DreamWorks Animation released Megamind in the United States on November 5, 2010, after a premiere in Russia on October 28. Tom McGrath directed from a script by Alan Schoolcraft and Brent Simons. It runs 96 minutes. It grossed $322 million against a $130 million budget. It is, by the numbers, a hit.
It is also a film that arrived with a tagline promising “a superhero movie with a mind of its own.” Megamind scores 6.3/10, which Metacritic lists as 63/100.
Trailer, via Universal Kids.
The Prison Baby and the Mansion Baby
The premise is the best thing in the movie. Megamind and Metro Man are extraterrestrials of different species, both sent to Earth as infants before a black hole destroyed their planets. They land in Metro City at the same moment. Metro Man is raised in a rich mansion. Megamind is raised in a prison.
That single split does more work than most superhero comedies manage in a full runtime. At school, Metro Man is well-liked. Megamind is bullied until he breaks, and the rivalry starts there.
Will Ferrell voices Megamind. Brad Pitt voices Metro Man. Tina Fey is Roxanne Ritchi, the reporter. Jonah Hill is Tighten, the new hero. David Cross is Minion, the fish-like assistant and best friend.
Metro Man Falls, and So Does the Point
Megamind and Minion battle Metro Man for control of the city, and they lose, repeatedly. Then comes the new Metro Man Museum’s grand opening. Megamind escapes prison, kidnaps Roxanne, and lures Metro Man to an abandoned observatory. He blasts him with a sun-powered death ray. Metro Man cannot escape — he had said the copper-lined observatory roof weakens his powers.
Megamind takes the city and runs a crime spree. Then he gets depressed. Without Metro Man to oppose, there is no purpose. That turn is the film’s real subject, and it is the part that has aged best.
He decides to blow up the museum to forget the hero, then sees Roxanne inside. He dehydrates the curator, Bernard, into a small cube. Disguised as Bernard by hologram, he talks to Roxanne, and her remarks push him to use Metro Man’s DNA to build a new superhero to fight.
Hal Stewart and the Wrong Cameraman
The formula works. Then a fight between Megamind and Roxanne in his lair goes wrong, and the injection accidentally lands in Hal Stewart, Roxanne’s cameraman, who is infatuated with her. Megamind disguises himself via hologram as Hal’s “Space Dad” and trains him.
Hal is not a hero. He becomes a worse villain than Megamind ever was, and Megamind has to save the city from his own creation. The joke is good. The execution leans on Ferrell doing a stern dad voice, and it wears thin before the third act does.
Here is the comparison the film keeps inviting, and it does not flatter Megamind.
| Megamind | Metro Man | Tighten (Hal Stewart) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Origin | Sent to Earth as an infant; raised in a prison | Sent to Earth as an infant; raised in a mansion | Ordinary cameraman injected with a hero formula |
| Role | Villain, then reluctant protector | Hero, defeated by Megamind | Megamind’s creation, then the worse villain |
| Voice | Will Ferrell | Brad Pitt | Jonah Hill |
The table tells you what the movie knows and mostly delivers: the middle column is the one that matters, and the film is smart enough to remove it.
What the Franchise Did With It
Megamind got generally positive reviews and then something stranger — a cult following built through Internet memes in the years after release. A franchise followed: a trio of video games, a short film called Megamind: The Button of Doom included in home media releases, and a sequel, Megamind vs. the Doom Syndicate, plus a follow-up television series, Megamind Rules!, both of which premiered on Peacock in 2024.
Megamind: The Button of Doom picks up after the feature. Megamind and Minion are Protectors of Metro City now. They auction off the old lair’s gadgets, keeping only the Death Ray. The De-Gun goes to a boy named Damien, who accidentally dehydrates his mother into a cube. Megamind has a supersuit that copies Metro Man’s powers. Minion finds an unsold box with a button. Megamind pushes it, and an AI based on his old evil personality transfers into a giant robot, the Mega-Megamind, which scans the suit, decides Megamind is Metro Man, and attacks.
That short keeps the self-opposition, the thing Megamind is actually about.
The Case for Metro City
The case for Megamind rests on its first half and its central idea. A villain who wins and finds winning empty is a sharper premise than most animated superhero films bother with, and Ferrell, Pitt, Fey, Hill and Cross are a genuinely strong voice bench.
The case against is thinner than the film’s reputation suggests. Once Hal becomes the problem, Megamind turns into a training montage and a rescue, and the melancholy that made the middle interesting gets traded for noise. The tagline promises a mind of its own. What it delivers is a good mind, spent on a third act that plays it safe.
The cult following makes sense anyway. The prison baby, the purposeless victory, the copper roof — those are the parts people kept.
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