Bring On the Bad Guys

So this week, I’ve got some recommendations for some entertainment featuring supervillains.

As part of an on-line contest run by Alethea Kontis, I won a copy of a book by Barry Lyga titled Archvillain. It’s written for younger readers, so I figured my 10-year-old daughter might like it. Reading through it myself, though, I’m sort of torn.

The story: Kyle Camden is a young genius who is famous for pulling elaborate pranks. He has decided that people are stupid and take themselves much too seriously, so he embarrasses them in public to get them them to lighten up or something. But then one night, there’s a meteor shower (sorry, plasma storm) that engulfs Kyle while he’s setting up one of his pranks. And the next thing he knows, he is invulnerable and super-strong and able to fly.Not only that, but he is suddenly smarter than ever.

And he’s not the only one. A mysterious boy was found in the aftermath of the storm, who has the same powers, only more so (except for the brains). Even worse, he uses his powers to publicly help people, which to Kyle just seems like showing off. And suddenly Kyle’s not the most popular boy in school. So he decides to take this “Mighty Mike” down a few pegs with the biggest prank ever. Things do not work according to plan.

It’s a fun read, with lots of explosions and an interesting anti-hero, who never once thinks of himself as a villain while doing all the cliched master villain things. But I had some trouble getting into it, because Kyle spends so much of the book as a vain, self-obsessed a-hole. I have no idea how this kid became the most popular kid in school, because there were several places where I just couldn’t stand him. The book has to posit him as popular in the beginning, so that he can fall from that pinnacle. But I had trouble buying into the premise.

That said, though, I really enjoyed the bits where he has to face off against Mighty Mike, and I thought the climax came together well.

And then last night, I went to see “Megamind,” the new Dreamworks animated comedy starring the voices of Will Ferrell and Tina Fey. It reminded me of Archvillain in a lot of ways, and of Austin Grossman’s Soon I Will Be Invincible, as well. The genius villain who is actually not such a bad guy at heart, forced into playing an evil role that he’d rather not, who is constantly forced into fights with a super-strong buffoon, fights that he always expects to lose–it’s a parody that has become pretty well-worn by now, but it can be surprisingly affecting when it’s done well.

And “Megamind” does it well. The script steers clear of too many fart jokes (there are a few, of course), and instead focuses on the complicated relationship between Megamind and Roxanne Ritchi, the female reporter whom he has kidnapped so many times. I thought the film struck a nice balance between overt comedy, romantic comedy, pathos and action.

And it handles 3-D really well. There are a few throw-stuff-at-your-face moments, but the real payoffs for the 3-D process (as in “Avatar”) are the scenes that give you a sense of scale–heroes and villains flying through Metro City in extreme long shots, giving you a sense of how huge the city really is. Oh, and Megamind has a fish companion named Minion, who lives in a little glass sphere full of water, and there’s one shot in particular where the sphere refracts the light coming through that totally sucked my attention away from the scene overall–it was that convincing.

I really look forward to getting this on DVD, but I wonder if you can really get a sense of the scale of it watching it in 2-D on a video screen at home, even a large HD screen. Because it’s really incredible in the theater.