It's probably safe to suggest that many Spider-Man fans are uneasy about the forthcoming reboot of the franchise. While Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 3 certainly wasn't a lot to write home about, his first two Spidey films were far more successful. Furthermore, as he was set to embark on Spider-Man 4, there was a feeling that lessons would have been learned, and that studio interference would have significantly lessened.

However, Raimi's fourth Spider-Man adventure is one that's consigned to the recycle bin of films we'll never get to see, as Sony instead opted to press ahead with a full reboot. Thus, Andrew Garfield is the new Spider-Man, Emma Stone is Gwen Stacy, and (500) Days Of Summer director Marc Webb is calling the shots. Rhys Ifans is on villain duties, too.

Kirsten Dunst wasn't the most popular part of Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy, meanwhile, yet she does seem to have voiced a few pressing concerns in an interview with Hero Complex. It's hard to disagree with some of what she has to say, too. She's not being disingenuous or disrespectful, here. She might just be right.

"I mean, everyone was coming back, and they were casting a villain. I knew it wasn't ready to go, but I knew they were working on it. And they decided not to, so - you know what, it was only sad because we didn't know the last one was going to be our last. So we didn't have that extra little 'This is the last time, guys.' We didn't get to have that grieving. It was a little like, 'Oh, we're not doing it, bummer.'"

She went on to note that "They have a lot to live up to. I do really like Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield. I know that Emma's playing Gwen Stacy, but I wonder what story they're gonna tell, because it wasn't that long ago - we're not, like, old people. That's why I'd be nervous. They're gonna tell the story, I guess, from the beginning again - but in a different way. But it wasn't that long ago that we told that story. So the pressure's on again a little bit in that way. Yeah, they're in a funny position. But, hey, I'm sure they're gonna work it out."

Hope so.

Hero Complex

Follow Den Of Geek on Twitter right here.

Some two months ahead of Disney's release of Tron: Legacy, Den Of Geek was lucky enough to be invited to effects studio Digital Domain's surprisingly low-key base in Los Angeles to meet with the actors and makers of the film.

In the first of a series of interviews, we enjoyed a lengthy and fascinating round table discussion with co-producers Justin Springer and Steven Lisberger. Lisberger, of course, wrote and directed the original Tron, and acts as producer on the forthcoming Legacy.

Lisberger began by giving us a fascinating insight into the creative origins of Tron, a story that begins in the late 70s...

Steven Lisberger: The original animation studio was actually right up the street. Like, seven blocks from here - it used to be called Washington. It was at that studio, which was an extension of my Boston studio, where we continued design work on a warrior that we made out of neon.

Everybody was doing backlit animation in the 70s, you know. It was that disco look. And we thought, what if we had this character that was a neon line, and that was our Tron warrior - Tron for electronic.

And what happened was, I saw Pong, and I said, well, that's the arena for him. And at the same time I was interested in the early phases of computer generated animation, which I got into at MIT in Boston, and when I got into that I met a bunch of programmers who were into all that. And they really inspired me, by how much they believed in this new realm.

We started to write a story about those kinds of professionals -

Justin Springer: These weren't programmers looking to get into the movies or television. You saw a way of using what they were working on at MIT, right?

SL: Right. And at the time there were no PCs. There were computers that you could own, but they only ran on machine language. And this very idealistic idea came to us, which was that if we could all access the information in computers, if we could all communicate, wouldn't the world be a much better place?

It was hopelessly idealistic, and actually as I think back on it, we were telling the audience, "You've got to get your hands on a computer, and you've got to get connected to cyberspace!"

But thinking about it, there really was no way for them to do it. [laughs] It wasn't really until the PC came out that this became possible. It was possible at the time if you worked for the Defence Department. ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) was a worldwide net, and they certainly had their computers. Ironically, it was over in Culver City that we had a film recorder with 6,000 lines resolution back in 1980, and it came from the Defence Department. It was part of a spy system, and we got our hands on it, using it to create film footage of the MCP.

JS: Much better usage. [laughs]

So, the entire concept of Tron came from this single neon warrior. That was the germ of the idea?

SL: Yeah, the basic germ. You have an animation studio, and two things are inherent to that. One is, who's going to be your Mickey Mouse, you know? You can see that with Pixar and [John] Lasseter, with Toy Story.

He [Tron] was going to be our Mickey Mouse, but what artists really love is when you give them a fresh arena. If you look back at the history of animation, Disney was always trying to give them something that hasn't been visualised in a long time, or maybe never visualised - and artists love that.

So, we realised we had a character and a look that suggests other characters, and when we saw videogames we saw a fresh arena. But we didn't have deeper character issues or motivations until we met programmers who were part of that. And all that came together within six months to a year.

Was there a certain hippy ideology that came out of it as well?

SL: No question about it. I am part of the boomer generation, and we were idealistic. The Gen-Xers are more realistic. My generation is certainly guilty of being too unrealistic. We dreamt so big and didn't follow through.

But by the same token, I think the challenge for the next generation, the Gen-Xers, is to be more realistic, but not give up totally on idealism. My son's generation, basically Justin's generation, has the problem of putting both those elements together.

So, there's a correlation between the first film in that the original was idealistic, and this film deals with the technology in a much more realistic, practical and grounded way, and I think that reflects what their attitude is. I used an analogy once - I don't think it's necessarily that great an analogy - but I felt I had a tiger by the tail when we dragged in this whole computer graphics, cyberspace realm into our animation studio. We were just amazed that we pulled it in.

This new generation is making this tiger jump through burning hoops and training it. What impressed me is how relentlessly determined Joe and Sean have been about making it do exactly what they want. And is that not the challenge of your generation? That if you're going to have all this stuff, then dammit, you're going to make it do what you want it to do?

Whereas, for us, it was more like "We can get it to do something. Isn't that a miracle?"

I think that was what the original Tron was borne out of, that even when you watch it now, it's almost abstract in places, almost arthouse. Was your studio's partnership with Disney a comfortable one from an artistic standpoint?

SL: There's fairly unknown quote from Walt that went, "I don't make movies to make money. I make money to make movies." And when we were working on the film at Disney, I remember one of the old timers saying, "The fact that this film is so scary and so experimental, and people are concerned about that, is making the studio feel like it used to feel when Walt was here."

People have this misconception that in the heyday of Disney, they were so surefooted about where they were going, but they weren't. It was highly experimental, and I think there was enough of that ethos at the studio, but Tom Wilhite, who greenlit the movie, he was 29 years old, had just become the head of the studio, and I was 29 years old. And Tom told me, years later, that "It's a good thing I didn't know more, because if I had I wouldn't have made this."

Certainly, I had gone to film school, most of my experience was in animation. I had done hours and hours of animation, and Lisberger Studios had a staff of about 70 people. But when the full scope of what we were attempting became clear to everyone, I think any other studio would have completely freaked out. But because this was Disney Studios, what we were doing was sort of in their DNA. We were actually going to blow up every single frame of this movie, and make multiple mattes that would allow us to tint the faces and treat a live-action movie like it was animation. We could have filled this entire room with the frame blowups from this movie. It was two tractor trailer trucks full.

The 13 animation stands photographed this stuff to composite it, but at that point, even though we were going over budget, actually, said, "This is what we do. This is manageable." They felt strangely comfortable.

What they never felt comfortable with was using computer animation. At the time, that was the Devil. I can't tell you how scared of computers people were back in the day. And the argument that the film was making was, "It's scary because you are not part of it. You have no access. You have no idea what's going on. If it's in your hands too, and you will be empowered."

Since then, of course, the technology has divided our world into two parts - the analogue and the digital - and that is the underlying symbol of Tron. Holding the disc overhead is the symbol of unity.

It can be argued that we all have to have a feeling that "How do we put ourselves back together?" We're so divided between these two realities, and the story and Flynn and his son and his cyber-son, Clu, is a story of technology dividing and how those come back together.

JS: I've got a good example of how scared people were of CG technology back in 1982. The Academy eliminated Tron from the Visual Effects Award that year because they said it was cheating.

SL: We were not even nominated for special effects.

JS: Coming back to your point about the abstraction of Tron in 1982, and where we are in 2010, one of the interesting things for me is that, in 1982, the digital world was such a new frontier that it was like Steven and this small team that was on the inside of what this world might look like, and introducing that to an audience.

And I think that, as 30 years have passed, what's interesting is that digital technology is so pervasive in our lives. It's certainly been that way for the past 15 years. In 1982, they were using a lot of CG technology, but also practical tools to imagine a digital world.

