The Incredibles 2

[Matt the Bruins]

One of his other kids does voice work for the movie as well.

[Grailknight]

Saw it today and loved it.

 

Parts that stood out to me were Elastigirl's  conversations with  the main villain,  Edna with the baby , Violet vs Void and  Jack Jack's first battle.  The fight choreography was top notch throughout.

[sinanju]

How can Bob and Helen not know about Jack-Jack's powers? I haven't rewatched the original to be sure, but I seem to remember Jack Jack demonstrating at least one to his mother when they rescued him from Syndrome at the end of the movie. Or did all his transformations only happen in Syndrome's presence? (Plus the numerous frantic voice messages from the babysitter, culminating with "Your child has...SPECIAL NEEDS." That's a pretty blatant clue, even if she got memory-wiped afterward.

[Old Man]

In the first film Jack-Jack's powers were only demonstrated to the babysitter and to Syndrome.  Neither was still a witness by the end of the film, and the house containing all the evidence of his newfound powers was destroyed.  Not much time elapses--a couple of weeks at the end of the first film, and ninety days in the beginning of the second--and if he was only triggering his powers in the presence of threats or strangers or trash pandas, the delay is not that difficult to believe. 

[incrdbil]

Not sure what Kari relayed. she may have been mind-wiped on general purposes just because syndrome showed up to the Parr's without a detailed interview. Meanwhile about her freaking out--Helen didn't have any confidence in her as a babysitter anyway.  Given their other kids have powers, Helen seemed awful sure the baby had none. Maybe they had him tested and it didnt show yet. Or more likely, she was just hoping desperately the baby didn't have powers, so he wouldn't have to spend a life in hiding, hoping he never accidentally used them and went to jail. Not wanting to believe something can make you miss really obvious signs.

[Michael Hopcroft]

We get a glimpse in the movie (which I saw last night) of just how dangerous mind-wiping can be.

 

I was thinking about this after the film: What does one do if their very nature is illegal? The Parrs have superpowers. So do lots of other people in their world. In most cases they were given no choice in the matter. What are they supposed to do with themselves if their powers are unlawful? (The same question is posed in the first film, so I don't think that's a spoiler.)

 

Overall, I would say Brad Bird's position as America's greatest living animator is confirmed....

 

 

[RDU Neil]

1 hour ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

We get a glimpse in the movie (which I saw last night) of just how dangerous mind-wiping can be.

 

I was thinking about this after the film: What does one do if their very nature is illegal? The Parrs have superpowers. So do lots of other people in their world. In most cases they were given no choice in the matter. What are they supposed to do with themselves if their powers are unlawful? (The same question is posed in the first film, so I don't think that's a spoiler.)

 

Overall, I would say Brad Bird's position as America's greatest living animator is confirmed....

 

 

 

It was a great and fun movie. I was never clear if simply "having super powers" was illegal, or that using them in certain ways, was illegal. The former is highly problematic, because what is "super?"  Was Einstein a super-intellect, so it was illegal for him to think smarter than other people? Is Michael Jordan or Lebron "super" compared to other elite athletes (in some ways, yes) so is it illegal for them to even try to play/compete in sports?  The whole concept of super-heroes just mirrors performance enhancement and 'fairness' issues in the real world (in a fun-house mirror kind of way.) 

 

The "illegal to use them in a certain way" is much more understandable. A person can be strong, but punching people as an act is illegal assault, which isn't about how strong you are, but the act. Bird clearly has a philosophical issue with social limits on 'superior' people. And all his villains are "smart people who hate supers" which is really odd when you think about it. "Why limit someone who can do great things?" seems to be his general question. The Incredibles raises hard questions that it isn't equipped to answer fully (or in any way, really), but discussing them is fun!

[slikmar]

I think part of his "smart people who hate supers" is almost going back to the opposite of the Revenge of the Nerds syndrome. Instead of physically superior people (athletes) dominating the smart people (as happens in high school and college), in his 2 movies he has done, he is showing that smart nerds can be just as big a bully as the ones who are physically gifted, and the physically gifted can attempt to do right. Not sure I am completely saying this correctly, but hopefully you get my jist.

