Has the popularity of the new Minion movie amongst Gen Z signified the death of irony and cringe for our generation?

The new installment in the Despicable Me franchise, Minions and Monsters 2026, has caused quite the stir amongst Gen Z, despite this being the complete opposite of the film’s target audience. Since the franchise’s conception in 2010, Despicable Me has been aimed towards younger audiences, with the humour being slapstick and fart jokes; seemingly too low-brow for teenagers, and more aimed at the youngins’ parents, as seen through the popularity of Minion memes shared on Facebook by Millenials and Gen Xers with captions like “Who pushed the fast forward button on my weekend?”, which have become a source of amusement for Gen Z to make fun of our elders.

This is all to say that the Minions and all associated with them are fundamentally cringe. We're a generation raised in a culture that prioritises self-surveillance and an obsession with being perceived as the most intelligent, cultured and put-together version of ourselves, smothering our self-expression in irony and self-depreciation so that any semblance of authenticity is so deeply buried we are left wondering if we have any left. So, why have we been raving about Minions and Monsters? Although many have argued that this is because the movie, set as it is in 1920s Hollywood and lined with references to the Talkies, is director Pierre Coffin’s "Love Letter to Cinema," I believe Gen Z’s adoration of this film comes from a much simpler place. We are exhausted. Simply exhausted by all the layers of irony, post-irony and performance of what we think we are supposed to like and enjoy, and the fact that a simple unpolluted laugh does not exist.

So what do we do? We watch the new Minions movie and we laugh. Not in an “ironic making fun of Minion Facebook memes, we find it humorous that somebody else finds it amusing” kind of way but in an unabashed “fart jokes are funny” kind of way. 

It would be remiss not to mention that what got most of Gen Z into the cinema was the idea that they'd be watching this movie in a post-ironic way, that they'd be laughing at these jokes aimed at children in an absurdist sense, but at some point I've begun to wonder if the intention of why we are in the cinema and laughing matters, or if the fact that we do find this funny in whatever sense is the only thing that counts.

Rather than Gen Z embracing a post-irony that blends ironic and sincere enjoyment, not being able to tell which is which, I propose we are abandoning the idea of what is and is not cringe, as for something to be enjoyed post-ironically, cringe must exist. Although I believe the popularity of Minions and Monsters exemplifies this phenomena, I believe we are seeing this throughout all aspects of Gen Z’s cultural consumption. An argument that has gained traction recently is that the prevalence of Gen Alpha memes such as ‘6,7’ or ‘Italian Brain Rot’ lies in an embrace of the absurd, due to a disillusionment with the world at large, similar to the Dada-esque movement. Although I do agree with this to a degree, I want to distinguish my argument. Most Gen Alpha memes, lingo and references are rooted in a lack of meaning and absurdity, but this is not why I believe Gen Z enjoyed the Minions movie. I enjoyed the Minions movie because the jokes, although simple, were thought-out and at times very witty and enjoyable, and not in an absurdist sense. There is an inherent value in these movies that cannot be pinned down to absurdism or amusement being derived from a lack of meaning. 

A similar idea can be seen in the renaissance of ‘cringe’ music. This is becoming clear to me in the interests of one of my closest friends who I describe to anybody as a trailblazer, a cultural pioneer, who chronically has her finger on the pulse of what is going to be popular years before other people catch on. I can’t even begin to list the examples as the list would be endless. Now what has this girl been listening to in the last couple of months? Panic! at the Disco, which, in my opinion, is covered head-to-toe in all that Gen Z would deem to be cringe. Don’t get me wrong, Panic! At the Disco has a crazy oeuvre of bad music, but this is not what is having the renaissance; it's particularly the album A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out, which I deem to be the band’s magnum opus. Although drenched in emo pop smothered in eyeliner and an unnamable, quintessentially 2005 quality, there is value there that outweighs however cringe we might have thought it to once be.

I believe the basis of the popularity of Minions and Monsters would be that under all the layers of cringe lies real cultural value. This value proves more important than what we might have once deemed cringe. Although this might not apply to all of Gen Z’s cultural consumption—and I believe our cultural elitism will never die—I do believe we are seeing a shift away from the need to hide sincerity and authenticity under layers and layers of irony, post-irony and the fear of cringe, having realised how boring and fundamentally uninteresting it is to be so caught up in how we wish to be perceived that we can no longer just enjoy media that we like and laugh at things we find funny.