In an odd coincidence, 2010 saw the release of two animated films -- DreamWorks' Megamind and Illumination's Despicable Me -- that revolve around a supervillain changing their ways for the better. And while the latter was a bigger hit that would go on to spawn one of the most lucrative animated franchises of the 2010s, there's an argument to be made that the former might be the better movie, looking back ten years later.

Similar premises aside, Megamind and Despicable Me are very different films. The former pokes fun at the superhero genre, particularly the Superman mythology, to tell a story about self-acceptance and making your own destiny. Despicable Me, on the other hand, isn't a spoof of comic book supervillains so much as the type of bad guys one would expect to find in a James Bond movie. It's also a tale about the value of found family that, for adults, speaks to the challenges of balancing your career with the demands of being a parent.

Related: Illumination: Ever Despicable Me Poster, Ranked

Gru and the Minions in Despicable Me

Of the pair, Despicable Me has easily had a bigger impact on the pop culture landscape from the past decade. When put together with its sequels and Minions spinoff series, the Despicable Me brand has grossed billions of dollars at the global box office and evolved the Steve Carell-voiced baddie Gru from a Blofeld-inspired caricature into an animated icon in his own right. Things get shakier when you look at these movies from a creative perspective, but the original Despicable Me still holds up.

Despicable Me also had the advantage of opening a few months before Megamind in 2010. As a result, the latter was unable to avoid being compared to the former when it first hit theaters. In fact, many a Megamind review, Roger Ebert's among them, flat out described the film as a cross between The Incredibles and Despicable Me. With the benefit of hindsight, however, Megamind feels less like a knockoff and more like a clever predecessor to the many subversive superhero movies and TV shows that have come out in the years since.

Related: The Incredibles Theory: The Parr Kids Are Set Up to Be Supervillains

In fact, years before The Boys and Brightburn explored how having superpowers could corrupt someone, Megamind put a much funnier spin on the idea with Hal (Jonah Hill), a hapless cameraman who Megamind transforms into a superhero so he has someone to fight, only for Hal to turn around and become a villain instead. The movie also plays with the idea of a superhero -- in this case, Megamind's nemesis Metro Man (Brad Pitt) -- getting older and wanting to retire, as opposed to spending their entire life fighting crime. It's a concept that's been examined in many comic book stories in the past but has only recently started to come up more in bigger superhero franchises due to actors aging and wanting to work on new projects.

Of course, Despicable Me and Megamind both have their fair share of flaws. Both films were made at a time when the post-Avatar 3D boom was in full swing and are vibrantly animated, but also have a lot of visuals that were meant to be enhanced by 3D and just look clunky in regular 2D. Plus, after ten years of non-stop Minions madness and superhero media, the satire and humor in these movies can't help feeling less relevant today than they did in 2010.

Related: The Croods: A New Age Is an Uninspired Animated Sequel

When push comes to shove, though, Megamind stands out a little more than Despicable Me nowadays thanks to its namesake. The Megamind character has many of the same quirks that Will Ferrell has brought to other roles, yet his insecurities and internal conflict give him a depth that the actor's other creations tend to lack. Gru is insecure in his own way, but his fear of no longer being the world's greatest super-criminal just isn't as interesting as the existential crisis Megamind faces when he thinks he's defeated Metro Man and has to figure out what to do with his life now.

Overall, the answer to the question of which one is best depends on how you frame it. Despicable Me was more commercially successful and the brand has had greater staying power, yet Megamind was more precedent when it comes to the evolution of the superhero genre over the last ten years, and might be even more timely in 2020 than it was when it first came out. So, in that sense, it's Megamind that gets the last laugh in this unexpected battle of the supervillain cartoons.

KEEP READING: The Grinch Should Cross Over With The Despicable Me Franchise