What happens in the movie Megamind

The film starts out by showing us two young babies hurtling toward Earth from a far-off planet: one, a fair complexioned with great hair (which was pretty amazing, considering his age)–the other, a blue complexioned infant. The babies glimpse each other briefly through their spaceship portals as they whiz by each other.

Both youngsters reach Earth safely–but one has an advantage over the other. While the fair boy ends up at a wealthy family’s home, the blue boy ends up at a prison. Both boys are raised by their respective “families,” and don’t see one another until a few years later, when they are sent to the same school for the gifted and talented.

At school, the blue child seems to always get the short end of the stick when it comes to blame and punishment, while the fair child draws nothing but admiration and praise. In time, the blue child comes to believe it is his destiny to be evil–so being a perfectionist, he decides to be the absolute best evil mastermind in the world.

Jump to the present. The blue boy–now fully grown–calls himself Megamind, while the fair boy–who resembles the D.C. Universe character Superman in many obvious ways–calls himself Metroman. The two have battled each other for years for control of Metro City. But for some reason, Megamind’s greatest plans always seem to go awry–until one fateful day.

To everyone’s shock–Megamind’s, included–Megamind wins the battle with Metroman by killing him. Prancing up and down the streets of Metro City, loud music blaring from a boom box, Megamind enjoys his success. But his joy in victory is strangely short-lived, and soon he misses having Metroman around to fight. Finally, he realizes that he’s lost his purpose in life.

What he needs is to have someone to battle–someone like Metroman. So he does what any self-respecting evil mastermind would do and devises a way to create a new Metroman by giving a normal person his old adversary’s powers.

As usual, Megamind’s plan doesn’t work out the way he intends, and the “hero” he creates turns out to be way more evil than he is. Realizing this anti-hero is going to destroy the city, Megamind finds himself in the unexpected position of becoming. . .you guessed it, the city’s hero.

By the end of the film, Megamind comes to realize that a person’s destiny is not something he is assigned at birth. Instead, each person creates his own destiny through the choices he makes along the way.

Megamind also learns that the path of one’s destiny can be changed by altering one’s choices. And (amazingly) sometimes the “bad guy” really does get the girl. 😉

My thoughts on the movie.

Early on, you think you’ve got the movie pegged. You know what’s going to happen, because you’ve seen it all before, right? But then, events throw you for a loop–and things happen that take you by surprise.

There are lots of humor peppered throughout the movie. On numerous occasions, I actually found myself laughing out loud. There are also lots of touching moments in the film as you realize that Megamind–the “evil mastermind” of the world–is really just a guy trying to fulfill his purpose. He thinks he’s supposed to be a bad guy, so tries to be the best one he can be. But his actions speak volumes, and show that he’s not as evil as he’d like to believe. You realize pretty early on that Megamind is the guy you’re rooting for.

The theme of choosing your own destiny is a great one for both kids and adults. Kids are still forming their visions of who they want to become. And as for adults–too often, we end up feeling trapped by our lot in life. But this film reminds us that no matter what our life has been in the past, we have always have the power to change things–just by making the choice.

One a five-star scale, I’d give this movie 4 stars. It could have been a little “meatier”–but then, I probably wasn’t the primary audience it was intended for. It was definitely worth the money to see it in the theater, and I’m glad my son and I saw it in 3-D.