Something I have been thinking about...

[alpha_centari27]

As I have been working out Metro Man/Music Man's back story in my fanfics something I have been wondering about is why an entire city would for the most part entrust their safety and well being to one person

Comments

[pitbulllady]

It is actually not that odd for people to put their trust in one person. After all, how many times have we seen large portions of a populace put their trust in ONE person...a politician at that? More times than I even want to think about! Once Metroman showed up and offered his talents, it would be all too easy for the police and other public sector job holders to just sit back and take it easy while he basically did all the work for them. As a result, they would have grown more and more incompetent and more dependent. I can promise you that right now, at any given level of government across the US, we have people who show up at work just for a paycheck, and don't actually do anything because someone else is doing it for them. One of the Megamind storyboard artists(can't recall his name)actually had a great storyboard which illustrated this aspect of Metroman's relationship with the police force and populace of Metro City, making it very easy to see why he'd gotten so burned out by it all. Megamind would really have his work

[alpha_centari27]

I know the story boards you're referring to.

Metro Man Day 1/3:
http://tobyshelton.blogspot.com/2011/01/metro-man-day-pt-13-megamind-2009.html

Metro Man Day 2/3:
http://tobyshelton.blogspot.com/2011/02/metro-man-day-pt-23-megamind-2009.html

Metro Man Day 3/3:
http://tobyshelton.blogspot.com/2011/02/metro-man-day-pt-33-megamind-2009.html

[maybeawriter6]

LOL! That’s hilarious! I almost wish this sequence had made it in, or at least the part with the old ladies. It would have made Metro Man a heck of a lot more understandable and more sympathetic. Still, it’s a pretty long sequence. And the movie is about Megamind, and this would sort of shift the focus to Metro Man. I wonder when this would have been put in, during the beginning, or during Music Man’s story…
Wow, this is an old post. Probably nobody is going to even see this…

[alpha_centari27]

I see your post.

[fairest1]

Thing is, they still have the police to handle the more mundane things, stuff that requires paperwork, but having a guy who flies around and stops Megamind and other supervillains -- even if he doesn't take the time to deal with mundane muggers and the like -- serves as a deterrent for petty crime.

Actually, I could see the crime rate dropping with Megamind in charge -- like the Thieves Guild in Discworld, unlicensed thieves aren't going to try anything for fear the Guild will take action.

[margi_lynn]

That's a fun plot bunny - Megamind's Guild.

[pitbulllady]

Actually, in Toby Shelton's storyboard(thanks for reminding me of his name, A.C.!)the cops DON'T handle even the mundane things, but expect Metroman to deal with those issues, too. In one of the boards, he captures a group of thieves in a van and delivers the van, thieves still trapped inside, right to the cops...who are naturally at the local donut and coffee shop. They refuse to take the criminals to the police station for booking, under the excuse of being on their lunch break, so Mets even has to do that, and most likely once there, is asked to fill out the paperwork, too. That was something that the cops should have handled 100% from the get-go, but they did nothing. I honestly can't see Megamind letting something like that slide by, though, so he probably really shook things up once he took over the job from Wayne by expecting people to actually DO the job they are being paid to do, or go home.

pitbulllady

[evil_overlord]

I would agree with the notion of the police being incompetent boobs. Think about the opening to the Metro Man Museum. Right in front there was...two cops? Three? At least two, one man, one woman. Both had...well, for lack of a better way of saying it, stupid looks on their faces...AND SHOT THEIR GUNS OFF MULTIPLE TIMES INTO THE AIR!

Now, I *know* this is a super-hero movie [after a fashion! XD], but still, the absurd stupidity of COPS shooting their guns into the air just struck me [especially when I watched it the other day...I was like "they don't even seem worried where their bullets are going to go!"] as 'the cops are incompetent boobs' kind of thing.

The utter terror they showed when Megamind showed up at City Hall, after Metro Man's "death", that was a *bit* more understandable, but NOT ONE even attempted to take Megamind out. XD Doesn't show incompetence, per se, but more of their total reliance on Metro Man to take care of EVERYTHING!!

[neuralclone]

Well to be fair to the cops at City Hall, Megamind has *apparently* just taken out an "invulnerable" man and has a death ray pointed at the city. So their attitude is understandable at least, if not particularly laudable.

I'm inclined to the view that the cops, fire service, etc. of Metro City because Metro Man let them become that way. And it probably started out as a combination of vanity on Metz's part and laziness on the part of the city workers. I'd also bet there's an element of demoralization there: why even try when Metz can do everything so effortlessly? Megamind will have to try and reverse this process.

[neuralclone]

... but a sudden thought occurs to me. Megamind will probably wind up demoralising the city's technical experts, its engineers and architects. After all, he can whip up a perfect power source from half a ton of scrap, so why bother straining their poor human brains when Megs can do everything so much better?

[joanhello]

About the cops firing their guns in the air: it could be that the guns are loaded with blanks for the occasion, which would imply even more strongly that, with Metro Man around, nobody expects to need real bullets.

[sevandor]

There's actually an all-too-logical and mundane reason for this happening: given Metz's apparent age at the time of the film (mid to late 30s by the estimate of some of the filmmakers), he would have been a teenager capable of "working" for the city without incurring little nuisances like child labor laws right around the time that the Rust Belt recessions were causing a lot of financial problems throughout Michigan, industrial collapse and huge monetary problems for cities. Western Michigan wasn't spared, and if Metro City was in financial trouble, unable to pay for a decent police force, having someone with godlike powers suddenly appear on the scene, able to handle just about any crisis, for free...! You can just bet that canny politicians, seeing this as a way of reducing the budget and freeing up funds for other things (like making the city look purdy...) would view it as a gift from on high. Don't bother with the expense of hiring a competent police force, bring on enough shopping mall security types to make things look good

[pitbulllady]

Yep, me too. Makes a lot of sense, actually.
Megz is definitely gonna have his work cut out for him just finding replacements for this lot, given that he doesn't have those superpowers.

pitbulllady

[joanhello]

I wouldn't be surprised if the child labor laws, along with many other rules, were "bent" where Metz was concerned. After all, the whole point of the child labor laws is to prevent harm to the child and this child obviously could not be harmed. He was also an incorrigible show-off, as we know from the movie, and might have started showing up at major fires and other disasters while his age was still a single digit, in the hope of getting on TV. He might even have given the live TV news crews a lift to the scene if the streets were blocked off. The first footage of him rescuing people from a fire might have to be judiciously edited because of him flying into the fire in ordinary clothes and coming back out with nothing covering his body but ashes and soot, so he might have gotten his first costume at quite an early age. Probably the title "Metro Boy" came with it. Someone said something in a previous thread about him being frequently yanked out of school to deal with emergencies, and I can see that. So he would gradually take

[alpha_centari27]

I think the point about him being yanked out of school to deal with emergency situations was something I came up with.

It makes sense to me. Super powers or not his awareness can only be at so many places at once.