10 Trailers That Should Make You Nervous About 2017's Biggest Movies

If you've seen any of the existing films in the Despicable Me franchise, you know that both the original and its sequel are actually pretty good: funny, charming, and surprisingly smart, they're solid family flicks (and nowhere near as annoying as they might appear to an outsider who knows only of the Minions).

It's a shame, then, that the trailer for Despicable Me 3 feels like it's selling audiences the film that will finally push the series into "jumped the shark" territory, with its reliance on obvious pop songs (check out the use of Michael Jackson's "Bad") and a villain - voiced by Trey Parker - who's stuck in the '80s (read as: not very original).

The trailer also shows a film that appears to have lost all respect for Gru, the franchise's central character (voiced by Steve Carrell), who is forced to endure a strange, shameful moment where he's covered in chewing gum and left dangling in the nude. This seems out of place for the series, one where Gru was once treated as a fully fleshed-out character, immune to these kinds of broad, wacky hi-jinks.

But the worst thing is that the trailer totally ignores the kid characters, who have always acted as the heart of the franchise. They're glimpsed in a few quick shots and have no dialogue at all. Which seems to suggest that, in its third incarnation, this franchise might have become everything the haters always feared it was.