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Minions & Monsters is in theaters beginning July 1.

You can’t deny the amazing box office success of each film, but if you’re not a little kid, it would be understandable if you’re less than hyped for the third Minions movie, AKA the seventh movie in the larger Despicable Me franchise. After all, what new avenues are there possibly left to explore with little banana-obsessed, gibberish-spouting dudes? And yet lo and behold, Minions & Monsters is here to say “You know what, actually, there is something new that can be done,” taking a rather different approach to its story than the previous entries.

Though it’s Minions lore that these guys essentially go back to the dawn of time, Minions & Monsters actually is set before any movie in the franchise (a few earlier flashbacks in those films aside) and feels almost like a spinoff of a spinoff. It centers on an entirely different group of Minions than we’ve met before, who, after arriving in Los Angeles in the 1920s, end up accidentally becoming silent-era movie stars.

Where the Despicable Me movies have Gru’s relationship with his daughters to give it some ongoing emotional stakes – even as the overall quality of the films has diminished in recent sequels – Minions is more purely driven by the gags. Which makes sense, because usually a Minion is a Minion is a Minion, and their manic, often destructive antics essentially come off as less brutal Gremlins. But Minions & Monsters dares to dream bigger via a Minion who dares to dream bigger in the form of James. James, you see, is an artist, who’s less interested in finding a new evil boss to serve than in documenting, through his drawings, the adventures he and his fellow Minions encounter along the way… Or, when given the opportunity, through moviemaking.

Yes, Minions & Monsters is a movie about the joy of art in general but much more specifically about the joy of moviemaking and moviegoing, which is a surprising turn of events for this series to go in, and yet it’s a frequently clever and funny example of such a thing. Returning director Pierre Coffin (who provides all the Minion voices, per usual) and his fellow screenwriter, Minions veteran Brian Lynch, feel inspired from the start, with the movie tipping its hat from the moment the modern day Universal logo begins to hurtle back in time through its previous incarnations, followed by the Illumination logo reimagined to what it might have looked like had the company existed 100 years ago.

Lo and behold, Minions & Monsters says 'You know what, actually, there is something new that can be done,' taking a rather different approach to its story.

More than ever, Minions & Monsters has jokes and references that will be appreciated by adults on a different and sometimes deeper and funnier level than the kids who will still get their dependable Minion laughs from the bountiful sight gags and slapstick. From animated versions of the likes of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton popping up to direct references and homages to films like Casablanca and Citizen Kane, there’s a lot to appreciate here. It’s a film that earns the tried but true “love letter to cinema” moniker, while also being witty enough to include a line like “We’re not evil anymore! We work in the motion picture industry!”

After a prolonged intro through the ages that both allows us to meet James and his pals, Henry and Ed, and does an even funnier version of the Minions leaving an accidental body count in their wake than the first Minions movie, the storyline really kicks in when the Minions meet Hollywood director Max, warmly and enthusiastically voiced by Christoph Waltz. There’s a lot of strong material involving the Minions becoming the Next Big Thing, including some meta gags about their success, plentiful merchandise included. I just wish the movie wasn’t quite so segmented, because after the Minions’ career is threatened by the addition of sound to film – their gibberish just won’t cut it anymore when it comes to delivering actual dialogue, you see – Max ends up kind of dropping out of the story for the most part, with the latter half not as strongly tethered to the Hollywood-specific elements.

In fact, those early backlot-set scenes are so entertaining that I was dreading the film needing to live up to the second half of its title by eventually bringing some Monsters into the mix. But that portion, while not as standout as what precedes it, is still quite entertaining in its own right, as one of the Minions uses a spell book established in the film’s intro to conjure forth a few ancient beasts in order to use them in a self-made movie, only for that to go about as well as you might imagine.

Is it a little distracting yet also quite funny to hear Trey Parker, who played a different role in Despicable Me 3 , do a voice that’s not quite an exact match but pretty damn close to his Eric Cartman voice as the diminutive, smooth-talking, and Cthulhu-inspired Goomi? It is indeed! The monsters portion of the film also gives us the multi-eyed, oozy orange beast known as Irene, which provides some of the most visually imaginative and trippy aspects of the film, both from watching Irene travel through a vibrant depiction of 1920s LA and then seeing what it’s like when some Minions travel inside Irene, where everything she’s consumed is bobbing about.

