2 l May
16 - 22, 2021
Northeast Oregon TV Weekly
‘Marvel’s M.O.D.O.K.’ proves that even
evil megalomaniacs can have their problems
BY GEORGE DICKIE
He may be a Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing,
but the title character in a stop-motion animated Marvel series
upcoming on Hulu is really just an insecure little boy at heart.
In “Marvel’s M.O.D.O.K.,” premiering Friday, May 21,
we are introduced to M.O.D.O.K. (voice of Patton Oswalt),
a canister-shaped, clearly immature megalomaniac who
floats around in his hover chair and vaporizes any who get
in his way. He’s the head of A.I.M., short for Advanced Idea
Mechanics, whose motto is “settling for nothing less than
conquering the world.”
But the reality is A.I.M. is in trouble. Years of producing
hair-brained tech toys like a Fitbit for pets and a cerebral
cortex manipulator have left the firm in dire financial straits
and even his right hand Monica (voice of Wendi McLendon-
Covey) thinks he should step down. Worse, the search engine
GRUMBL has designs on a buyout.
Things at home aren’t much better. Wife Jodie (voice
of Aimee Garcia), a social media star, has had it with her
husband’s selfish, self-involved behavior and offspring Lou and
Melissa (Ben Schwartz, Melissa Fumero) don’t have much of a
relationship with him, either.
So with his company and his family life in ruins,
M.O.D.O.K. is in for fight of his life.
The series was created by Oswalt and Jordan Blum and is
based on the character from the Marvel Comic universe.
“There’s this humor already built into the character of this
megalomaniacal supervillain with a huge ego,” Blum explains,
“Marvel’s M.O.D.O.K.”
premieres Friday on Hulu.
“who has this self-doubt that kind of creeps through. And
it drives him, and it makes him want to be taken seriously
and want to be seen as something more. So having this as
the basis of who this character was in the Marvel comics and
then being able to explore that, you know, with his family and
how he’s seen at work, it kind of just lent itself to this type of
show.”
“We went back and looked at the original v‘M.O.D.O.K.’
comics,” adds Oswalt, a longtime Marvel fan, “and he ...
wasn’t meant to be comedic, but he’s so over-the-top rageful
that a lot of (the scenes are) very unintentionally funny, I
think. He is truly his own worst enemy. And as far as the
blood and gore, we decided to take it to just Monty Python
level so it doesn’t feel offensive or disturbing. It’s hilarious. We
just said, ‘Let’s go way over the top with it.’ ”
Oswalt, who has an extensive voice-acting resume that
includes the TV series “BoJack Horseman,” “Spider-Man” and
“American Dad” and the feature films “Ratatouille” and “The
Secret Life of Pets 2,” says he had no problem coming up with
the voice of a childish megalomaniac.
“I hate to say this because he’s such a twisted, damaged
character,” he says, “but M.O.D.O.K.’s voice is just an
amplified ... more treble-y version of my own voice. It’s me
when I’m at my most whiniest and angriest and petty. So
that’s all I had to do, was sort of crank it up that way. He was
very, very fun to vocalize.”
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