[Old Man]

4 hours ago, RDU Neil said:

The "illegal to use them in a certain way" is much more understandable. A person can be strong, but punching people as an act is illegal assault, which isn't about how strong you are, but the act. Bird clearly has a philosophical issue with social limits on 'superior' people. And all his villains are "smart people who hate supers" which is really odd when you think about it. "Why limit someone who can do great things?" seems to be his general question. The Incredibles raises hard questions that it isn't equipped to answer fully (or in any way, really), but discussing them is fun!

 

Note that over the course of the film Elastigirl commits reckless endangerment, trespassing, breaking and entering, and assault, just off the top of my head.  And recorded all of it.  And this time she's not a cop, she's not a government agent, and she's not on a foreign desert island.

[Starlord]

Jack-Jack stole this movie.

[Bazza]

Good, but not incredible. 7/10. 

[Michael Hopcroft]

7 hours ago, RDU Neil said:

The "illegal to use them in a certain way" is much more understandable. A person can be strong, but punching people as an act is illegal assault, which isn't about how strong you are, but the act. Bird clearly has a philosophical issue with social limits on 'superior' people. And all his villains are "smart people who hate supers" which is really odd when you think about it. "Why limit someone who can do great things?" seems to be his general question. The Incredibles raises hard questions that it isn't equipped to answer fully (or in any way, really), but discussing them is fun!

That, in a nutshell, is what draws comparisons to Objectivism in his work. The difference is that Bird thinks those with "superior gifts" can choose to drive the world forward, while Ayn Rand couldn't give a rat's *** what happens to ordinary people. Bird thinks sacrifice is noble at lot of the time, while Rand saw it as borderline-obscene (why save the world when you can get rich?), Bird's superheroes are heroic because they choose to be, because (as the villain points out mockingly) they have "core values" that dictate what to do with their abilities. Hence Bob sitting by a police scanner waiting for things that could benefit from his involvement in the first movie.

 

I don't think I'd want to live in Bird's universe, though. The laws of physics not playing out predictably can lead to all kinds of problems, and superheroes and functioning mind control are a very dangerous combination. And with superpowers being surprisingly common in the right genetics, how many supers get themselves or others killed when their powers first emerge?

 

One other note: Why do supers put up with Mr. Incredible? It's his excesses that caused a lot of the travails supers face. He's a blunt instrument, who combines incredible raw physical prowess with a tendency to think on his feet (and sometimes get things wrong). Elasatigirl is much more flexible in terms of her tactics and technical acumen, probably because with her powerset she's not going to punch her way out of most of her problems.

[csyphrett]

11 hours ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

That, in a nutshell, is what draws comparisons to Objectivism in his work. The difference is that Bird thinks those with "superior gifts" can choose to drive the world forward, while Ayn Rand couldn't give a rat's *** what happens to ordinary people. Bird thinks sacrifice is noble at lot of the time, while Rand saw it as borderline-obscene (why save the world when you can get rich?), Bird's superheroes are heroic because they choose to be, because (as the villain points out mockingly) they have "core values" that dictate what to do with their abilities. Hence Bob sitting by a police scanner waiting for things that could benefit from his involvement in the first movie.

 

I don't think I'd want to live in Bird's universe, though. The laws of physics not playing out predictably can lead to all kinds of problems, and superheroes and functioning mind control are a very dangerous combination. And with superpowers being surprisingly common in the right genetics, how many supers get themselves or others killed when their powers first emerge?

 

One other note: Why do supers put up with Mr. Incredible? It's his excesses that caused a lot of the travails supers face. He's a blunt instrument, who combines incredible raw physical prowess with a tendency to think on his feet (and sometimes get things wrong). Elasatigirl is much more flexible in terms of her tactics and technical acumen, probably because with her powerset she's not going to punch her way out of most of her problems.

They put up with Mr. Incredible because he's better than most of the other heroes that are shown like the guy who blew himself up with the missile, or the girl who fell into the jet engine and caused it to crash.

 

In the real world, Mr. Incredible would have been immune to the lawsuits that started everything. His status as a government agent would have made him exempt from such a case.

 

Essentially this is a marvel trope that doesn't make sense.

CES    

[csyphrett]

Also the two guys that Winston's dad was waiting on to rescue him were killed by Syndrome. I expect the government covered that up.

