Megamind

Tom McGrath spends the real climax at the start: Metro Man dies in the opening stretch, and the rest of the 96 minutes deals with a villain who has won and has nothing left to do. The plot is about the morning after victory, so anyone expecting the big fight at the end will find the order reversed. The rivalry is staged from rock rather than comics: Megamind’s look was taken from Alice Cooper, and Brad Pitt built Metro Man on Elvis. McGrath has said some scenes were fully scripted while others were at least half improvised, which is how Will Ferrell’s Marlon Brando impression got in. The script began as live action written for Ben Stiller’s company; Stiller ended up voicing Bernard, the museum curator. The pitch was flat: what if Lex Luthor beat Superman. The project carried the names Master Mind and then Oobermind, changed directors twice before McGrath took it, and lost a whole villain team, the Doom Syndicate, during production. It opened four months after Despicable Me, which ran the same redeemed villain idea. A good fit if you accept a structure whose main fight ends early and whose remaining hour hunts for something the winner can do. Not a fit if you plan to watch it dubbed; much of the comedy sits in Ferrell’s delivery.