Megamind (2010)

[foxfirefey]

So, unless it happened in the very very beginning of the movie I missed, Megamind utterly fails the Bechdel Test--one woman with no other women to talk to! Even worse, she's pretty much the rope involved in a tug of war between two pillars of manpain. One of whom (her coworker with a crush made into a superman, no less) decides that when she rejects him romantically, he should kill her.

Comments

Spoilers in comment

[tinpantithesis]

I agree that it totally fails the Bechdel Test, but I actually sort of liked that the villain was the way he was. "Hey, guys. Do you like a girl who's rejected you? Several times? If you won't take no for an answer, and are kind of creepy, you are a supervillain."

I saw this with a few friends, and someone pointed out that the bad guy (can't remember the character's name) is basically an Internet Nice Guy, and when you give an Internet Nice Guy obvious power he becomes really obviously scary. Which is a lesson I think some people could stand to learn, and I think it's useful to show kids a character that's bad in both a realistic (creepy guy) and unrealistic (superpowers) way.

Re: Spoilers in comment

[gehayi]

Yeah, I kind of like the fact that being obsessive and creepy and not listening when a woman says "NO" is, for once, not being romanticized as the good approach to relationships.

That said, I wish the woman in the movie had had at least one other woman to talk to. And that she didn't get to kick the ass of the supervillain herself, because when a guy decides that a woman should die for rejecting him, I think that the woman in question should deliver a permanent smackdown. *sad*

Re: Spoilers in comment

[holyschist]

I did like that the villain was a Nice Guy, but I am very unfond of Good-Woman-Motivates-Bad-Guy-to-Become-Good as a plot device, and the usual 5-1 male-female character ratio rather depressed me.

And you know who would have been an awesome new superhero for Metro City, and could have taken the movie in a whole different direction? Roxy.

I wonder what kind of movie it would have been if Megamind had shot her with the gun and set her up as his new rival. Possibly a less predictable one.