Megamind (2010)
Megamind (2010) — Premise in a nutshell: evil supervillain actually defeats the superhero who has been thwarting him all these years and find that he now has no idea what to do with his life. Dreamworks Animation has rarely been on the same film-making level as Pixar (mostly due to over-relying on popular culture references… and it’s not like they make bad movies or anything, Shrek and Madagascar are still both funny as hell) but between How to Train Your Dragon earlier this year and now Megamind, they’re getting better. The story takes a couple sort-of-unexpected turns that I liked (where you know what they’re going to do but not how they’re going to do it). Will Ferrell goes over-the-top (big surprise) speaking in a grandiose voice and mispronouncing words for no good reason, but over-the-top isn’t such a bad thing in a cartoon. The rest of the cast includes Tina Fey, Brad Pitt, and Jonah Hill with voice cameos from Ben Stiller, J.K. Simmons, Bill Hader, and Amy Poehler (and according to Wikipedia, Justin Long as a bunch of robots I don’t ever remember talking in the movie…). This movie came out the same year as Despicable Me, another movie about a supervillain who proves to be more lovable than menacing and think Megamind is the better of the two. I don’t know about anyone else, but a lot of supervillains seemed to have more relatable origins than heroes. Heroes often seem to stumble into superpowers. Supervillains have to suffer the same indignities that we all have to put up with… they just don’t handle it well.
Persistence of Vision 