive meddling.
 * 24) While not bad or dumbfounded as other companies (like Mattel) they sometimes used the "It's made for kids" excuse such as in Minions.

Good Qualities
Despite their bad qualities, they have enough to still be on the sister wiki.

Movies With Their Own Pages

 * 1) Hop (2011)
 * 2) The Lorax (2012)
 * 3) Minions (2015)
 * 4) The Grinch (2018)
 * 5) The Secret Life Of Pets 2 (2019)

Videos
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