For anyone who was dazzled by the fun and heartwarming antics of the original Megamind movie from 2010, it shouldn’t be a surprise that the franchise would eventually get picked up for a sequel. Megamind vs. the Doom Syndicate is marketed as a wacky adventure with your old pals as they try to solve new problems. However, the straight-to-streaming release may say as much about what to expect from this film as the trailer did.
Animation (1/10)
The animation for this film looks so unpolished and stiff in comparison to its predecessor. Which is odd, considering it is a sequel that has been fourteen years in the making. The production team made no attempts to hide that this is merely an over-glorified pilot for the television series that premiered on Peacock on the same release day. The character models are nearly lifeless as well. They lacked the flexibility and expressiveness of the previous movie. This only serves to make the acting less believable.
Other examples of lazy animation include not properly animating when a character bites into an object. There are also points where they reused footage from the first movie. They did this for any flashback sequences, which clashed with the current art style. The amount of corners cut on the visuals for this movie are astounding.
Sound design/ music score (2/10)
The music score for this movie was so bland, you could hold a gun to my head and I would not be able to remember any of the tunes. There were scenes that called for high energy beats to hype up the audience for the final battle. However, they were shunned in favor of bensound-esque corporate-peppy nonsense. I would have preferred them reusing the music score from the original movie. It would have been preferable over this creative (a generous descriptive) decision.
They kept any sound design work for this film to a minimum. All the sound effects were generic at best. Also, the characters never felt like they existed in the spaces they were assigned. It was like the audio engineer threw a bunch of sounds on the timeline, hit export, and called it a day.
Voice Acting (4/10)
While this category has the highest rating, the acting performances still disappoint. None of the original cast returned for this sequel, which you can expect. They had celebrities like Will Ferrell and Tina Fey for the first movie. Trying to pay and schedule talent of that caliber for a movie and then subsequent TV show would have been a hassle. Also, way more commitment than the studio wanted to put into this franchise to begin with.
Paramount chose Keith Ferguson to take Ferrell’s place as Megamind for this movie. A logical decision considering he has played the character for video games before. That said, you can tell this man was only trained to voice this character for quick one-liners. The long monologues or interactions with other characters make him sound strained. He, along with the rest of the cast, struggle with delivering lines naturally. Other than that, not much else to speak on for this category.
Story (1/10)
The writers rehashed and butchered the original story. They retold Minion’s side plot from the first film instead of coming up with a new one. He is also now named ‘Chum’ to “avoid copyright infringement.” They also introduced a plot device disguised as a character named Keiko to play the annoying tween sidekick who’s too cool for character development.
Outside of a very obvious jump in technological advancements, the main plot hole in the film stems from the super villain group that our protagonist claims to have led at some point before even the first movie began. He states that this group was well known, and that he worked with them on many escapades. However, Roxanne states many times that she has no recollection of him doing that, even though she’s known him for years and also admits this group has been widely publicized. Overall the writing was lazy and inconsistent.
Movie Rating (2/10)
“My childhood died!” is what I told my friend after we watched this movie together. While Megamind was ahead of its time for creating a fun story that challenged the status quo of the superhero genre, its official successor has not held itself up to the same standard. I would not recommend this movie to anyone, let alone the entire show that follows it. Frankly, I wouldn’t even use this movie to torture my worst enemy. It had over a decade of hope and promise riding on its wings only to have them clipped as soon as Paramount released the first trailer.
Rebecca Starke
Student Assistant
Rebecca Starke has been a full-time student of Gulf Coast State College since 2019. She has an Associate of Science degree in Digital Media and is working on her Bachelors degree in the same field. She has been working with Commodore Productions as a Student Assistant since 2020, and had a brief stint as an E-board officer of the Student Government Association during that time as well.
