While The Incredibles 2 didn't really lean heavily on story twists, there is quite a bit about it that's worth discussing from a thematic perspective, and yes, this discussion does involve spoilers.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
(SPOILER ALERT)
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Okay, you've been warned. When The Incredibles 2 introduced a "mystery villain" in the form of Screenslaver, it was pretty obvious from the word "go" that he was going to be one of the two new characters introduced, either Winston Deavor or his sister Evelyn. Brad Bird managed a bit of a fake-out by revealing him to be a mind-controlled pizza delivery man, but there never was any doubt that it would have been one of the two siblings. Winston was played a bit too obvious, making Evelyn the likelier candidate for villainy, as she in fact was.
The predictability of the twist wasn't really an issue for me, though I confess I kind of rolled my eyes at the "angry at superheroes" motivation that drove Evelyn, who for some reason reminded me of Helena Bonham-Carter, to concoct her scheme to destroy them, as it felt like a variation on the motivations that drove Jason Lee's Syndrome to murder just about every known superhero except for Mr. Incredible, Elastigirl and Frozone from the first film.
I found it curious considering that neither of the "big bad guys" that the Incredibles have fought are actually "villains" per se. They're not out for world domination, or even something more mundane like grand larceny. They simply hate superheroes, for one reason or another, and set out to destroy them. That's basically their sole goal, and they're willing to inflict considerable death and destruction to achieve it.
The Incredibles 2 presents a more interesting spin on the concept than its predecessor, which simply presented a spurned fanboy. While Evelyn is similarly angry with superheroes, she's also angry with the way people have come to depend on them, which sounds like a pretty reasonable gripe with superheroes if you ask me. The argument, if I'm honest, was never fully debunked, and Evelyn's line when the police are hauling her off at the end--"just because you saved me doesn't mean you're right"--actually rings somewhat true.
I mean, there is something to be said about the argument that people shouldn't count on "heroes" to save them; it actually applies directly to our global politics right now. Countries all over the world are caught in the grip of a new wave of authoritarian rulers because voters have been embraced the ultimately false notion that these "strongmen" could "save" them from all of their problems. There's a distinct failure to realize that if anyone is to save us from our problems, it's us.
It kind of makes me wonder if The Incredibles isn't a surreptitious critique of the entire superhero storytelling genre; in this world, it's the superheroes themselves who, however inadvertently, create their biggest villains. And then, of course, there's that scene in which the Parr family are shown their new house, which suspiciously resembles a certain billionaire philanthropist playboy's former Malibu mansion, and Violet comments on how ridiculously exposed a self-confessed superhero living in such a house would be.
Of course, there have been comments on how Brad Bird's personal philosophy of Objectivism plays into the narrative, but really, neither Syndrome, who wanted to "democratize" being "super" by selling everyone high tech weapons, nor Evelyn Deavor, who wants to "cure" people of their dependency on superheroes to solve their problems, sounds like a particularly bad person; it's only their chosen means (assassination, mayhem) that ultimately make them bad. But I'll be darned if they aren't SPOT ON in their disdain for superheroes in general, at least in the context of the stories that are told.
I'd like to see Brad Bird explore this thought process further, and I'm fairly sure he'll get the chance. The thing is, even though he's presented villains with cogent arguments against the so-called heroes, he has yet to have the villains win the argument, the way Erik Killmonger did in Black Panther, and to a lesser, less-commonly-acknowledged extent, the way the Vulture did in Spider-Man: Homecoming.
I really love this world that Bird has created, and even though it's nowhere near as expansive as, say, the Marvel Cinematic Universe in its scope, thematically it's got a richness to it that the first two films have only just begun to explore.
No comments:
Post a Comment