Although they’re not quite as confusing as grown adults who wear Winnie the Pooh sweatshirts, people over the age of 12 or 13 who are really into the Despicable Me movies are their own breed. Even the people who share Minions memes ironically can be kind of baffling. But something about those movies just click with the people of China, who gave Despicable Me 3 the biggest-ever opening for an animated film in that country over the weekend with $20.1 million, according to Variety.
It should be noted that China has been setting a lot of domestic box-office records in recent decades, thanks to the rapid expansion of the country’s economy, and therefore, spending money for things like movie tickets. But the previous record was set by the last movie in the franchise, 2015’s Minions, with Despicable Me 3 topping that figure by 17.5 percent. The film has also set records for the biggest opening weekend of all time for an animated movie in Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Ukraine, and Venezuela, suggesting that, perhaps, we‘re the weird ones for not understanding what’s so funny about these non-verbal—and therefore easily translatable—little thumb-shaped goobers.