We got an early look at footage of Dreamworks' supervillain epic Megamind. With Will Ferrell as the lead, and Tina Fey as the scrappy reporter, we had high expectations. So was it funny, or a flop? Spoilers ahead...
First off, we find out that Megamind wasn't always evil. At least his childhood concept design doesn't look that way. We see a picture of our anti-hero with short legs, a cherub face and a big blue noggin. Megamind director Tom McGrath explains that the little blue boy came from an advanced civilization in a distant galaxy. He was sent away by pod as his planet was being destroyed, but instead of winding up in the arms of a lovable farming couple in Smallville, he landed in a prison. Thus he grew up with a criminal mind.
Megamind is voiced by Will Ferrell — so you guessed it, he tends to go on long tangents and constantly mispronounce his home city Metro City as Metrocity over and over again. Thankfully when paired up with the rest of this amazing voice cast, he doesn't overpower the production. If anything, his flair works well with his character's various cape ensembles — one cape is for business, another cape is dubbed the Black Mamba, and so forth.
Meanwhile Metro City prospers thanks to the help of Brad Pitt's Metro Man, who's something of an Elvis, crossed with Patrick Warburton, with a giant savior complex, and fringe. In fact, Metro Man is so good at playing the hero, Metro City starts getting rather complacent, and some people have even stopped wearing seat belts. Because what's the point when you have an ever-vigilant hero in town?
Of course, none of this is meant to last, and in the first moments of our screening we see Megamind with his half-fish, half-gorilla sidekick Minion, voiced by David Cross, pull up in their invisible car with local reporter Roxanne Ritchi as their hostage. Roxy is played by Tina Fey, and we really hope this is something Fey continues to do because the back-and-forth banter between Roxy and Megamind didn't miss a beat. In fact, while she may be Metro Man's gal, she's got a much better chemistry with Megamind — perhaps a love story is in the works?
Moving on, Megamind takes Roxy hostage and tries to impress her into screaming with a barrage of guns, alligators and lasers. The unflappable Roxy one-liners each weapon off, and clearly she's used to being kidnapped. Finally, Megamind gives up and moves on with his diabolical plan.
Cut back to Metro City, Metro Man is entertaining the crowd outside of his new Metro Man Museum, until Megamind interrupts on the large screens in the middle of the crowd. Megaman informs everyone of his evil plan while Roxy reassures from behind him that she isn't the least bit scared at all, and that she's at the old abandoned observatory — there always seems to be one of those. Metro Man takes to the skies and crashes into the building. But what? It's a trap! Megamind wasn't there at all!
Megamind rushes to release his death-ray, which is still booting up. Meanwhile Metro Man gasps for strength and reveals that he cannot escape, because the copper lining in the observatory is his only weakness. Safely in a fake observatory, Megamind can't freaking believe that copper is Metro Man's weakness, and blows the entire place, and Metro Man away. The whole thing is actually pretty horrific, and hilarious.
This is where the footage ends. What we see next are a few stills of Megamind concept art including the villain sitting at what looks like the Oval Office. According to McGrath, Megamind does indeed take his place as ruler of the world. But with out the challenge of Metro Man, he's bored. So what does he do? Take Roxy's camera guy and turn him into a buffed up red headed superhero named Titan, voiced by Jonah Hill. But, sadly, the power corrupts the once camera man and turns him evil, so Megamind is forced to make a decision: is he the hero or the villain in this story?
We're excited — like most recent Dreamworks productions, it's stuffed with witty and timely jokes, oddball characters and fantastic voice talent. Let's just hope the CG body of Megamind can keep up with Ferrel's mouth.