Thirteen years ago Dreamworks released Megamind, a movie where young viewers got to see how a villain came to be. Megamind differentiated itself from other superhero movies by showing the viewer a supervillain’s point of view rather than the superhero’s point of view. While it got mostly positive reviews it was one of Dreamworks’s lowest-grossing films of the 2010s which is more than likely why a sequel didn’t come out sooner.
In the original Megamind viewers watch the antagonist slowly become the protagonist. The movie is set through Megaminds point of view who is originally the set as the villain of the movie. When Megamind defeats his life-long nemesis he thinks he’s lost his purpose. To solve this he creates a new hero to fight, this plan ended up back firing when his new superhero ended up becoming a better villain than Megamind. Which leaves Megamind in a contradicting position where he has to save the city.
However, when the sequel Megamind Vs. the Doom Syndicate was released, many fans were disappointed by the different voice cast and change in quality. Dreamworks was supposed to work on the entire movie and the television show that was supposed to continue the movie. Later on into production Dreamworks decided to mainly just focus on the production on the television show and dropped working on the movie after the first half was done. Due to this last minute decision the animation quality was noticeably worse. There was no effort put into the overall animation and a lot of the characters didn’t move as smoothly compared to other Dreamworks-produced animations.
The movie’s ratings were so bad that Megamind vs. the Doom Syndicate couldn’t even make it into the theaters, the only place to stream it is Peacock. Because of the negative reviews Dreamworks also held off on marketing for the movie.
Many viewers could tell how rushed the movie was. A notable change between the first Megamind Mind movie was the voice actors. The creators of the film couldn’t get the original voice actors due to bad scheduling and rushing. This detail made a lot of the original fans of the original Megamind movie irradiated. Not only was the quality noticeably worse but also the movie had a basic and predictable plot compared to the original. The new characters’ personalities also seemed to be a little dull and mainly just revolved around their powers.
There were little to no good reviews on rotten tomatoes. Top critic Nell Minow was the only review on rotten tomato with a somewhat good review “It is intermittently funny and briefly heartwarming, as though they ran the original through the washing machine a few times, and then faxed it.” Said Nell Minow. Other critics saw this movie as a cheap money grab and were mainly upset with the lack of effort put into the movie.
As of right now, the only thing Megamind Vs. the Doom Syndicate has going for it is continuing to the television show due to the cliffhanger it ended on. However, there will no longer be any more promotions for the movie due to overall bad reviews.