Now we've been there, Joe [Kosinski, Tron: Legacy director] has taken the approach of how can I use all these digital tools to create a world that is very real. And you can see in the footage that Tron has now become a more realistic place, and that you're starting to see evidence of the organic appearing in a synthetic world, and the themes have changed.

The overarching themes are still there, but you have the theme of holding onto your humanity in an increasingly digital world, and what is the relationship between man and machine, and all those things that you were kind of considering then, but it was more about "Here's the next frontier."

Now that we've lived with it, we're asking, "What are the dangers of this frontier we're living?"

SL: We dealt with it in a sort of mythic way, and this is a practical approach, in the sense of asking, how does it affect our individual lives, and come between a father and a son.

In the original Tron, you could see the technology up there on the screen. It was very digital looking, but you're saying you don't want it to look quite like that any more?

SL: It's an evolution. When we went to Disney, we had a team of artists that were really good, and at one point, the number of people who went on to have big careers from that studio was unbelievable. Roger Allers, who was my right-hand guy, and drew the MCP, he went on to direct The Lion King.

John Norton, who drew the original neon warrior, he was the Disney animator for years after that. He walked on Tarzan. Brad Bird worked at the studio, and Bill Kroyer and Jerry Rees, they've all directed animated feature films.

And we went to Disney who said, "If you could have anybody you wanted, who would you want?" I wanted Mobius, and Richard Taylor, my effects guy, wanted Syd Mead. I got to know both of them, and I got them both.

I can't tell you what a difference that made to us. We were scared before. We're still a little scared, but now we have these top guns. With these two artists, there's nothing we can't do. When I think about how great that was, that cyberspace had not been imagined, and the first gang to go there would involve the efforts of these super talented artists, I love that part of the story.

It's always been form following function. Computers have always been doing what they do best. And that is certainly true, when I see Joe being the conductor, overseeing everything coming together, and see how he is capable of tricking the technology to doing exactly what he wants. He seduces it into doing what it does best.

The Light Cycles look more like they're supposed to look now than when we did them. We were so limited that Syd gave me the original designs for the Light Cycle, and there were too many compound curves. So, I had to, over a weekend, work out how to get rid of some curves, so I sort of squeezed most of the Light Cycle between two invisible planes of glass, and that eliminated a lot of compound curves while keeping the windshield and the fairing on the front, and it still, in profile, looked correct.

We didn't have the ability to put the rider on the back and make his helmet part of the design. That was Syd's original design. What's happened now is that we have a Light Cycle that looks much more like we'd hoped.

For me, that bike is the symbol of man coming one with a machine.

JS: It's that iconic look that certainly inspired us when we went looking to revisit this saga. And we looked back and said that one of the things that's most memorable about Tron is, for sure, the look that the team had created.

That was Joe's pitch, that he wanted to take what was so iconic about the first movie and not throw it out the window and do it afresh, but evolve that look forward.

We have the tools to be far more photorealistic with things, but let's still hold true to the design of what Steven's team had created in ‘82.

So, when you look at parts of the world, and you can see from the logos to the Recogniser and Jeff Bridges, when we sat down and said, at a fundamental level, "What do we need Tron to be?", we wanted it to look like the movie Steve had created, and feel like it, and we needed Jeff Bridges. So, that's what set us on the path to continuing the story.

It's a standalone sequel, so you won't have had to have seen the original film, but if you have, it's fun to be able to take that narrative and write a mythology from the late 70s when the original started, through the 80s, where Kevin Flynn disappears, all the way into 2010 when Legacy begins. So, from a design perspective, from a story perspective and a thematic perspective, there are really strong ties between the two films that has created this pretty rich and lengthy mythology.

SL: It turns out that people don't really change. Whatever idealistic view I had, that people are going to see my Tron I did in 1982, and then they're going to come out as different people, didn't happen.

What really happened is, 35-year-old and 40-year-old people took their eight-year-old and 10-year-old kids, and the parents freaked out. They'd just seen a Disney film which had a lot of stuff in it they didn't understand, and was disconcertingly different. And that wasn't supposed to happen.

The marketing department at Disney was not that sophisticated, and really hadn't warned these people. And when their 10-year-olds looked at their parents freaking out, they said, "This is good. This is for me. Sign me up for more of this."

And it turns out that they were the ones that, the minute the PC was there, said, "I gotta get this." They were the ones that embraced videogames. They were the ones that embraced digital culture, and they grew up with that technology, and made it theirs.

At a certain point in time, the gears really lined up with the original Tron. And it turns out they didn't forget that. And after 28 years, those kids are now producers, and studio executives, and they were now 35 and 40, and in a position to make the film and take their own kids.

And that, for me, is the reason why it took 28 years for the wheel to go around.

The look of Tron is very sophisticated, and very specific, but isn't there a question of why this internal world looks the way it does?

SL: The reason it looks like that is because there's an ongoing tendency to take computer technology and make it look like the real world. So, what happens is, we get a certain amount of fascination out of saying we're going to take supercomputers and make things that look like stuffed animals, or spaceships, or whatever CG things you see in films.

What Tron does, is say, there's a magician, there's a power behind that, and we get a certain satisfaction from making it do what we want, but what it really wants to do is not this. It doesn't really want to do images that look like the real world.

Computers really want to do images that, say, "You know what I actually like? You know what the landscape of my interior is? It's that. [points to movie stills on the wall] It's pulling off the magician's tablecloth and finding out what's really under the table.

And when you do that you end up with this look.

JS: And also we had the idea that Tron is a world that exists on a server. And once you're in there it's this massive universe, but the idea that from 82 to 2010 this server has been sitting there like a Galapagos island, fully powered up and also evolving, self-generating new programs.

And then Kevin Flynn came in and started making it look more and more like his own world, which is - one of the comfortable things humans try to do with technology is try to use it to create a more realistic simulation of the world they come from.

Over the course of thirty years, with ideas like Moore's Law, which is this rapidly repeating grid system, is becoming more and more realistic. So, by the time you see the Grid in Legacy, you see mountain formations and Programs that look very real and Programs that are acting independently and have some form of individualism. You see vehicles that look more realistic, and there are weather systems with rain and fog, and there's thunder and lightning in the clouds.

We've come up with a narrative explanation for why the world looks different from how it does in 1982.

SL: It's computer powered. The underlying architecture's the same. I recently remastered the first film for Blu-ray. And there's software that enables you to take a frame of the film and then puts cursor lines and vector lines around certain things you want to alter. And it was most interesting, because when I put those things up there to start to manipulate the frame, you couldn't tell they were there, because they actually looked like Tron.

The cursor frames, the wire frames, just fit perfectly into the original Tron image.

JS: Another good example that I remember freaked you out a little bit, was the idea that in Tron there's a famous scene of Jeff Bridges being digitised and put inside a computer. And when we began working on Tron: Legacy, and we started to create Clu, we put Jeff in front of a laser and basically digitising him to go inside the system. [laughs]

SL: ...and I'd made that up! That was a pain in the ass 28 years ago!

JS: Jeff was like, "This is wild, man!"

SL: And then the technicians that were doing the scanning didn't appreciate the irony. I said, "Don't you realise I just made that up all those years ago!" and they said "You made it up, so of course it came true this way."

So, I had this strange feeling that, when you predict what is going to happen, then it's like "Well, of course, it's inevitable that it went that way." But I guess if you get it wrong in a big way, it's almost more shocking.

Do you think there's a danger that, where the original Tron was borne out of adversity, modern computer technology is so advanced, you can almost, theoretically, do anything? So, you have to, in essence, reign your imagination in a little bit?

SL: I know what you're saying. It's a misnomer when people say artists don't like limitations. It's actually quite the opposite. Artists do best when it's, like, just a block of marble, or your blue period, a piece of paper and just a pencil.

When you can do anything, you get a problem. I think there is an artistic danger to that. And I think that Joe has been really good about avoiding that pitfall, just in the same way as the new generation, by comparison to my generation, anything with this technology.

You can be on the phone talking to your friends constantly, if you want. If you decide to meet for lunch, you can have 16 phone calls the day before lunch. "I'm 10 blocks away. I'm one block away. I'm actually in the parking lot. I'm approaching the table. I'm can see you! I'm sitting down. Oh, hey, we're at lunch!"

You can do that if you want. That's the responsibility of how you deal with this technology now.

So, how do you give yourself boundaries?

JS: That's what's so great about Joe's vision for this is that he came in from the first day and said that what was special about Tron was its look, its aesthetic. With the current technology, we could make a CG version of this room and say it's inside a computer, but then you've moved away from what is fundamentally Tron.

