Scarlet Overkill & The Cash Cow

Plutonis offers an in-depth, must-read analysis of Scarlet Overkill from MINIONS, with a specific focus on the importance of a compelling story and well-developed characters: http://plutonis.tumblr.com/post/136760013155/lets-mold-a-character-subject-of-today-minions

I agree with many of the points made and have a few spin-off thoughts—an expansion of the analysis, if you will.

Plutonis seems to basically be wondering that since Scarlet Overkill was presented with a certain level of characterization and backstory, why didn't she get a *complete* story and a fully-realized character arc, either in the context of MINIONS or another movie altogether?

It's an excellent question and Plutonis does a thorough job of pointing out areas of Scarlet's character development that could have used more work. In some cases, a lot more work.

Unfortunately, the film's problematic story structure and character development go far, far, far beyond ignorance of basic storytelling techniques. In fact, I'd wager that it's possible the creators know all about ideal story structure and character development, but deliberately chose to ignore them. Why on Earth would they ignore something so important? Possibly because their overlords instructed them to focus only on making a movie about Minions (Illumination Entertainment is owned by NBCUniversal (Comcast)). Hence, the ultimate goal was to create a Minions cash cow. If a great story came out of the process, super, but it probably wasn't NBCUniversal's primary goal. The movie was simply a conduit for the Minions merchandise juggernaut. So right there we have a conflict between organic storytelling and franchise demands. And the conflict would have evolved right from the beginning.

MINIONS co-director Pierre Coffin acknowledged the tension between the creative side and the business side in an interview at Flickering Myth: http://www.flickeringmyth.com/2015/06/interview-directors-pierre-coffin-and-kyle-balda-talk-minions.html

"PC: That's very interesting, because when we pitched the story about the Minions, we had this feeling that the studios just wanted to make this movie because the characters had been really successful. I'll get it totally wrong now and he [points to KB]'s gonna kill me but... it feels to me with all the marketing stuff that the Minions are the cash cow of Universal, and I have that very cynical, European, French mind and say "well, they wanna make money... I just wanna make the best movie ever." If I'm given the opportunity I'm going to try and go not where people are expecting me to go, and that's in every scene and every shot of the movie. We try to find a way to make it original, to make it pleasing, and that's how we approached the whole movie, by trying to make it distinctive and not like "this movie is gonna make money", but like, a movie on its own, even if it means making less in numbers but becoming kind of cult in a way." [emphasis mine]

Despite the cash cow aspect, Mr. Coffin's quote indicates the team attempted to make the best story they knew how and to even subvert the cash cow approach within the context of what the studio overlords actually wanted, which was to make a profit.

Still, when outside forces play a significant role in what a filmmaker can or cannot do, a story is inevitably impacted—sometimes in positive ways, and sometimes in negative ones. In this case, MINIONS is supposed to be primarily about Minions, not anybody else. So it'd be a challenge for anyone, even experienced filmmakers, to create things like fully realized character arcs when storytelling techniques are in direct conflict with factors like merchandising demands.

There's another factor at work here, though, and that's who's on the creative team at any given time. It's possible that MINIONS is what it is because of who was allowed into the filmmaking team club. Could another team altogether have crafted a more compelling story and characters despite NBCUniversal's restrictions? It's possible. According to that same Flickering Myth interview, the team had lots of creative freedom: