8 Mistakes That Will Ruin Upcoming Movies

7. Mimickry - The Grinch

How The Grinch Stole Christmas
Illumination

The Mistake: Copying Despicable Me.

The recent teaser for Illumination Entertainment's The Grinch - starring Benedict Cumberbatch as the title character - was met with a mixed-to-negative reception, and it's really easy to see why.

Rather than trying something different or exciting, the animation studio appears to be sticking to what they know. And while that can sometimes be a good thing (the Marvel Studios formula always delivers), here, that essentially means copying their 2010 breakout hit, Despicable Me.

From the trailer, it's clear that this version of the Grinch is just Gru with green hair; a grumpy loner with a minion sidekick (his dog) who enjoys walking around his nearby town acting like a complete d*ck. Just look at that early Despicable Me scene where Gru freezes the people waiting for coffee. This trailer feels exactly like that.

But isn't the Grinch supposed to hate interacting with other people? Isn't he meant to be a scheming, evil villain, who doesn't just do annoying things like knock products off store shelves (oh, what absolute wickedness!), and generally keeps himself to himself?

Sure, it'll probably be entertainig enough, but it looks safe and generic, and it would've been far better to see something a bit more creative - and faithful to the original character - from the studio.

And to make the Despicable Me comparison even more apt, Illumination couldn't even get through a two-minute trailer without several Despicable Me nods, including a lone Minion, and Pharrell's song, Happy.

Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!