So, he sat down with Steve first and said, "Show me what you're working on", and Steve pulled out this big book of all the original art that Syd Mead and Mobius had worked on together, so Joe took that. The fundamental design principles of Tron and Tron: Legacy are the same, we just have the technology to push it forward.

SL: What's interesting is, he made the distinction of saying, "This stuff over here is going to look like the evolution of the original stuff, but true to it in spirit." The first film pushed boundaries so hard that we have to find an area where we can use the technology and push the boundary totally, and that's what he did with Clu.

But he also pushed the boundary in rendering that looks to a level and completeness that is incomprehensible to those who worked on the first film. To see how realistic that world looks, and still looks Tron-esque, it's pretty spectacular.

JS: Anyone have any Tron world questions? You know, what is the world, what is the Disc?

Yeah, what is the Disc? [laughs]

SL: It's a frisbee [laughs]. I think the Disc, for me, is one of my favourite parts of the Tron world for multiple reasons. It is a contemporary symbol that, by fate or chance, lines up with something that goes through human history. The Mandala has been with us for, you know - the Egyptians, the Mayans - the circle is the symbol of wholeness.

And that we should end up, in the contemporary era, with these holographic discs that hold all this information, is to me an artistic and intellectual irony, and that they are, in essence, as powerful, as they are meant that they could be weapons. They could be symbols of self.

Frankly, I'm really bored with seeing actors pretend to be marksmen, soldiers, hitmen, who aren't really good with weapons at all, and whose idea of being deadly is having their agent call you, and carrying prop guns, and pretending to kill people with them.

I'm just really bored with it. It's strange, because in this day and age, people get bored with anything if they have to endure it more than twice, but for some reason you can go to a movie theatre, and you'll see six major actors in a row fondling guns, for one reason or another. Followed by them pretending to kill people with guns. And people never seem to get bored with it. I'm bored with it.

JS: It's cool, though, that in Tron you have these discs that are both your weapon and spiritual centre. It's where all the information about you is stored, it's fundamentally who you are.

SL: It's a symbol of self.

Don't you think it's weird to throw a symbol out of yourself, so you're separating your body from your soul?

SL: I'll give you an analogy of that, I'm glad you brought that up. We are born with our self. We don't develop our ego until we're about eight years old. Prior to that stage in our life our super-ego has been implanted in us by our parents. We have no protection against them. We don't have an ego yet. Whatever they tell us goes right to the harddrive. When your friends hurt you it goes right to the harddrive.

So, what happens is, your ego starts taking a pounding, and you develop a personality to protect your ego. And what happens is, the personality becomes so good at protecting the ego, it completely cuts the ego off from the original self. And that's when people start to feel quite a bit of dissatisfaction.

And when they go to a film, for instance, or they fall in love, part of their personality is broken away, and the connection can flash between the original self and the ego. That's why people will say to you "That movie made me feel like a kid again," or, "When I'm with this girl, I feel happy again. I feel like the person I really want to be."

So, the idea that you're cut off from yourself is represented by the fact that you put your disc out there, and part of your soul may remain, but part of the disc is out there, the way we put ourselves out there in society, at work, and if we're not careful, we get cut off from who we really are.

That concept is hidden underneath the idea of projecting your disc. I think that what the world is doing to us now isn't a problem to do with ego. It's a problem to do with toxic personality. And our egos are expressed through cyberspace. The ego helps you function in society, and it helps you work. You have to have one. And that's the role that cyberspace plays. Good luck finding a job, or being part of society, if you're not connected to the net.

And all that is part of the ego. Look how many toxic personalities there are on the Internet. And as that becomes more and more a part of life, we get cut off from who we really are. The whole idea of anonymity on the Internet represents being cut off from the original true self.

So, all of cyberspace and the mechanism of cyberspace is becoming a Rorschach to our true condition. That's about as heavy as it gets! [laughs] That's the penthouse.

When you thought of the Grid, the world of Tron, was it intentional that it reflected The Wizard Of Oz?

SL: It's interesting that you should say that. It did reflect The Wizard Of Oz to me, and no one made that connection. It's really strange, because we were completely overshadowed by E.T. that summer, and people kept comparing E.T. to The Wizard Of Oz, which I really didn't understand at all.

But then I realised their definition of The Wizard Of Oz was just as something for kids, and that meant it was connected to The Wizard Of Oz. 

Salman Rushdie wrote a great piece about The Wizard Of Oz, where he talked about what it really means is we go through life trying to grow up, looking up to our parents as wizards, and then one day we realise that's just a face on a curtain, and behind that curtain is my mother or my father.

And that's very much the story of this film, because Sam Flynn, his father's nothing but a big legend. In this film, he really is like The Wizard Of Oz. You can't love a legend. You can't really connect with it or relate to it. And in this film, the legend becomes just a man, which is a good thing, and the son goes from being just a memory to a man. And when they can both look at each other as men, then the connection is there.

In the case of the first film, this idea of the Programs looking up to us as gods is very much like The Wizard Of Oz, and the MCP is the Wizard, and we know that, underneath, he's just a bunch of bits and bytes.

We weren't chasing down The Wizard Of Oz, thematically, but I think it's in our DNA. The Coen brothers have said the film that has influenced them the most is The Wizard Of Oz.

Justin Springer and Steven Lisberger, thank you very much!

Follow Den Of Geek on Twitter right here.

In Megamind, comedy actor Will Ferrell provides the voice for the swaggering, dome-headed outsider of the title, a blue-skinned anti-hero who specialises in fancy capes and nefarious schemes.

As the film hits cinemas, we enjoyed a round-table interview with Mr Ferrell to discuss his work in Megamind, the classic Anchorman, and his comedy influences…

What was your inspiration behind Megamind’s voice?

Well, in terms of vocals, I was just trying to go for… he’s this villain who, under a different circumstances, could have been the good guy. He’s alienated to the point where he thinks, "I might as well be evil, it’s what I’m good at"

Tom McGrath, the director, and I, we spoke about how he should be approachable and sweet, and someone you’d root for. And at the same time, I thought, his whole life and demeanour and the way he acts is based on the idea that he thinks he’s very intelligent. That’s where the voice came from. A kind of a Madonna-esque affectation. Faux articulate. [Laughs]

Did you see what he [Megamind] looked like before you took the part?

Yes, yes. They have that all drawn up. It’s so sad when you’re in a movie with Brad Pitt, and even his animated version is chiselled and beautiful, and I have an ugly blue head. [Laughs]

A lot of your comedy is visual, obviously. How difficult is it to just project your voice to get the effect you want?

That’s the interesting process in a way, because at first you feel like you’re on this island, and you have to trust the director. I didn’t have a problem diving into it, and trying to be funny was one thing, but what tripped me up was the scenes where you kind of have to down-shift and come off very sincere. Any of the scenes that had an emotional through-line were hard to articulate with just my voice.

The things that you’re used to drawing on are not there, and I felt like I was struggling at times, but Tom was like, “Oh no, you were great.” But there were times when I was trying to come off as sad in a scene, and I’d think I’d really nailed it, and Tom would say, “Okay, let’s try that again.” [Laughs]

I’ve a lot of respect for people who can easily do that.

But it works well, when you see the finished film, doesn’t it?

Yeah, and they have your back, too. Tina Fey used to say, when we did interviews together, “They made me seem like a much better actress than I really am,” because they [the animators] give you that expression and nuance.

What emotions do you draw upon when you’re doing the voice work?

What do I draw upon? Do I think about dead kittens, or something like that? [Laughs] Oddly enough, I think about dead kittens a lot [Laughs], but you just try to be very sincere in those moments, and try to be as real as you can within the context of the script.

You’ve worn numerous crazy costumes in your movies. Was it a relief to not have to worry about those?

Yes, absolutely. Even though I think that was such a brilliant part of the character, that here’s this guy who really thinks about how he’s going to look, and designs his capes. This kind of rock ‘n roll persona that he’s thought off for himself, that goes against the fact that he’s just trying to seek acceptance from people.

Did you have a lot of acting time alongside Tina Fey and Brad Pitt?

Tina and I had to do a couple of recording sessions together. As you guys probably know, the norm is to be by yourself. You record with another actor, but usually not with the actor you’re in the scene with. So Tina I got to do a couple of sessions with, which was great, and Brad refused to anywhere near me. [Laughs] I don’t know why.

Your character’s very much an anti-hero, which was once, you could say, the preserve of films like Scarface…

Yeah [Laughs].

…whereas now you’ve got anti-heroes in family films. Why do you think now is the right time for villainous characters to take a central role in family movies?

