In a world where there are people who have superpowers, a super “competing” against normals as a way to show he is special is a malignant mindset. In our real world, a comparable activity would be a strong, healthy, athletic 20 year old “competing” against toddlers to show off how “special” he is and gain some recognition.
Even if we accept all this as real, you’re talking about a ten-year-old kid who likes to run.
Let’s consider the supers and how they interact with the general population of normals. They operate as costumed vigilantes outside the law. IOW, they are unelected and unaccountable. The Incredibles borrows a good bit from Watchmen including the idea of how the general normal population, over time, comes to regard costumed vigilantes…
Mr. Incredible misses being a “superhero” because he’s bored, mainly. IOW, it’s about him. He misses the excitement, the publicity and the adulation. The normals exist for him mainly to feed his ego. It’s possible for him to quietly do good for other people in the insurance business; but that doesn’t satisfy him because it’s not exciting. Excitement and ego feeding is what it’s about, not doing good things.
He scorns young Syndrome, claiming he works alone. Clearly not really the case. There’s evidently a partnership with Frozone and another with Elastigirl. Seems more likely to me that he a) doesn’t want to work with a normal and b) doesn’t want to share the spotlight with a normal.
Frozone and Elastigirl were adults with superpowers. Mr. Incredible recognized that as adults they were free to make their own choices about fighting and they had superpowers so they would not be defenseless. At the time, Syndrome was ten year old Buddy whose tech wasn’t working at optimal levels. It was extremely appropriate for Mr. Incredible to refuse to endanger a child who was pretty clearly out of his depth. If Syndrome had approached him as an adult with competent tech and capabilities and Mr. Incredible still shot him down then you might have a point. I see no evidence that that would have been the case, however.
I thought the German soldier they freed is the one who kills Tom Hanks at the end. It seemed pretty clear. Am I wrong?
BTW, I have yet to find a children’s film that doesn’t contain a disturbing message. I kind of figured that was the point of children’s films, to disturb 'em in manageable doses.
Strangely enough, this is very close to what somebody here said about Remy in “Ratatouille”. Here it is:
I’ll have to rewatch some Pixar films (and watch the ones I haven’t seen) and see if this is a recurring theme.
That’s selfish, it’s true. But in a way this feeds into the same issue Dash has. If Mr. Incredibly is capable of doing more than settling insurance claims*, is it a bad thing for him to want to do more? I would say no. There’s a selfish motivation behind it, I agree, but I think selfishness is very underrated as a motivation for good deeds. I don’t believe there’s such a thing as pure altruism, personally, and his selfish motivations doesn’t harm anyone. It’s about excitement because it’s a thrill to do what he does - and why shouldn’t it be a thrill?
*And it’s worth noting that even here, he goes above and beyond the call by helping people beat the system.
[Church Lady]
Hmmm. . . theme sounds so familiar . . . I wonder what could it be . . .
Hmmm . . .
could it be
RANDISM?!
[/Church Lady]
(Well, isn’t that special ?)
I always wondered why Dash would have even wanted to be on the track team. He was a bit surly at the beginning of the movie because he never had the opportunity to run as fast as he could. That little problem is solved during the course of the movie where Dash has an opportunity to take part in a fantastic adventure, wear a cool costume, and run his little heart out. Why does he need to join the track team?
Marc
If Rand was the first person to have that idea, I’ll find one of her cultists (somehow) and eat his hat. 
The roots of the Beauty and the Beast story go back a lot further than the de Beaumont version that gained the most attention, which was the main basis for the Disney Beauty and the Beast. There’s a Greek myth about Eros/Cupid and Psyche that’s much older. There are some recognizable elements repeated in the later story, particularly the invisible wind servants. There’s also a Nordic tale where the enchanted man is in the form of a bear, which I’m pretty sure is older than the French versions. There are some ties with Perrault’s Bluebeard and Red Riding Hood, too.
The earlier versions mostly make the women stronger characters, having to overcome difficulties in order to get their lost husbands back. On the negative side, they lose the husband because of a breach of trust, or not obeying an injunction laid out at the beginning of the relationship. Common elements are listening to gossip or bad advice from other women, who usually don’t have the heroine’s benefit at heart.
Psyche was told that she could never look upon her husband or she would lose him. Her curiosity was piqued by her jealous sisters, who insisted that he must be some kind of hideous monster, and she of course lost him. The rest of the story has the basic theme of a wife fighting the influence of her husband’s mother, and of fighting for equal standing with her husband. Indeed, Psyche comes out looking a lot stronger than Cupid in most of the versions I’ve seen. The Nordic version is very close to the Greek one. Probably more than a little story-mixing going on there.