CES  

[RDU Neil]

18 hours ago, slikmar said:

I think part of his "smart people who hate supers" is almost going back to the opposite of the Revenge of the Nerds syndrome. Instead of physically superior people (athletes) dominating the smart people (as happens in high school and college), in his 2 movies he has done, he is showing that smart nerds can be just as big a bully as the ones who are physically gifted, and the physically gifted can attempt to do right. Not sure I am completely saying this correctly, but hopefully you get my jist.

 

Yeah... I just wonder where it is coming from, thematically, as a writer. Is it the trope of "I'm smart and capable, but I'm overshadowed by someone who can lift a train, so I'm resentful?" Sort of, with Buddy.

 

Or maybe it is more subtle... in that this is a kids movie where we are supposed to root for the heroes... and the Incredibles really are good heroes with best intentions... but the villains are speaking for Bird as a "You don't really want to think about these hard questions, because they are hard... and therefore unpleasant, and uncomfortable... but if I put these questions into the movie as coming from the villains, I can get my subversive subtext across, while on the surface, giving the viewing public its feel good film."

 

No writer creates at Bird's level of complexity, subtlety and nuance are not addressing issues that mean something personally... but exactly what Bird's personal view is... hmmm...

 

Is he a Randian Supericist (oooh, I like that word... glad I made it up) or a Subversive Egalitarian warning about the dangers of elitism?

 

2 hours ago, csyphrett said:

They put up with Mr. Incredible because he's better than most of the other heroes that are shown like the guy who blew himself up with the missile, or the girl who fell into the jet engine and caused it to crash.

 

In the real world, Mr. Incredible would have been immune to the lawsuits that started everything. His status as a government agent would have made him exempt from such a case.

 

Essentially this is a marvel trope that doesn't make sense.

CES    

 

I think the first movie was the Gov't shielding the Parr's from the lawsuits... and clearly the government didn't want to keep using supers after the public backlash... or at least not supers like Bob who can't help but draw attention to themselves. We haven't see the Incredibles version of Batman or Black Widow or Daredevil or such. In this movie, they were no long shielding them, so things became desperate.

 

The unrealistic thing is that the government didn't weaponized the supers somehow... but I think the answer to that would be... they probably did, but the Parr family and Frozone were "good" and would never have gone for that, so they sidelined them.

 

Also, I don't think they thought it through to this extent for the first movie... but now...

 

So... Incredibles 3... The Image Years... where Bob and Ellen are upstaged by "government supers" with distorted anatomy like bulging thighs and tiny little feet, with toaster guns and names like KewlBluudKill and Ripshredgutter!

[Starlord]

It also ignored the idea of how useful supers could be in just regular, everyday jobs.  You can't use your powers at all?  Or, you just can't use them to protect others and fight crime?

 

Mr. Incredible would be a hell of a construction worker, for example, yet he is forced to work in insurance?

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

 

Yeah... I just wonder where it is coming from, thematically, as a writer. Is it the trope of "I'm smart and capable, but I'm overshadowed by someone who can lift a train, so I'm resentful?" Sort of, with Buddy.

 

Or maybe it is more subtle... in that this is a kids movie where we are supposed to root for the heroes... and the Incredibles really are good heroes with best intentions... but the villains are speaking for Bird as a "You don't really want to think about these hard questions, because they are hard... and therefore unpleasant, and uncomfortable... but if I put these questions into the movie as coming from the villains, I can get my subversive subtext across, while on the surface, giving the viewing public its feel good film."

 

 

He might just be trying to make an entertaining film with questions people would ask IF superheroes existed.  But its also possible he's opposed to the kind of egalitarianism that's like the old story of the tyrant clipping the tops off of wheat so all the stalks are equal height; equality that reduces all to the lowest common denominator or tries to remove the ability to excel or achieve success.

[Michael Hopcroft]

4 hours ago, csyphrett said:

They put up with Mr. Incredible because he's better than most of the other heroes that are shown like the guy who blew himself up with the missile, or the girl who fell into the jet engine and caused it to crash.

 

In the real world, Mr. Incredible would have been immune to the lawsuits that started everything. His status as a government agent would have made him exempt from such a case.

 

Essentially this is a marvel trope that doesn't make sense.