I think maybe all the other avenues have been exhausted. [Laughs] To the point where someone thought, “Oh, let’s tell the story of the anti-hero.” I don’t know. I think that’s the innovative part of the movie, that it’s the story of the villain told from his perspective. It is an interesting examination of what happens when the anti-hero gets what he wants – how does that play out? As we find out, it’s not everything he thought it would be, and it’s an empty existence.

Who’s your all-time favourite movie villain?

You know, I’m not an aficionado on the whole superhero genre, in a way. I do remember in the Michael Keaton Batman Returns film, with Danny DeVito as the Penguin. I remember thinking, here’s the guy from Taxi, and he's a really creepy, evil and weird villain. That’s one that sticks out for me.

What do your kids think of Megamind?

Well, it was interesting, because this is the first movie I’ve done where they have an awareness that I was in it. They couldn’t decipher the fact that I was Megamind, and asked, “Are you in a costume?” I had to explain that it was kind of like a cartoon.

It was fun. [It was] the first time they got to go to a premiere, and they got to go to France. The best part about it was, when I asked my three-year-old if he liked it, he was like, “Yeah, I really liked it.”

But my six-year-old, he’d seen the trailer and stuff, and he saw the movie and was laughing at the jokes. I asked him, “What did you think?”, and he was like, “Oh, um… you were fine.” [Laughs]

And I said, “Remember you were laughing at the phone and smells like a hero and all these things?”, and he says, “Oh yeah, I know. You were fine.”

His attitude was like, “Don’t ask me again, or I’ll have to tell you what I really think.” [Laughs]. Tough Love!

Do they appreciate what you do for a living?

The oldest one is just starting to know. I think because his friends at school say, “I saw your dad.” Last summer, he pulled me aside and said, [adopts conspiratorial voice] “I know what you do.” It was like, “Hey, buddy, let me talk to you for a second.” [Laughs]

I said, “What is it that I do?”, and he said, “You’re an actor.” And I asked him how he felt about that, and he said, “Okay. I’m fine with it.” [Laughs]

You’re a fairly regular visitor to Ireland, with Step Brothers and Talladega Nights. Are you thinking of doing a film there anytime soon?

As soon as the studios let me, I’d do it in a heartbeat.

Because the country could really do with a boost right now. [Laughs]

I could save the economy with one movie! Are you kidding me? I’d love to work over there. It’s funny doing interviews in France – this is only the second movie where I’ve been able to go there. And they’ve said, “You don’t like coming here. Why?” [Laughs]

And I tell them, it’s not me, it’s the studios. They’re not willing to promote the movie over there.

The characters in Megamind remind me of rockstars. Was that a conscious decision?

Yeah. In talking to Tom, there was a conscious decision to have Megamind based on Alice Cooper, someone like that. And part of his whole persona is the pageantry of what he thinks a bad guy should be. With the AC/DC and Guns N’ Roses music, I don’t think you see that in a family movie for the most part, so I think that’s part of the charm of the character.

What film has come the closest to how you initially intended it to? Is there one or two in particular that you look back on and think, “That was perfect”?

Gosh. In comedy, I don’t know if there’s ever one that lands on its feet in exact way you’d pictured, because it’s such trial-and-error. Actors and comedians who say “I knew from the first day this would be a hit” are usually full of it.

Of all the stuff Adam McKay have done, we’ve always said “I don’t know if anyone else will like it, but I think that’s funny.”

Elf has become this big holiday movie, and I remember running around the streets of New York in tights saying, “This could be the last movie I ever make”, and I could never have predicted that it’d become such a popular film.

Anchorman has to be the one movie that would be the closest to what you’re talking about, because that was such a crazy movie at that time. The studio didn’t understand it. The head of marketing was openly telling the media, “I don’t get it.” [Laughs]

We didn’t care, because we got to make exactly what we wanted to make, and we were happy, even if it was the last movie we ever made. [Laughs]

Is that the one that gets quoted back at you most? Do you get people shouting lines of dialogue?

It depends. I guess I’ve been fortunate enough to have been in a number of things that are fairly quotable. It just depends on the crowd. A number of movies get shouted back at me, to the point where… I was shooting this film, which was at the London Film Festival, called Everything Must Go, a small indie movie. And we had done the last shot of the day, and I was riding a bike, and this woman pulls up next to me and screams, “Why are you sweating so much?” [Laughs] “Why are you sweaty?”

And she’s smiling. So I say, “Oh, I was just riding a bike, so…” And she says, [Bangs fist on table] “No! It’s from Step Brothers!” [Laughs] “Oh, sorry.”

What was it like to get the Forbes [most overpaid actor] award?

I think it’s a badge of honour. Aren’t we all striving to be overpaid for what we do? It’s funny. Two years ago I was in Australia, and a journalist said, “You’re on the top ten list of most bankable stars.” Then all of a sudden it flips. I don’t know who’s doing the calculations. But now, I’ve had two hit movies, so maybe I’ll descend the ranks into profitability again.

I know how to fix the balance. I wanna be in the next Terminator movie, and do it for one dollar. And then it’ll make a few million, and I’ll be real value for money. [Laughs]

Where did you get your comedy shaping from? Who influenced the way you perform?

I think I got a general love of comedy from my parents, in a way. And then I loved the first, original cast of Saturday Night Live. I just thought that was a collection of five or six comedic actors that were so good that it’s amazing to think they were on the same cast.

My dad turned me onto Peter Sellers as a kid. I loved the fact that he was a unique combination of being extremely subtle and over-the-top all at the same time, and that’s a hard thing to do. I admire that.

The other influence is Steve Martin. When he came on the scene, he was doing silly comedy that didn’t follow a linear path – if you were to write down what he was going to do, it wouldn’t make sense. I think that’s inspired my generation, and it’s happened a lot of times when writing a script, and the studio… [In Anchorman] DreamWorks wanted to take the out the Steve Carell character, Brick Tamland. “He doesn’t make sense! Every time he speaks, he doesn’t make sense! Lose that character.” But that was the point. [Laughs] That’s why he’s in there.

I presume people look up to you now…

No. [Laughs]

Did you plan to get into movies after Saturday Night Live?

I got lucky. I left Saturday Night Live without a film to go to, and I’d filmed Old School while I was in my last season of the show, and that hadn’t come out yet. I was a free agent, in a way, but I knew it was time to leave the show and test the water. The first three movies leaving the show were Old School, Elf and Anchorman, so I had those three in a row that were good ones.

Will Ferrell, thank you very much!

See Also:

• Tom McGrath interview: on Megamind, animation and superheroes

Follow Den Of Geek on Twitter right here.

In the mountains of Finland, a survey team are about to dig up something secret, something which will change the face of Christmas forever.

Following on from director Jalmari Helander's acclaimed shorts, Rare Exports Inc and Rare Exports: The Official Safety Instructions, comes this debut feature length effort.

Living in a remote Finnish mountain village, young Pietari uncovers the truth about Santa Claus in a horrific, yet darkly comic fashion. Buried for hundreds of years beneath the ice is the real St Nick, and he isn't a kindly old man. At once a re-examination and a clever deconstruction of the Santa Claus myth, Rare Exports also functions extremely well as the type of otherworldly fantasy Christmas adventure film which, for my money, has been missing over the last few years.

First things first, though, this is definitely not a little kids film. There is a level of dark horror and violence, coupled with a few well placed swear words, which puts me more in mind of a del Toro piece, rather than, say, Santa Claus: The Movie. However, having said that, it is wonderfully bizarre, with a sense of foreboding and wonder which older kids will definitely love. So, if you are in charge of one of theses kids, use your discretion on letting them see it!

Now for the positives. The tone of the film is excellently judged, with the total isolation and helplessness of the village set up extremely well. When dark forces are unleashed, you know there is no possibility of help arriving anytime soon, and it is definitely up to the few characters on display to save the day.

Of these, Pietari and his father are central, and it is their relationship which is at the heart of the film, both story-wise and thematically. Bereft of a tender motherly figure (for reasons unexplained, but subtly touched upon), Pietari instead must obey his gruff father, who is unable to properly express the wealth of love he feels for his son.

In return, Pietari feels he is a disappointment to his father, and at the same time is desperate to prove himself a man in his father's eyes. All of this is shown in a few scenes based at the homestead, and it is a relationship which grows throughout the film, leading to organic and natural actions taken by the pair as events reach their conclusion.

The few supporting characters are also given their fair share of action and moments, especially the Santa Claus-impersonating, sunglass-wearing Piiparinen, who, in the course of the film, has his ear bitten off and flies a helicopter, as well as helps to chop up a body. Equally as important to events are young Juuso and his father, who act as a counterpoint to the main father/son relationship.