The Bluebeard story is a reverse Beast story. He has the mask of civility, with the true nature of a Beast. Her new husband is successful, has good manners, dresses well, but conceals a secret in a room of his house. Of course, the hook is that she has to trust him enough not to poke into his privacy, and of course she just has to look to see for herself. Similar to Red Riding Hood, she is saved by the men in her family, who she was clever enough to send a message to. This tale is so child-unfriendly that I don’t imagine anyone will ever make it into an animated film. You’ve got domestic abuse, serial killing, vigilanteism, profiting from a husband’s death, invasion of privacy, a bit of a moral morass on both sides of the relationship.
There are undertones of sexual politics in all of these, along with trust issues and family dynamics. The beast-transformation variations have an added element of a female distaste for sex and animalistic urges, which they eventually come to terms with, thus he is transformed in their eyes from something disgusting into an acceptable or even highly desirable partner. This sexual link between Beauty and Red Riding Hood is made even more blatant with Perrault’s version of the latter. In his opening he specifically warns young women against “wolves” who are pretty clearly sexually predatory men.
The Disney version is, as usual, more simplified and bland than the roots of the story it uses, but even so there are two transformations: Belle’s perceptions, and the Beast’s treatment of other people. Gaston is portrayed as more beastlike than the Beast in the fight on the rooftop, and Belle was intelligent enough to have recognized elements of this from the beginning. Her love for the Beast comes both from familiarity, which brings more acceptance of his flaws, and because she does have an effect on how he behaves. In the end, they learn from each other and compromise, which is, really, how relationships function best.
Gremlins.
Cute teddy bears sometimes turn into monsters that hide in dark places and chew your arms off.
Also, Santa Claus got stuck in a chimney, and nobody knew until they smelled him rotting.
Merry Christmas.
Hmm, I would have never thought to make that connection. Interesting! But I’m not certain whether their situations are really comparable.
It’s made obvious that Bob Parr can’t in fact do much good at his insurance job. The system is stacked against him, and his attempts to help others only serve to endanger his position when they are noticed. Yes, he’s obviously bored and unhappy, but it seemed like his dissatisfaction is at least as much due to the fact that his “insurance” job is the antithesis of superheroing–Wallace Shawn requires him to offer as little help as possible to those in need.
Ultimately the decision is forced on Bob to either help a mugging victim, or keep his job. Of course, he… er… fails to help the mugging victim. Then he beats up his superior, and loses his job anyway. Okay, I’m not sure whether that was really the best course of action.
I definitely enjoyed The Incredibles less than I might have otherwise, due to its occasional bitter tone of anti-egalitarianism. The whole “When everyone is special, then nobody will be!” rhetoric is sort of undercut by the presence of actual superhuman powers. I’m surprised that Dash didn’t realize how worthless his track award was at the end.
Also, what was the deal with Richard Nixon as the harried government official sympathetic to the plight of oppressed superheroes? You’re really pressing your luck there, movie.
The Incredibles makes the point several times that the Supers’ problems are due to being unable to use their powers in any practical way. They are forced to conceal their greatest strengths and talents in favor of lesser, normal, aspects that are more acceptable to society.
This has some extremely negative effects for the Supers. For example, the things that make Bob Parr a celebrated hero are distinct liabilities when he has to work in an environment that penalizes him for taking positive action to help people. He has poor impulse control partly because of his personality and partly because stifling his impulse toward action would have gotten him killed in the past. He is an extremely physical and direct person who, if he were able to use his natural abilities, would be best suited to something like emergency services, athletics, or even coaching.
Unfortunately any of those would probably blow his cover in short order, so he’s stuck doing something that is antithetical to his inclinations and abilities. It’s no wonder that he “tries to relive the glory days” because that was the last time he felt good about himself and what he was doing, when he could use his abilities to help people. Even when he’s undercover and can’t take any credit for the acts, the thing that he most wants to do is to save people from danger.
Yes, Dash’s abilities would make him the absolute best at most sports, and it wouldn’t even be a fair contest. The problem is that he is absolutely unable to use those abilities in any positive way, or his family would be uprooted, again, or possibly targeted by villains. He has no good outlet, so he takes the only available one.
Part of his joy when fighting henchmen is that for the first time in his life, he doesn’t have to hold back. He finds that his abilities allow him to do things he never even tried to do before. IMO, he’s not getting off on the violence, it’s just that the danger is a secondary concern. Even the fact that he and his family could DIE if he screws up is overshadowed by the realization that it feels amazing to do something you’re good at.