CES    

I remember reading an X-Men comic in the 1980s where Colossus and Juggernaut meet in a New York bar and get into a glorious brawl, which the bartender doesn't worry about too much because he's covered for it. Apparently any business in New York City that can afford it buys insurance against the damage done by superheroes and supervillains when they fight. Not only does Juggernaut have no hard feelings about the whole thing, but when it's all over he throws an enormous wad of cash to the bartender to pay a fair share of the damages. (Colossus lacks a huge wad of cash, so his share was presumably covered by the insurance -- and IRC he did not start the fight).

[Michael Hopcroft]

16 hours ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

One other note: Why do supers put up with Mr. Incredible? It's his excesses that caused a lot of the travails supers face. He's a blunt instrument, who combines incredible raw physical prowess with a tendency to think on his feet (and sometimes get things wrong). Elasatigirl is much more flexible in terms of her tactics and technical acumen, probably because with her powerset she's not going to punch her way out of most of her problems.

 

5 hours ago, csyphrett said:

They put up with Mr. Incredible because he's better than most of the other heroes that are shown like the guy who blew himself up with the missile, or the girl who fell into the jet engine and caused it to crash.    

That can easily be viewed as another argument against legalizing superheroes. They're more dangerous to themselves than to anybody else. Superheroes apparently have a really high casualty rate, usually because of their own carelessness. In the case of the poor girl in the jet engine, she took about a hundred people down with her because she didn't keep an eye on her cape.

 

The other question is who deals with supervillains when no heroes are available. 

[RDU Neil]

1 hour ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

 

The other question is who deals with supervillains when no heroes are available.  

 

So I find this question of heroes and villains to be interesting from a literary and trope perspective. Most traditional superheroes start out fighting "normal" bad guys... as the only individual who can stand up to organized crime, or a cult or the KKK, etc. It is only after the superhero is established do the supervillains rise up to challenge him (traditionally him, but him or her.) This is actually brought up in Bronze age and later comics, the idea that the supers make things dangerous for everyone else by inciting all the crazies to new levels of villainy.

Now... juxtapose this with the classic fantasy literary tradition/trope of the great evil that rises, taking over and unstoppable by traditional forces, and it requires the hero (or heroes) to rise up to face and defeat the villain. It is the exact opposite... the super villain inspires the hero.

 

So you can look at the literary precedents to supers, primarily pulp heroes, and see where it comes from in comics. Sherlock Holmes or the Shadow or Doc Savage or Tarzan were superior individuals taking on the evils of the world that the common man was typically unable to handle. That was more in the vein of fantasy... a large, often faceless or organized evil where the individual of merit takes them out. But from a publishing and story perspective, these pulp characters had continuing adventures, and quickly they needed adversaries that could challenge them, since they'd proven to be too much for "normal" evil. So Moriarty appears... or for Batman, the Joker.  (Actually, I'm not actually sure who the first "supervillain" that Superman had to face, after he got tired of throwing KKK members off of buildings. I personally approve of that old Supes... sigh.)

 

In terms of the Incredibles, or any super world, I think it would be essential to the setting to have a clear idea of how the public views this? Is the general consensus that the supers arose to fight the fights normal forces couldn't?  If so, then there is likely to be a lot more cultural forgiveness for super-collateral damage. If, though, the social perception is "We never had these problems until the Capes showed up!" then things can go in a very different direction, with a lot more social pressure for control over supers.

 

Who came first, the hero or the villain?  It actually matters.

[Michael Hopcroft]

Smart guys hating supers is, of course, not new. Lex Luthor (both as a mad scientist and later as a jealous tycoon) has always been this super-genius who hates being upstaged. His brain is a superpower in and of itself, but in his more recent versions he also holds a lot of social, economic, and political power -- but lacks what Superman has. Of course, early on in the Man of Steel reboot, Luthor tries to buy Superman's services -- which backfires substantially and puts him in a humiliating position. Since he cannot buy off Superman, all he can do is attack him. The Corrupter must destroy the Incorruptible Man.

 

Now Luthor would still have been a menace even if Superman never existed. But he would have been a totally different sort of villain, rather like the Kingpin of Marvel. And since he is so [politically powerful already, Luthor with no check on him might well make himself a dictator or worse.

 

Would the Screenslaver have existed if Elastigirl didn't? Probably. Screenslaver has more to her motives than just her emotional scars. She simply doesn't suffer fools lightly, resents being out of the spotlight, and hates the notion that there's anybody out there better than herself. She'd probably use her technology at first to  humiliate and destroy business rivals, but once she had a taste of power she wouldn't have stopped.