As mentioned above, Rare Exports is, indeed, a Santa Claus movie, but one which seeks to reclaim the myth for both Finland and those who reject the commercialism of the modern day festive season. It re-examines his roots as a terrifying figure that would punish children rather than reward them, and in the director's words, seeks to explore just why "children still seem to be afraid of Santa Claus and wait for him with anxiety". He looms over the film like a shadowy threat, lurking in a national psyche as something half remembered, and half feared, despite the Coca-Cola-inspired love for him.

When Santa is finally introduced, it is as a suitably grubby and creepy character, an alien figure in an alien environment, which, while obviously malevolent, is familiar enough to our childhood memories that we expect him to come good. The fact that events, in fact, pan out in a completely different manner to what we have been led to believe just adds to the fun at guessing the true nature of Santa. It is a tremendous bait and switch which I won't spoil here.

However, it is not all perfect. The film feels far too neatly wrapped up at the end, and at no point during the climax did I feel the characters were truly in danger as before. There are also a few scenes of poorly judged CGI which detract somewhat, but all in all, these are minor nitpicks in what is a tremendous 80s style dark fantasy.

There were also a few points where I thought the plot defied logic with certain characters' actions/skills, but then you catch yourself and realise you're watching a film about a monstrous Santa terrorising a small Finnish community! And any film which has a scene involving a small child being charged at by hundreds of naked old men can't be judged too harshly with questions of logic.

So, if you are looking for a Christmas film with a difference this year, then you really can't do better then this little beauty. Weird and demented, it will leave you scratching your head (especially at the wonderfully left field ending!) but feeling oddly Christmassy. You will however, be terrified at what may be coming down your chimney this year...

Follow Den Of Geek on Twitter right here.

There's a scene in The American where George Clooney's character, named Jack, Edward, Butterfly and Farfalla, depending on the circumstances, spends an evening in a cheap Italian café where Once Upon A Time In The West is playing on TV in the background.

It's a pertinent moment, a glimpse of a stone-cold classic motion picture in what I feel is a stone-cold classic motion picture. I'd rate both movies as being perfect masterpieces, but the convergence of the two feels very appropriate for other reasons.

They're vastly different movies, of course, but there are striking parallels. At the most fundamental level they both focus on haunted individuals who have 'something to do with death'.

With his spaghetti westerns Sergio Leone, a foreign outside eye, deconstructed American mythology and, with Once Upon A Time In The West especially, grappled with the authenticity of a nation's identity and how it was built. There's a touch of that sort of activity happening in Anton Corbijn's second feature film.

When the café owner proudly proclaims "Sergio Leone! Italiano!", you almost expect the main actor to respond with "George Clooney! American!" in line with his image as a shining icon of the USA. He's a handsome and masculine rugged individual with a sparkling smile associated with Hollywood entertainment, A-list glamour and Democratic idealism.

That's a pretty shallow summary of a intelligent personality who repeatedly takes on challenging parts and directs his own sophisticated movies but, nevertheless, to some audiences he'll still be the hunk from ER or a suave bachelor from coffee adverts (or the version of Batman who wore the suit with pronounced nipples).

Clooney is, therefore, perfectly cast as the enigmatic title character of The American, not just because he is such a compelling and excellent actor, but because of those associations. Like Leone playing with Henry Fonda's persona in Once Upon A Time In The West or Alfred Hitchcock (British), screwing with the Jimmy Stewart type, Anton Corbijn is a European twisting an established all-American persona.

Clooney's ‘Farfalla' is a foreigner in exile in the rustic Italian rural backwaters, but we don't get the ‘loud, obnoxious American tourist' clichés. We also aren't forcefed a mass of trite Italian stereotypes, and the shadows of World War II occupation or mafia movies don't cloak the encounter of the two national identities either.

The American isn't a story built on stereotypes and superficial imagery. Its poignancy and power comes from the fact it doesn't dwell in cultural constructs, but delves deeper. Indeed, Anton Corbijn's subtle thriller isn't really about an American, but about being human and about being dehumanised.

Clooney's character, an assassin, really has no identity. He has multiple names and is a confused contradiction. He says he's no good with machines but is a master craftsman with obvious expertise, whether he's building a rifle or fixing up a broken down automobile.

The only consistent handle that anyone has on him is the fact that he identifies as American and, as above, he doesn't impress himself as an archetypal Yank. Altogether, he's just a blank individual without a past, a quiet loner whom no one can penetrate and whose personality is repressed below conditioned reticence.

He and Jean Reno's Léon of The Professional are both very alike in that they are introverted, meticulous killing machines whose work has led them to alienating loss and tragic isolation. Léon's personality and true identity are suppressed and hidden behind those shades. The only expressions of humanity on display are in his taste for milk, his affection for his pet plant and his adoption of Natalie Portman's Mathilda.

With Jack in The American we get even fewer hints. The protagonist's reach for love and empathy is in the soul connection he tries to kindle with Clara (Violante Placido). Otherwise we get scant few details or indication of character, even in his conversations with the priest, Father Benedetto.

He's a bare void of a figure whose existence is built on violent deeds and those events are brief and sporadic. The action in The American stirs up thoughts of Kurosawa and Peckinpah movies (Sam Peckinpah being another director concerned with dismantling myths about America and ‘heroic' bloodshed). It happens in short, messy bursts without glamour or triumph and then there's chilling emptiness.

That's how violence actually unfolds in the real world. If your identity is centred around these short spasms, then who or what are you the rest of the time? Inactive and in hiding, with only himself and the absence of things to contemplate, the assassin with many names is a truly lost man.

What the character does have, though, is a few tattoos. They don't provide any clues to help us break through the mystery, but the butterfly positioned at the top of his back resonates. That's the mark that comes to define him as he develops his relationship with Clara (who calls him "Signor Farfalla"), that the camera keeps on catching sight of and that symbolically starts to really mean something as The American progresses towards its later stages.

A fragile, pretty little thing below the facade he wears, the image of a butterfly suggests that there is something more to this figure, a human being of feeling and emotion alive underneath.

Butterflies representing souls in bondage desperate to fly free is an age-old idea present in films like Papillon, for instance. Whereas the Mr Butterfly of that film (Steve McQueen) is imprisoned by the penal colony system, however, the protagonist of The American is trapped by himself and the private, grim profession he's pursued that has made him into this particular person, a dehumanised non-person.

His exile and relationship with Clara come around to make him consider quitting and bring Signor Farfalla hope that his trapped soul can find freedom. But breaking free seems impossible when, butterfly effect style, executions he enacts in Sweden ripple out and disturb his Italian solitude.

As a lone assassin, he's one small figure who's beat out little movements with far-reaching impact. The generated waves of death that surround are now overwhelming. No one can get close and he can't escape himself.

The American nails that idea, true for both those with 'something to do with death' and wider humanity as a whole. Little actions have consequences. They spread and create growing reverberations which distance and damage both others and ourselves.

Corbijn's profound film isn't about an American at all. It's about being human and being dehumanised.

James' previous column can be found here.

James sketched a series of movie-spoof comics and they can be found here.

Follow Den Of Geek on Twitter right here.

This review contains spoilers.

1.9 No Ordinary Anniversary

When a show like this is finding its feet, it's strange how characters that you liked initially you can learn to hate when they're altered. I had this in my mind after the first ten minutes of No Ordinary Anniversary, because George is really beginning to grind on me. The way he continually bugs Jim about fighting crime is ridiculous, and he even whines when Stephanie is brought to the 'lair' later in the story. How stupid is that?

But in the list of complaints I have about this show currently, I can now add gapping plot holes to them.

One of the most obvious was at the outset, where Jim rescues someone from a burning building and discovers that he's flameproof. Except they make no explanation as to why his clothes didn't combust, even if Jim didn't. Perhaps they need to introduce an 'Edna' character, so they can have appropriate and specially resistant outfits?

But the worst hole came later when the super-fire starter (a Pyro clone) is in a secure police vehicle, which he the escapes from. When Jim and Stephanie get to the vehicle the arsonist has escaped, and the two cops inside the upturned car are unconscious. So, who called it in, for the Powells to become aware and arrive before the police?

The demise of the super-villain was also incredibly lame, and as far as was seen, Jim made no attempt to find out if he'd survived the freak accident that actually stopped him.

This gives me the same feeling I got in the latter stages of Heroes, where minor details like the plot making sense or even joining up successfully became chores the writers couldn't be bothered to do.