I’m not bothered at all by the “anti-egalitarian” sentiments in The Incredibles because it’s not about elitism any more than it is about oppressing the the non-powered. These people have special abilities. So what? Why is it wrong to want to use those abilities? Why is being faster, or stronger, or being able to make force fields any different than being a genius or an Olympic athlete? If you’re incredibly gifted with math, do you have to prohibit yourself from developing those abilities, or keep yourself out of competition with “normals” who might have less of a math ability than you? Did Einstein or Newton have to hobble themselves so that others could have a fair competitive chance? Why do we have to, as the movie puts it, “celebrate mediocrity”?
Buddy’s genius was just as much a super power as Bob’s strength, and he was a villain because, unlike all the Supers, he chose to use it for personal gain with no thought at all for improving the lives of people around him. He created weapons that supported wars, kept technological secrets to hold himself above others, and killed people and destroyed families through training his robots for no reason other than to stroke his superiority complex. He didn’t have an egalitarian bone in his body. He was an egotistical monomaniac.
The powers were a side issue to the more important themes of living life. The movie isn’t really about huge sweeping causes — which is why I think the Randian interpretation is way off-base. Its message is more prosaic than that. Helen tells Bob at their wedding, “If we’re going to do this, you’re going to have to be more than incredible.” She knew that powers don’t make things any easier when it comes to having a family. In fact, later those powers complicated the hell out of things. She knew that, especially for him, the routine and unfailing responsibility of being a father and provider would be much harder than being a superhero. Maintaining relationships, supporting your family, and helping each other develop potential are the difficult things that everyone has to deal with. Powers don’t help with those.
Horse puckey. There are any number of practical ways the supers could use their abilities. The problem is that (as they are written by the script writers) the only way they *want * to use them is as costumed vigilante adventurers.
Mr. Incredible would make one heck of a furniture mover. For that matter, he’d be great at any conventional job where physical strength is an asset. Elastigirl would, likewise, excel at anything that would normally require a lot of scrambling up and down a ladder. Somebody like Dash would be a dream employee for an outfit like Fed Ex. And so on. For that matter, supers-only sports leagues would probably be an enormous ratings-draw on TV. Super powers have *tons * of practical real world applications. As written, though, that apparently doesn’t suit the desires of the supers. It’s not exciting enough…and this is all about what excites and pleasures them.
Maybe, for some crazy reason, they felt like they were doing more good fighting supervillains and stopping trainwrecks than delivering the mail and moving furniture. Those glory hounds.
Yes, exactly. They are glory hounds. The only actual “supervillain” we see is Syndrome. He exists because of Mr. Incredible. The police and other emergency services apparently are able to handle things without the supers because they **do ** handle things without the supers. IOW, the supers as costumed vigilantes are “needed” only to correct a problem that they cause.
Whether they were actually doing more good (or any good, in fact) by playing costumed hero is less important than how they felt in the scheme of the movie. Mr. Incredible, Dash, Syndrome, and Edna are all monsters of egocentricity. Frozone somewhat less so. Elastigirl and Violet are better adjusted and don’t seem to need the superhero thing the way the others do.
At the end of the movie, they have it all. They get to play superhero with government approval while keeping their cover identities. They are getting to do what they need to gratify their egos. Yet that isn’t enough. They *still * have to go to a track meet and let Dash toy with a group of normals. To any outside observer, Dash’s participation is just an exercise in ego-stroking and any “victories” in such a competition are meaningless. Yet celebrate they do…
He exists as Syndrome “because of” his own greed and malice.
We don’t get much information from the movie on how well things like emergency services run (or don’t).
[quote]
Whether they were actually doing more good (or any good, in fact) by playing costumed hero is less important than how they felt in the scheme of the movie.
The movie doesn’t overlook Mr. Incredible’s egotism, in my opinion (it’s his major failing) or Syndrome’s. Edna is a comic relief character, and Dash is a child, so I’m not sure why you find his ego monstrous.
I’m not sure why you find it so outrageous that a 10-year-old wants to be a superhero and a regular kid at the same time. I thought that was pretty much how all 10-year-olds are.
The average 10 year old is also a monster of egocentricity. All kids are. Learning to be otherwise is part of growth, maturation, and development. Dash’s egocentricity is, for that reason, understandable. The others, most notably Mr. Incredible, are in that regard little more than oversized, superpowered children.
I like this board. I never really got into Incredibles, not the same way I did with Monsters, Inc. or Finding Nemo, and I think this is why. The characters left me cold–they all seemed so self satisfied and smug.