Megamind
Year: 2010
Rating: PG
Length: 95 minutes / 1.58 hours
It’s odd how few superhero movies ever look at the villain’s perspective. Sure, modern villains have been written to be tragic figures whose descent into evil is justified based on their background and past trauma. However, taking all the tropes of the genre and flipping them on their head can expose how ridiculous some of these heroic premises are. As a satire of the genre, Megamind (2010) is surprisingly deep considering its animated and child-like appearance.
The argument of nature versus nurture (and brains versus brawn) is front and center here as two alien beings voiced by Brad Pitt and Will Ferrell arrive on Earth and are given distinctly different upbringings. But once Megamind finally defeats his heroic counterpart, he sees how he tied his identity up in his role as a villain. And in creating a new hero to fight him, Megamind learns the difference between the contrasting hero motivations of altruism versus narcissism. Ultimately, the moral of the story is that helping people feels better than being evil (somewhat akin to Wreck-it Ralph (2012)).
Most of the jokes in this film end up being silly as compared to outright bathroom humor. As an adult, I also appreciated some of the more obscure superhero references (like the call out to Marlon Brando in Superman (1978)). Visually, most of the main characters are enough of a caricature that they don’t fall into the uncanny valley. Unfortunately, Roxanne (Tina Fey) suffers from this and is clearly an artifact of the DreamWorks visual style at the time. Because after all, what can make or break a superhero film is something as simple as…presentation!
A surprisingly deep superhero film from the perspective of the villain, I give Megamind 4.0 stars out of 5.
This film appears in the following posts:
Cinema Connections #391. The Animated Anti-Hero
Cinema Connections #392. Brain over Brawn