[slikmar]

3 hours ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

I remember reading an X-Men comic in the 1980s where Colossus and Juggernaut meet in a New York bar and get into a glorious brawl, which the bartender doesn't worry about too much because he's covered for it. Apparently any business in New York City that can afford it buys insurance against the damage done by superheroes and supervillains when they fight. Not only does Juggernaut have no hard feelings about the whole thing, but when it's all over he throws an enormous wad of cash to the bartender to pay a fair share of the damages. (Colossus lacks a huge wad of cash, so his share was presumably covered by the insurance -- and IRC he did not start the fight).

Actually, IIRC, this happened after Secret Wars and was basically Woverine and I believe Nightcrawler taking Piotr out to slap some sense into him, and Juggernaut being there was, to them, a happy coincidence. I believe that Wolverine basically handed the bartender a wad of cash at the end and both of them told Juggy they have no beef with him at this time after he pounded Colossus. Course, didn't take, Piotr was still, stupidly, broken up with Kitty due to falling in love during secret wars with the healer girl, having met her for 10 minutes, who was in love with Torch, who could care less. God, Secret Wars was bad. Did anything good come out of it? Venom - nope, Ben Grimm can change into human, but only on the planet they were on - nope, post SW X-Men - nope. Simonson ignored it.

 

Also, as per other parts of this discussion: I just finished the last book in the "Don't Tell my Parents" series. in the prior book, they take the main character around (she is a mad scientist, as is her father) to various things trying to find her niche, explaining that hero and villain mad scientists both use their abilities to help, creating devices that help agriculture, medicine or whatever the person is good at.

[RDU Neil]

1 minute ago, slikmar said:

Actually, IIRC, this happened after Secret Wars and was basically Woverine and I believe Nightcrawler taking Piotr out to slap some sense into him, and Juggernaut being there was, to them, a happy coincidence. I believe that Wolverine basically handed the bartender a wad of cash at the end and both of them told Juggy they have no beef with him at this time after he pounded Colossus. Course, didn't take, Piotr was still, stupidly, broken up with Kitty due to falling in love during secret wars with the healer girl, having met her for 10 minutes, who was in love with Torch, who could care less. God, Secret Wars was bad. Did anything good come out of it? Venom - nope, Ben Grimm can change into human, but only on the planet they were on - nope, post SW X-Men - nope. Simonson ignored it.

 

Oh man... razzing on Secret Wars (original) needs to be its own thread... 'cause man, that was bad. Such a knee jerk, processed reaction to DC's Crisis... it was, in my opinion, the end of Marvel as an internally consistent and relatively well constructed super-world. They realized they could sell a bunch of comics that were absolutely crap, by making a big marketing deal and "event" out of them.

 

Funny that it would take 31 years before a major "event" was actually done well again... and it was called Secret Wars. The Hickman Avengers-Secret Wars run was epic and well done, with a satisfying culmination.

[sinanju]

8 hours ago, Starlord said:

It also ignored the idea of how useful supers could be in just regular, everyday jobs.  You can't use your powers at all?  Or, you just can't use them to protect others and fight crime?

 

Mr. Incredible would be a hell of a construction worker, for example, yet he is forced to work in insurance?

 

My understanding is that supers were forbidden to do "hero work" in the first movie. That is, vigilantism is illegal and while supers were given a pass at first, the accumulating property damage, casualties and lawsuits led to a law explicitly addressing costumed superheroes. They, too, are forbidden to play vigilante.

 

I don't think there was an explicit prohibition of using your powers in other ways, but since the Parrs were relocated repeatedly when they violated the Masquerade (plus all the mindwipes that were done too), apparently keeping their secret identities secret was still important. So, no, Bob couldn't have done construction work--or at least, he couldn't have done any more than a normal large and strong man could do. 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

Who came first, the hero or the villain?  It actually matters.

 

That's why I had the villains come first, be established, and be a serious problem for years before the heroes showed up to make sure people (and the players) knew what was at stake.  One of my all time most-hated modern tropes is the "they've caused all the problems, we were better off without heroes" crap.  And too many movies play right into this.  Iron Man literally causes all the problems he has to fix.  Fantastic Four were the reason they had to fight bad guys.  Its just awful storytelling, despite how entertaining it can be.