With its awful IMDb rating and single-digit Rotten Tomatoes score, “Megamind vs. The Doom Syndicate” may be the worst example of an animated sequel ever to see the light of day. While its memeified 2010 predecessor captured audiences with its fresh and humorous take on the superhero genre, the sequel butchers any sense of originality and charm with a 14-years-late downgrade. Kicking off the Peacock television series “Megamind Rules!,” “Megamind vs. The Doom Syndicate” sees the return of Megamind (now voiced by Keith Ferguson, as Will Ferrell didn’t return) as the supervillain faces a crisis when his former menacing crew, the Doom Syndicate, challenges his hero status and threatens to launch Metro City to the moon.
Writing for RogerEbert.com, Nell Minow remarked the movie “is intermittently funny and briefly heartwarming, as though they ran the original through the washing machine a few times, and then faxed it.” Still, director Eric Fogel defended the final outcome and blamed its shortcomings on a significantly smaller budget than the first. Beyond the disregard for the original’s characterization, plot, and humor, the most glaring, cheapened element of the movie is by far the poor-quality animation, robbing it of its bare-minimum entertainment value and strengthening our distaste for this trend of lazy franchise reboots, remakes, and sequels.