If there was redemption here at all it came in the form of the mercurial 'Watcher' character, who provides an air of mystery to proceedings. This week we find he's got two more powers beyond telepathy, and the fire starter could also fly in a very human torch kind of way. That suggests that the injections that Dr. Dayton King is giving out have the potency to deliver multiple abilities.

The show also moved forward in combining Jim and Stephanie as a crime-fighting duo, which I presume is the prelude for them working as a family, considering that much of this story involved Daphne and JJ working as a team too. I've generally disliked what they've done with the Powell children so far, but in a scale of what they've been stuck with, this week sucked slightly less than most.

Next week's story is the last before the seasonal hiatus, and I'm really hoping that, when the show returns in 2011, they come up with some more imaginative adventures for the Powells than we've been given so far.

And, if they introduce a nosey journalist pursing rumoured super-heroes, then I'll know they've entirely run out of ideas.

Read our review of episode 8, No Ordinary Accident, here.

This episode's guest is one that should need very little introduction, legend of horror, Mr Vincent Price. A veteran of many genre films including the likes of House Of Wax and The Fall Of The House Of Usher, Price also appeared as the inventor in Edward Scissorhands in a significantly scaled down role than was originally intended, due to his diminishing health at the time.

This is the episode that tailors itself most perfectly to the guest star so far this series. There's very little filler. Instead, audiences are treated to a running horror theme that supports Price's talents and adds a cohesive tone that has often been lacking in many of the previous episodes this series. It's the first Muppet Show episode that sticks to one theme throughout this closely, and the results are very strong, indeed.

The material is incredibly well judged and funny, and not only does it explore the obvious horror elements of Price's persona, but also his fondness for cooking, as he discusses gourmet cuisine in the Discussion Panel segment, in which he encourages Gorgon Heap to eat Kermit.

Price's first appearance on the show sees him show up as a guest seeking a room at a rather creepy looking holiday cottage that Fozzie and Gonzo have rented. Price lays on the horror camp in the episode, building suspense through his famed mixture of horror and comedy, until the surprising payoff of the sketch.

During the talk spot segment, Price talks about his craft at length, but is cut short by Kermit, who grows fangs and proceeds to bite Price's neck. Other than that, there's a brief skit with Sweetums and the usual closing of the episode, but that's it from Price.

Despite being in a smaller number of sketches in comparison to some of the other guest stars this series, his influence is felt throughout all of the other sketches, which all take a supernatural and monstrous tone with the exception of the talking Houses sketch, which is my least favourite of the reoccurring sketches.

The At the Dance segment features ghosts joining the usual array of dancers, Statler and Waldorf are joined by a monstrous guest in their box, and the Muppet News Flash is sublime, with a cutaway from the news segment to a viewer who finds his furniture turning into monsters and attacking him.

The two musical numbers are also of a high standard with the opening number being a quite literal rendition of Under My Skin by Behemoth and Shaky Sanchez, and an absolutely brilliant version of The Beatles' I'm Looking Through You by a trio of ghosts. Both of the songs are performed well and, in addition, are very funny.

In the copy I viewed there was, sadly, no musical number from Price. However, when the episode originally aired, he performed You've Got A Friend with an assortment of Muppet creatures backing him. I sought out the video online and it's an entertaining sketch, so it's difficult to understand why it was cut. The fact that it was cut means the episode as it is on the DVD clocks in at three minutes shorter than the average length of an episode this series.

Still, despite this omission, it's an incredibly solid episode that lived up to my high expectations of it. It could be argued that they could have gone a bit darker with some of the material and stuck to the horror theme a little closer than they did, but this was an incredibly entertaining and satisfying episode.

It's clear that the creative team went to great lengths, not only to come up with material to do their guest justice, but it's also apparent that they had a lot of fun with the material. This is clear from the opening through to the close and, for me, this stands as one of the best episodes seen so far this series.

You can read our remembrance of episode 18 here.

Follow Den Of Geek on Twitter right here.

No stranger to animated movies, Tom McGrath has provided voices in such films as Flushed Away and Shrek The Third, and directed episodes of The Ren & Stimpy Show, Madagascar, and most recently, Megamind. We caught up with Mr McGrath for a round-table discussion about his latest film, and the process of creating it.

Shortly after Megamind’s star, Will Ferrell, left the interview room, Mr McGrath entered with the gently self-deprecating line, “After Will Ferrell, this interview’s going to be really boring!”

What made you choose Will Ferrell for the lead?

Ah, because he’s fun. He’s also a great actor. We had the script and the character designs, and I know Alan Schoolcraft and Brent Simons, the writers, envisioned Will early on. He just has a great talent, he’s a great character creator.

I watched Stranger Than Fiction, and it was great, because he has the acting chops to pull off, I think, drama as well as comedy. That’s what the role needed. And it’s very challenging when you do a movie about a villain. Will brings a great humanity to the character, and can portray a vulnerability that was key to having you like him.

Do you subscribe to the theory that it’s more difficult to do comedy than anything else?

Everyone I’ve seen that can do comedy can pretty much do the heavy stuff as well. Especially Tina Fey, who I’d love to see do a drama, because her acting skills are pretty mind-blowing to me. I’ve seen her be really funny and give three funny alternate takes on a line that were funnier than written, and then go to a place that was really heartfelt. I didn’t know she’d be able to take this as far as she has.

There are a lot of pop culture references in Megamind – which were specifically yours?

For me, it was finding a new angle on the superhero costumes and their identities. How I rationalised it was, a hero and a villain would probably be celebrities in the real world. They’d have a stage presence, so I thought of bands, like Alice Cooper versus Elvis Presley.

We pitched it to the actors that way too, to get that stage presence. Brad got the Elvis thing, and wanted to have his character grab a mic in his scenes so he could go parading around, talking to a crowd. It really affected his performance, which was really good.

It was finding that angle that was different from other superhero movies, where it’s all polycarbon-fibre, techno suits. It’s a comedy, so let’s push it towards leather and spikes. I just remember in junior high, AC/DC were taboo, Devil’s music, and Elvis was beloved by everyone, so it made sense for Megamind to blare AC/DC to intimidate people as he’s marching down the street.

There were two things that influenced me in the character of Megamind. Nikolai Tesla, who I’m a big fan of, versus Thomas Edison, who was beloved by the public. I’m not answering your question – it just reminded me of something! [Laughs]

But he [Tesla] was this super genius who was vilified by everyone, and was this great mind who came up with these great inventions. So it was like, Tesla dressed like Alice Cooper. If you’ve ever seen Cooper on stage, it’s very striking, you know? AC/DC didn’t have that look. Megamind wouldn’t look good in little shorts and a neck-tie!

So it’s a little bit of a mish-mash. It’s the same kind of era, though.

You’ve had some great voice-over roles, and then you’ve turned to directing with Madagascar and now this. How do the two compare?

I love directing. What [voice over work] really helped with is knowing what it’s like to be behind the mic, and feel really vulnerable. And realising you’re in a place where you need feedback. So it helped me figure out the kind of feedback I should give to the actors.

I love working with artists in animation. It’s excruciatingly long and painful, and you have to love the process. During the course of a movie like this, there’s five or six hundred technicians and artists working on it. I enjoy working with them all – animators are really fun, and just like working with actors.

Even though it’s a CG movie, it’s all hand drawn, and paintings are done, and there’s a lot of traditional art behind what you eventually see on the screen.

What made made you choose to make the movie in 3D as opposed to 2D?

It is in 2D too, if you want to see it that way. It has to work in 2D to work in 3D, and I didn’t want to… there are certain things that 3D can give you beyond the spectacle. Jeffrey Katzenberg said, “What you’re gonna like isn’t the spectacle. We’ve been through all that, with the spears in the face and so on, but what you can do with it storytelling-wise.”

So I worked really closely with Phil McNally who is at DreamWorks, at trying to use it specifically to create intimacy in the love story, and also the heartbreak in the falling apart of the friendship – to find subtle ways to make the convergences pull the characters apart. Things that are more subconscious, and use it more like you would use lighting to underscore emotion, and use 3D in that capacity. We tried to be really tasteful with it – there are a couple of things that fling out at you,  but really it was just finding out how we could emotionally use it.

I mainly edited the movie in 2D, because it’s easy to fall into the trap of looking at something in 3D and want to stay on it longer, which can mess with your pacing. It can get languid, in a way, so for me it was more helpful to cut it in 2D, and open it up a little bit longer if you wanted the 3D to last a bit longer.

Using the Michael Jackson track: was it difficult to get the licence for that?

I don’t know how we got it! [Laughs] I don’t know how they got them. I don’t ask questions if they say yes.

As great as Will Ferrell is in the role, wasn’t Robert Downey, Jr. in talks for the role, initially, and were you disappointed when he had to pull out?

