The Life lessons of Megamind

2 nights ago on Wednesday, January 30, my friends and I watched DreamWork’s Animation’s movie Megamind in the lounge of the Turner Residential Lounge. A lot of us remembered watching Megamind when it first came out in 2010, and so we all decided to watch again. Megamind is a movie that centers around the Supervillain Megamind. His goal in the movie is to become the baddest supervillain Metro City – the setting of the movie – has ever seen, but once he finally accomplishes his goal, he begins to question the purpose and significance of that very goal. I remembered really enjoying this movie when it first came out in 2010, but I did not really understand why exactly. In the company of my friends, I enjoyed the movie again in 2019. The difference watching this time compared to watching it in 2010 is that I understand now what makes this movie so magical for me.
The year 2010 was an interesting year for superhero/supervillain movies; movie producers began to really push the boundaries and challenge the premises of what makes a good superhero/supervillain movie. 2010 saw the release of Illumination Entertainment’s Despicable Me and DreamWorks Animation’s Megamind. Both movies centered around the supervillain becoming good and both received mostly positive reviews from critics and the general public. These 2 movies are very different from the Superman and Batman cartoons I used to watch as a kid, and I think what made Megamind so special to me was how different it was to these old cartoons I used to watch.

After watching Megamind, my friends and I got to into a discussion about what we enjoyed in the movie. Of course we talked about all the weird, goofy moments in the movie, such as all the times Megamind keeps pronouncing “Metro City” as a “Metrocity”, but the main point of our discussion was how Megamind is actually a satire. Someone pointed out how blatantly Megamind makes fun of the cheesy, overused classic superhero storyline; That storyline being that the hero is destined to be great from the beginning, win the fight against his destined arch nemesis, and get the girl in the end. Thinking about that point more clearly, it is obvious now that Megamind is making fun of this storyline. For example, the opening sequence in Megamind is a complete ripoff of Superman’s origin story. Superman’s origin story sets him up to be the Earth’s chosen defender, while Megamind’s origin story sets him up to be a diabolical supervillain. Megamind goes against this chosen fate of his though. Another interesting point that someone made was how one of Megamind’s themes was that the world is not just black and white – or good vs evil. The movie makes it clear that the reason why Megamind chose to become a supervillain was that he thought it was his fate to become a supervillain from the events that happened in his childhood. At the end of the movie, however, Megamind finds himself becoming the hero of Metro City and having to protect Metro City from the “superhero” he created to be his arch nemesis.

Watching Megamind again was refreshing for me. It reminded me of an important life lesson I was taught in high school: when society becomes too generalized and cliche like, it is up to us – the people living in that society – to break those molds. Our lives are shaped by us and not by fate. I wanted to share this because everyone faces moments in their lives where they feel like they are being pressured to become something they don’t want to be. For example, this can be parents forcing you to pursue a career you don’t to be in or peer pressure for friends to participate in an event you do not want to be in. It can seem like fate is working against you. Personally, for me, I felt the way Megamind did at the beginning of the movie; I felt like I was completely screwed over by fate. I was born without the ability to smell, breathing issues, and tons of digestive issues that I still do not fully understand today. I felt like I was set up by fate to be a failure, like how Megamind felt like he was set up by fate to be a supervillain. However, through my life experience, I have learned it is not about the cards you are dealt with in the beginning, but what you managed to do with them later on.