In its quest to serve as a tribute to the movies, there’s a lot going on in Minions & Monsters, and it’s almost too much, but it’s to the film’s credit that it mostly all comes together, as frenetic as it all is. That includes a subplot about Dort (Jesse Eisenberg), a guy claiming to be an alien robot from space who takes in some of the Minions at his dilapidated apartment, while also wooing an optimistic suffragette named Debbie (Zoey Deutch). And just re-reading that last sentence, it sounds like absolute madness, but the charm of Minions & Monsters is that it manages to interweave all of these bizarre elements.

Dort is a not so thinly veiled homage to Gort, from 1951’s The Day the Earth Stood Still, and while some film snobs may bristle at how Minions & Monsters pulls influences from multiple decades and crams them all into the 1920s, it’s worth remembering… This is a Minions movie! Strict adherence to the exact order of events of history doesn’t need to be a thing. So yeah, in real life, the arrival of sound in movies didn’t immediately lead to 1940s-style noir, but it’s still very funny to see a Minion try to act out a scene of that sort here, along with other Minion-fueled parodies of familiar cinematic tropes.

There’s a specific manic energy to Minions & Monsters, along with its use of early Hollywood visuals and celebrities, that evokes classic Looney Tunes more than any entry in the entire series to date and benefits the film greatly. It’s easily the best movie in the franchise since the first Despicable Me in 2010, and after weighing out the battle between recency bias and nostalgia, I feel as though it ultimately surpasses it.

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American Airlines is bringing commercial service back to a tiny airport on Florida's Gulf Coast.

Over the weekend, American filed plans to launch nonstop service later this year from Naples, Florida.

The move would give travelers in Southwest Florida an alternative airport to the region's main hub, and mark the return of commercial service back to an airport that hasn't had flights on a major U.S. carrier in decades.

American's Naples flights, AAdvantage redemptions open for booking

So far, neither American nor the City of Naples have officially commented on the Fort Worth-based carrier's plans at Naples Airport (APF).

But schedule data from aviation analytics firm Cirium shows that American plans to launch service from Naples to its Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT) hub beginning in December.

In fact, you can book Naples flights as we speak!

If you log onto American's website right now, you'll see flights between Naples and CLT beginning on Dec. 2, including AAdvantage award redemptions starting at 8,500 miles one-way.

Getting started: How to use points, miles and credit cards to travel

AMERICAN AIRLINES Commercial service returns to Naples

The return of true air service to Naples wasn't entirely surprising.

Earlier this month, the city announced survey results that showed 8 in 10 residents favored bringing back commercial flights to the airport, and at the time had noted that American was hoping to launch two to three daily flights by December.

Naples Airport is situated just miles from the Florida Coast and minutes from popular Naples Beach.

Naples, Florida. THEPALMER VIA GETTY IMAGES Over the past decade, the terminal has catered exclusively to general aviation flyers, and before that it had hosted smaller regional carriers.

It's been nearly 20 years since Delta Air Lines' departure from APF marked the end of Naples flights on a big-name airline.

Now, the return of commercial service to the airport should offer an additional, closer-to-home travel option to travelers who live south of the region's largest city, Fort Myers — not to mention for vacationers or seasonal residents flying to the area.

An alternative airport option in Southwest Florida

APF is located some 30 miles south of the far larger Southwest Florida International Airport (RSW). And it's just 17 miles from Marco Island — a much shorter drive than the nearly 50-mile ride to the island from RSW.

From the outset, it appears American's presence in Naples will be fairly limited, with just the two or three daily Charlotte flights.

Charlotte gets major lounge boost: Airlines, credit cards have big plans for CLT

American Airlines aircraft at Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT). SEAN CUDAHY/THE POINTS GUY And the planes will be small: AA plans to fly the route with an American Eagle Bombardier CRJ-700 regional jet which seats 65 passengers.

However, because of American's hub-and-spoke setup, that short CRJ flight could connect you to any of the U.S. cities the airline serves from its major Charlotte hub, not to mention European destinations it flies to from CLT — like London, Paris, Rome and Athens.

Point of interest

Interestingly, this isn't American's first go-around in Naples. The carrier previously served APF 25 years ago, in 2001.

