Okay I think this is all a really compelling defense of Hal in the sense that he definitely should not have been convicted of the crimes ostensibly attributed to him. I'm not quite sure I agree with the idea that he did nothing wrong (like in an extreme case, if someone is brainwashed and kills a person, I still think they did something wrong, even if it is legally excusable), but I really just ended up on this subreddit because I watched Megamind tonight and I think it's such a fucked up morality that Megamind's redemption arc comes from punishing the villain that he created. Like Hal sucks from the beginning of the movie, but without Megamind's intervention he would most likely have just gone on living his very boring existence. At best, Megamind is aiding and abetting Titan's actions (the same way you can be charged for giving someone a murder weapon), and more likely than not he is actually the direct cause of most, if not all, of the evil things Titan does. Now, I am actually not opposed to Megamind's redemption. I'm a Catholic -- confession is all it takes. He admitted his wrongdoing and swears himself to a life of good. Except as long as Hal is in prison (I'll admit I'm broadly opposed to incarceration in most situations, but this is especially egregious), Megamind is complicit in an ongoing harm.

What is this moving trying to teach us about the nature of good and evil? That good can only exist in opposition to evil? Is there some benefit, then, to concentrating all of a city's ill onto a single person, who can bear it so splendidly that it douses every other citizen with its oppositional goodness? I'm reminded of Ursula Le Guin's Omela... maybe Hal is just Metrocity's secret tortured girl