No. It would have been a different movie with Robert, and it was off the table really, because he had Iron Man 2 and Sherlock Holmes. He was pretty booked up. Will, to me, wasn’t a second choice – it was very important to find that charm in the character.

Do you feel there’s a political subtext to this film, or is that reading too much into it? About the way America perceives itself, perhaps, about being less triumphalist and more in touch with its darker side?

That’s interesting. It’s probably less political and more cultural. The new generation raised on videogames feels like this apathetic group that’s a little more selfish. I put that into Jonah Hill’s character of Hal. What if you gave a kid powers – I may be judging this generation broadly, and I apologise if I am – but to give someone like that powers, who’s completely self-interested.

It is an American thing culturally, but I wasn’t thinking that it could be read politically.

Do you think that now, more than ever, it’s okay to have an anti-hero in a family movie? That it’s embraced more easily?

Yeah. I liked the arc of the character, of a villain who comes around to being a hero. For me, it was more about the guy who gets off track in life, and is judged poorly by other people, and spends his whole life making wrong decisions. But it’s never too late to make the right choice, and there’s redemption at any stage of the game.

There’s that old saying, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks” – this was made to defy that. Which gives me a lot of hope, because I make a lot of mistakes!

How do you react to the suggestions that Megamind is similar to Despicable Me?

[Sarcastically] We saw Despicable Me, and had a month and a half to make Megamind. [Laughs]

I was worried about Despicable Me. I didn’t hear about it until a year into production. I saw their movie when it came out, and thought it was great. There was no malicious intent on either part. I think our movie is quite different – ours is really about a superhero, and Superman is such a big part of the genre, and initiated the genre in a way.

It wasn’t really about making a parody of Superman, but he’s got great powers, and this great moral fibre, and he’s kind of a dull character. Batman, on the other hand, is a guy always wrestling with his duality. He’s on the edge, and to me, that’s more real, a character trying to balance his own internal good and evil – that was Megamind. I don’t believe in altruism or evil. There’s always grey and struggle.

The characters were kind of these stereotypes, but we tried to different layers to them. A villain that has a good heart. A damsel who doesn’t need help, and is the smartest person in the movie. And a hero who, just because he’s got all these powers, everyone expects him to be a hero, but he has a secret passion, even if it’s music or something like that. So it was trying to find a way to turn it upside down.

Does Brad Pitt really sing that badly, or was that played up for the movie?

He was a great sport. He was like, “Was that bad enough?” [Laughs] His character is that guy who has a lot of money, and buys all the best musical equipment but no talent. That was really fun.

There was plenty of room for improvisation in Megamind, I understand?

Oh yeah. Always. As I said, Tina Fey, every line she had, she’d come back with three alternatives. “Girls, girls, you’re both pretty” was hers. It was just in the moment, and it’s great when those things happen.

Will Ferrell’s Marlon Brando impersonation – that was just going to be Megamind, and we showed the character design, and he started doing the voice with the lisp, and we were like, “Do that! Do that!” It was really funny, so we said, let’s put it in the movie.

Some scenes are a hundred per cent written, but some scenes are at least half improvisation. Even if it’s not for comedy, but for the actors to put the words in their own way, that makes it feel more genuine, and coming from that character.

Do you do a read-through first, and then start improvising?

Yeah. A really cold read-through, and the best way to do that is to take the pages and read them, with no acting. We get the gist of the scene, and then start trying to put something into it. Once you get the pages recorded, then you can play, you know, and that’s when you get the best scenes.

I do use a reader who’s familiar with improv, and so they can play back and forth, and find things. We can run hours of tape, recording all day to take the best of the best.

It’s interesting, because a lot of people seem to think we do the animation first, and we show them that to match the voices to. It’s the opposite. They have nothing, just pages. We do the acting, and the acting informs the storyboards, which we draw, and from that, we give the animators something to work from.

With the animators, we talk to them like they’re actors, because a lot of the stuff they do, the physicality comes from the animators, who are very talented. We get up and act it out, and videotape ourselves.

So what happens when the film’s dubbed for other territories – Spain for example?

It’s always encouraged, in dubbing, to find actors of the same calibre as the English version, and to let them make it their own. They’re not tied in to making the exact same performance. It’s whatever works in the dialogue. Sometimes humour’s converted, because it doesn’t really work in another culture. They’ll brainstorm too, to make it work in Spain or France.

Is the discipline of acting similar to working on radio? That was around for a long time before TV was popular, so it’s a different kind of discipline.

I’d say radio actors are very aware of their articulation. I don’t let my actors wear headphones, because that affects their performance. It’s better if they’re working with a reader, so they don’t get focused on what their voice sounds like. Film acting’s more difficult, because you have to stay in the frame. In animation, you can do whatever you like.

Technically, it’s difficult to record two actors. It’s a disservice to one actor if you’re letting the other improvise on and on. But there are moments where you can do that. It was really important for the love story between Tina and Will, that there was this chemistry. They were the only actors we got together.

We recorded them three times, to ensure we got the chemistry. Even the pauses between the lines of dialogue are part of the acting. The timing and delivery are invaluable. You really can’t manufacture it.

Tom McGrath, thank you very much!

See Also:

• Will Ferrell interview: Megamind, Anchorman and playing a villain

Follow Den Of Geek on Twitter right here.

This review contains spoilers.

Ever wondered what goes through the mind of the average Daily Mail writer? When not worrying over house prices or what causes cancer this week, they like nothing more than to vilify those who play videogames. Reams of column inches have been spent painting the average gamer as a dead-eyed, barely coherent buffoon whose only emotional outlet is stabbing a pensioner. After watching this week's Misfits, though, they may well have a point.

There's a new boy in town, Ollie the eco-warrior. Eager to impress the group, he reveals, dun dun dunn, that he has a power. The power of teleportation. Yes, Ollie can leap up to six feet away from his original position in the blink of an eye!

After being thoroughly underwhelmed, our superpowered ASBO crew get on with the big task of picking up rubbish. But they run into game-obsessive Tim, who sees the world as one big game of Grand Theft Auto.

Unable to distinguish real life from his Xbox, he sees the world as a mass of polygons, dubstep, and random murder as a means of getting a new hi-score. He confuses our heroic street cleaners with the mob boss who double crossed him and aggressively questions them on the whereabouts of his loot.

But have no fear. Ollie's got training in conflict resolution, which is swiftly resolved with a bullet to his head. Adding insult to injury, offing Ollie is only worth a measly 15 points when that should add at least two stars to your wanted level.

When Ollie meets his maker, Simon-future's plan starts to click into place. Sick girl Nikki gets the new heart she desperately needs. But there's an added bonus of a superpower and she's far more adept with it than Ollie ever could be.

Which comes in rather handy, as Tim, playing the cold violent gangster as well as a Call Of Duty addict ,performs headshots in deathmatch. He kidnaps Kelly believing her to be Roxy, the woman who jilted him at the altar and ran off with rival gangster Conti, luring the others to his warehouse and hanging them up like dead meat. Which, in Nathan's case, is about to become painfully accurate when Tim revs up the chainsaw.

Enter a surprised Nikki, who teleports in and manages to set Alisha free. As Tim gives chase, Simon-future isn't far behind to save her from the same fate as Ollie, by becoming her human shield. As he lays dying in Alisha's arms, he convinces Tim that he's Conti, which in Tim's mind unlocks the bonus level and takes the heat off of the others.

So, just when we've gotten used to Simon's future self being all enigmatic and cool and stuff, he goes and dies on us. Great! Bad enough his time was short, but poor widowed Alisha has to set fire to him and watch as the eyes of her beloved pop like milk cartons under a steam roller in the heat. And to stand a chance of getting back with him, she has to fall in love with the awkward clumsy boy whose last girlfriend lived in a freezer.

Misfits is firing on all levels in this episode. The effects sequences of Nikki's power are nothing short of stunning. The locations used are suitably grimy and intimidating. And there must be a special mention to the soundtrack, in particular Simon-future's theme, which sounds as if it came straight from the Spider-Man reboot, rather than a low budget TV show on a digital-only UK channel. The final few scenes are underscored perfectly by Massive Attack's Paradise Circus, which makes a nice change from Teardrop.

Matt Cross as videogame-obsessed Tim cuts an intimidating figure, strutting around like the Terminator in a shell suit, smirking to himself as he runs over old ladies (25 points). His relentless robotic pursuit of the misfits recalls Robert Patrick in T2, a picture of calm as his target runs panicking, never able to break free.