Meanwhile, AA certainly is no stranger to Southwest Florida. It already flies from Fort Myers to most of its hubs, including Charlotte.

Related reading:

Your ultimate guide to American Airlines AAdvantage

Best credit cards for American Airlines flyers

American's AAdvantage program changes for 2026

The best credit cards to reach elite status

American raises bag fees, tightens basic economy rules

The best credit card for American Airlines lounge access

Editorial disclaimer: Opinions expressed here are the author’s alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, airline or hotel chain, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of these entities.

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The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's largest and most powerful atom smasher, has entered a planned four-year shutdown that will upgrade it to its most capable form yet.

The particle accelerator was switched off Monday (June 29) and is scheduled to come back online in 2030 as the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HiLumi LHC), with improvements that will allow it to smash together roughly 10 times more particles than its original design. That data could help spark new discoveries in fundamental physics and shed light on the nature of dark matter , antimatter and the early universe.

"This is a very important moment," HiLumi LHC project chief Markus Zerlauth told Agence France-Presse . "From Monday, we will be entering a new phase."

Since its first successful proton collision in 2009, the LHC has allowed physicists to test theories about particle physics and the Standard Model of the subatomic world. It was essential to the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, which helped explain how tiny fundamental particles acquire mass. The collider covers a 17-mile (27 kilometers) loop at the border between France and Switzerland near Geneva.

The current shutdown is the third long-term, planned pause in the collider's operations. The first, a two-year shutdown beginning in 2013, consolidated connections between superconducting magnets and boosted the energy of the colliding proton beams. A second pause, from 2018 to 2022, involved a series of upgrades, replacements and preventive maintenance.

In the current period of dormancy, dubbed Long Shutdown 3 (LS3), specialists will install upgrades to boost the collider's luminosity by a factor of 10. That will increase the number of particle collisions, roughly tripling the number of times particles will smack into each other compared with the existing setup. Once the final version of the particle accelerator is online, it will run until the end of its operational lifespan in the 2040s and will be earmarked for replacement by a new, higher-energy particle accelerator in the years that follow.

"It really is an opportunity to explore the universe in a way we haven't done before," Mark Thomson , director general of CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research), where the LHC is housed, told New Scientist .

Civil engineers work on upgrades to turn the Large Hadron Collider into the High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider, significantly increasing the facility’s rate of particle collisions. (Image credit: Samuel Joseph Hertzog, CERN) That jump means that experiments will produce much more data, which will allow scientists to study known phenomena, such as the Higgs boson, in more detail and increase the odds of observing rare events. For example, the HiLumi LHC is expected to produce about 380 million Higgs bosons over its lifetime of a decade or so, compared with the 55 million it's made to date. The data could help scientists solve problems with the Standard Model, which currently doesn't incorporate dark matter or dark energy , the primary forms of mass and energy in the universe.

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"The LS3 represents a huge and complex logistical and engineering undertaking," Jean-Philippe Tock , head of the LS3 coordination team, said in a statement . "In the LHC alone, 1.2 km [0.75 miles] of magnets and components will be removed and replaced with new equipment, and across the whole complex, dozens of projects are planned, involving thousands of engineers, physicists, technicians and support personnel."

While the LHC won't be smashing any particles together during the shutdown period, researchers will continue to analyze data already collected during experiments during the prior operational window.

Though the LHC's primary purpose is fundamental physics research, technologies used to upgrade the collider could find their way into everyday life. For example, some instruments and techniques originally developed at CERN are now being used in medical imaging, sensors and art restoration.

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Prime Video has released plenty of big projects in 2026, particularly in the superhero genre with both The Boys and Invincible . The Boys has been around since 2019, and Prime Video released five seasons of the show in only seven years, which is an almost unheard-of timeline nowadays when streaming shows often take years off between seasons. The Boys fans only have a new offshoot, Vought Rising , coming sometime in 2027, along with the fifth season of Invincible , which Prime Video has already set for release next year . Events in the war between Earth and Viltrum are finally heating up after Season 4, and now that Grand Regent Thragg ( Lee Pace ) is involved and Viltrumites are living on Earth, Mark ( Steven Yeun ) and the rest of the heroes on Earth have to be cautious.