Things I Don't Get

[forsyth]

Okay, so, The Incredibles. Really good movie. So, Syndrome, the villain. He's obviously a villain, what with the killing supers to perfect each generation of his bot he was gonna send to attack the city. Right, got that.

So, his secondary motivation, though, was to sell off his inventions after he used them, and then "when everyone is special, no one is."

That's quite frankly one of the stupidest lines I've ever heard. Okay, yeah, when everyone can fly, being able to fly isn't unique, but it's still special. And damn useful. That's not really a villain motivation. For all that it'd overthrow the current status-quo, something most heroes don't do. Or maybe I'm just weird and reading too much into it.

Comments

[kalifla.livejournal.com]

"And when everybody's super...no one will be."
Which is true, even now. We're all individuals, all equally. We're all unique together.

And earlier in the movie during the argument about Dash going into sports he starts getting into "But when someone is TRULY exceptional -" and how people have to hide it. It's absolutely true and it's why superheroes would have to hide it - because even if the person with a different ability isn't trying to be snobby and all "noblesse oblige" about it, they will more than likely be perceived as such by everyone else. (There's a grain of first-hand experience in all of this, namely in high school.) We're slowly developing a super-race of humans in sports now, but since they are both entertainers and a collective, it's a lot easier to find their feats likeable. Their superior abilities don't make them less human to the public - at least not yet.

It's the perfect sub-theme for this movie. This movie is taking all the ideas in superhero comics and applying far more realism to the situations. Maybe the powers themselves aren't all that realistic in terms of physics, but the situation, to me, is handled with precision and seems entirely likely. My favorite moments in this thing were between Mr. Incredible and his lovely wife - her wondering about their marriage, his sudden happiness in being able to do the job he loves, his absolute deep grief when he thought he had lost everything.
"I'll break her in half."
"That sounds a little dark for you...!"
"It'll be easy. Like breaking a toothpick."
And then, at the end, when he says he's just not strong enough to lose her again and they kiss - that is one of the single most real, passionate kisses I have ever seen in cinema. They took the idea of superhuman and focused on the humanity of it rather than the super abilities. That's why the sub-theme, the villain's hate for the super abilities, works so well. He is hating what makes them "superior" to himself and ignoring completely what makes them people.

So yeah, you're thinking too hard about it.