However, you'll be left thinking "Is that it?" when Simon-future gasps his last, leaving so many questions unanswered. It's a bit of a cruel trick to play, teasing fans with the future only to snatch it away just as quickly. But maybe this is all part of the larger plan for Misfits.

Again I find myself gushing wildly about how fantastic this series is. There are gaping holes, such as Nikki's instant recovery from a heart transplant. Ok, it's a superpowered heart, but still. And the feeling of being robbed when Simon-future dies. But when you have a show that is this effortlessly smart and witty, yet able to shift tone and deliver an emotional gut punch, then it simply doesn't matter.

As Alisha gets a further glimpse of a life to come, you'll realise that this is possibly the best 45 minutes running time of TV you've seen all year.

You can read our review of episode 3 here.

Follow Den Of Geek on Twitter right here.

This review contains spoilers.

2.3 Taking Ames

"Dude. That was awesome." Guerrero

This latest episode opens at a factory where Ames and her friend, explosives expert Brodie (J. D. Pardo), break in to steal some explosives. Unfortunately for Ames, Chance was following her to make sure he could trust her.

While the team discusses whether or not they can trust her, Ames fills them in on a bit of her backstory, how she and Brodie grew up together and then, when a job went wrong, he took the fall for it and kept her out of jail and now she owes him.

Meanwhile, Brodie has accepted a job stealing diamonds from a museum from Markus (Hakeem Kae-Kazim, 24,) who wants him to bring Ames into the team. This leads to Ames having to go along with him and the team ends up with a new client, Ames herself.

In order to help Ames, Guerrero kidnaps a member of Markus' team, Chicago (Mile Dopud, Stargate Universe) and Chance blindly takes his place. Back at the office Guerrero has a little trouble with Chicago, and after Ilsa hits him with his own briefcase, they figure out why Chicago is involved: he's a cleaner who's there to kill everyone else on the heist team after the job.

At the museum, the heist team heads in while Ames is taken around the back to take care of the security. She was picked to squeeze through an incredibly small duct and to accomplish this she has to strip down and get oiled up, leading to some fantastically gratuitous shots.

Meanwhile, Chicago has woken up and, finding out that Markus has another cleaner, Yuri, on the team, lets Winston and Guerrero in on some info.

Back at the museum, the job is all going to plan until Brodie figures out Chance is a cleaner and tries to take off with Ames and the diamonds. While Chance takes care of Yuri, Brodie gets away after Ames has taken the diamonds off him.

Ames later gets a call from Markus telling her he has Brodie hostage and wants the diamonds in exchange, so Ames asks Chance and Ilsa for help. The team let Markus get the diamonds, and in exchange, find Brodie on a bench sitting on top of a bomb, giving Chance a chance (I apologise) to use his initiative to save Brodie's life.

While Markus escapes, Guerrero and Winston cut him off and give him to Chicago. After Ames has said goodbye to Brodie the team decides to let her stay on, while Guerrero gets decidedly more unhappy at the amount of people drinking the 40 year old Scotch that Chicago gave him as a gift.

So that's what happened: but what was it like?

Well, this episode was definitely a step up from last week's and in many ways reminded me of the first season. There were plenty of explosions and Chance was once again thrown into a situation where he had no clue what was going on, which is where I think the character excels.

As usual, the fight choreography and stunt work (especially the fight in their office) was absolutely fantastic. Ames also continues to grow on me. Yes, she has the potential to be annoying, but she hasn't been yet and as the season goes on she could become an interesting addition to the team. It's also nice knowing there's definitely going to be some eye candy in an episode. (Or is that just me?)

The character of Ilsa is still very hit and miss for me. She was introduced as a silent partner but was quite involved last week. This week she is being called boss and everyone seems to have to clear things with her. I don't like the way that's progressing.  I'm sure she's been put in as she's more relatable to the audience than the other main characters, but her complaining about rules and laws is starting to grate a little.

I'm also starting to see a worrying trend (for me): underuse of guest stars. We've had Tahmoh Penikett, M. C. Gainey and Mike Dopud, who are all fantastic actors and have had big roles on other shows, coming into episodes and not doing much. Although, with Guerrero and Chicago seeming to gain some rapport, will we see more of Chicago?

Overall, I like the way the second season is progressing and this episode was the best yet. Hopefully, as the writers get a grip on the new characters and how they fit in with Chance, Winston and Guerrero, the season will continue to improve.

Read our review of episode 2, The Wife’s Tale, here.

Follow Den Of Geek on Twitter right here.

Two episodes in and this series is already shaping up to be one of the best yet. I was happy to compare it with many great series from the past and present last week and I saw nothing in this follow-up episode to change my mind. Peep Show is, quite simply, one of the funniest and finest-written comedy series the UK has ever produced.

It never ceases to amaze me just how strong the scripts are in each and every episode and this one was another belter, delivering yet more classic lines to add to the canon. "You can’t stop someone from jamming. That’s against jam law." "That’s not jam. That’s just total, fucking, marmalade!" "Can babies go by shredders?" "Yes, of course. Safest place for him." Just a couple of choice examples there, but, as ever, this was full of eminently quotable dialogue.

We were also treated to the fabulous reintroduction of Dobby and Gerrard, former work colleagues of Mr Corrigan, of course, and the crux of a marvellous plotline to ground the week’s comings and goings.

Discovering that the lovely Dobby is dating a graphic designer, Simon, so begins the formation of Dobby Club. With the sole aim of winning back Dobby, Mark and Gerrard’s newly formed bond provides an opportunity to witness the pitch perfect geek acting of Jim Howick as Mark’s partner in crime. Howick is prolific on UK television – you’ll have seen him in Armstrong and Miller, Reggie Perrin and, if you’re a fan of kids’ comedy shows like I am, Horrible Histories – and he’s a vital part of the wider Peep Show cast.

Bringing out Mark’s inner geek to the fore, Gerrard represents what could have been, had Jez not have grabbed a hold on his life and, in truth, it’s not a pretty sight. When you see the pair hanging out in model shops (a clip showing how this scene was filmed can be seen over at Channel 4’s Peep Show site), you just know that this is the sort of activity Mark would dearly love to do week-in, week-out, but that the threat of castigation from Jez looms over his every action. Brilliant, then, to witness him slowly becoming at ease with himself while perusing model dolls of FDR and other historical characters, and this gave the natural payoff of the look of disdain on Jez’s face at catching them in the act.

Gerrard also offers some stiff competition for the affections of Dobby, Mark’s on-off object of lust/salvation. In forming the Dobby Club, the pair dream up a genius pact to ensure at least one of them can get the girl, but when Gerrard breaks rank, the hurt in Mark’s eyes is priceless. The subsequent stalking/stakeout Mark and Jeremy (with baby in tow) is gloriously over-the-top, and pure Corrigan. Works a treat, too, as Dobby and Mark finish the episode together again. Amazing what power a baby has over a woman – a well-worn cliché, but not without some accuracy, on the whole – and I was pleased to see that despite getting the girl, Mark’s neuroses and self-doubt were still in overdrive.

But this week wasn’t just about Mark’s exploits, of course. Jez, bless him, is still gunning for Zahra, whose boyfriend Ben is out of his coma and placed Jez under his wing as part of his web-based music promotion service. Charged with finding some new acts, Jez tried to use the chance to get himself back in Super-Hans’ group, Man Feelings. ‘I am in loco parentis. I am the last remaining contestant on the Apprentice. I am the home-trained dentist.’ That’s the standard we’re talking here, but Jez just doesn’t like to be left out of things, so, driven by jealousy, he suggests that the band changes their look and name to get ahead. Zoot suits on, Danny Dyer’s Chocolate Homunculus is born.

In a feat of genius absurdity, the scriptwriters have come up with a phrase that, by rights, should be remembered alongside some of the very best. It’s very much the kind of thing Jez would splutter when put under the kosh, and reminds of the kind of thing Alan Partridge came out with in his own pressured moments – Youth Hostelling with Chris Eubank, anyone?

Naturally, it all blows up in his face, but then Jez knew as much when he himself said this is exactly what would happen earlier in the episode. Anyone who has seen Robert Webb’s new Channel 4 show, Robert’s Web will have a greater appreciation for his work in Peep Show, as he is in a different class here compared with any other work he’s undertaken.

But then, that’s true of both his and Mitchell’s work and is testament to just how good Peep Show is – it’s head and shoulders above most things on TV and without it, we wouldn’t be privy to the horrors of ‘lady milk’.

Read our review of the series opener here.

Peep Show airs on Channel 4, Friday nights at 10:00pm.

Follow Den Of Geek on Twitter right here.