1.)Mr Incredible had saved Syndrome as a kid by removing the explosive planted by Bomb Voyage. Why didn’t he bring it up? It would have been evidence to tell Syndrome while he was captured. In fact I was assuming he would bring it up.
2.) Why exactly did Syndrome become a supervillan in the first place? Seems he just wanted to be a superhero, but felt animosity toward real heroes. Was it getting rejected by Mr. Incredible as a child? Is Syndrome an emotionally stunted person? He was a (young) adult; you would think that he would come to the realization why Mr. Incredible didn’t want his help. Syndrome’s failure to destroy his own robot exemplified this.
3.) Wouldn’t the absence/death of so many heros create a vacuum for supervillans? They never really mentioned what happened to all the villans like Bomb Voyage (who got away in the beginning) and others. In the Batman universe, Gotham city would go to hell and a handbasket every time Batman was out of comission. How could the government knowingly put superheroes into hiding when they might be the only one able to stop certain villans?
4.) Was Mirage really a super? She tells Mr. Incredible she is, but she doesn’t demonstrate any powers. What exactly is her relationship with Syndrome, are they lovers or something?!
Some people were clamoring for a sequel, but I honestly don’t think it needs it. The story wraps up pretty well. If they made a sequel, it wouldn’t have nearly the same weight as the first, because you’d be starting with the whole family working as a team. The film really stressed that these are all human beings emotionally, and its hard to go from supressing an ability to being forced to use it at 120%. There is conflict in the family which gets worked out through the movie. Any sequel wouldn’t really have the same kind of conflict, in my opinion.
1 & 2. Syndrome is insane. Both as a youngster and as an adult.
Presumably, after shutting down hero vigilanteism, the regular authorities got by on their own. They didn’t show too many high powered villians that the regular authorities wouldn’t have been able to handle (with the exception of Syndrome, once he came into his own).
Mirage wasn’t too well thought out, IMO. They show no motivation for a cool, hot chick to be hanging out with superdweeb. Also, they show she has some morals (she was upset when she found out their were children on board the plane they were shooting down; she helps Mr. Incredible in the end), but what kind of morals does she have if she partakes in the cold blooded murder of hundreds of supers? If I were Mr. Incredible, after she gave me the codes to escape, I would have flung something at her that would have decapitated her.
With regard to #3…They went out of their way to establish that the police could handle the bad guys on their own, if the supers had something else they’d rather be doing. “But Bomb Voyage is still out there…” “You can handle it.”
Mirage could’ve been lying about her super-powers, just to lure Mr. Incredible to the island. She could be attracted to Syndrone just because he’s rich and powerful (remember, he’s already made a fortune selling armaments). And while there might have been a relationship between them, that got soured after she realized Syndrone didn’t care if she lived or died.
They did. “Why would anyone build his headquarters in a volcano?” “He’s attracted to power. As am I.” Syndrome is unquestionably powerful, and by the time of the movie, he’s arguably the most powerful person on the planet. We don’t know when Mirage joined forces with him; he needed her to contact Mr. Incredible, of course, since Incredible would recognize him, but for all we know, he might have recruited his first victims himself (by which time he’d have proven his power). And while she obviously doesn’t exist in the same moral vacuum as Syndrome himself, she’s still not exactly all sunshine and roses herself. It’s a far cry from “respect for life is not necessarily weakness” to being actually, you know, good, and you’ll notice that she didn’t have a problem about shooting down the plane before she knew about the kids.Back to the OP,
I don’t think that there’s any possible way to miss that one. The answer is “yes”, and it wouldn’t be more obvious if he had worn a big sign taped to his back saying so.
It’s a prejudice that has existed since the beginning of the superhero genre. Superman, the prototypical and archetypical superhero, is brawny and a good guy, while his arch-nemesis Lex Luthor is brainy and a bad guy. Scientists who aren’t in the employ of the brawny good-guy leader are always evil, twisted men bent on destruction. People whose main power is the ability to invent things are never allowed to be the leaders.
Personally, I think the problem starts in elementary school when the strong kids are feared and respected but the smart kids are ridiculed and beaten up.
Batman
Iron Man
Hank Pym
Flash I and II
Atom II
Spider-Man
Beast
Professor X
Doctor Mid-Nite
Mister Fantastic
Mister Terrific
Brainiac 13
Steel (John Henry Irons, I forget his number)
All heroes, all Brainiacs, all (except for Batman, Spider-Man and maybe Brainiac) professional scientists or engineers. Yes, the mad technologist versus the “elitist” superpower is a common trope. However, the renaissance man hero is even more common. Even those not primarily known for their mental prowess (like Superman) are often portaryed as being plenty smart in tehir own right. Comics may be the least anti-intellectual medium.
1.)Mr Incredible had saved Syndrome as a kid by removing the explosive planted by Bomb Voyage. Why didn’t he bring it up?
This is much too rational. The bottom line here is that Syndrome wanted what he wanted, and he didn’t get it, and he was publicly humiliated. The fact that his impulsiveness would endanger not only himself but anyone whose sidekick he became (and the people they were supposed to be protecting) was, to Syndrome, completely irrelevant, if he realized it at all. As to why Mr. Incredible didn’t bring it up, I suspect it’s because Syndrome seemed to do most of the talking when they were together…
2.) Why exactly did Syndrome become a supervillan in the first place? Seems he just wanted to be a superhero, but felt animosity toward real heroes. Was it getting rejected by Mr. Incredible as a child? Is Syndrome an emotionally stunted person? He was a (young) adult; you would think that he would come to the realization why Mr. Incredible didn’t want his help. Syndrome’s failure to destroy his own robot exemplified this.
Again, being much too rational. Syndrome not only didn’t learn anything from his defeat, but almost immediately went after baby Jack-Jack, assembling a numbskulled plan for revenge along the way. Some people, even in real life, simply do not learn what they do not want to know; many comic book plots are assembled around this truism.
3.) Wouldn’t the absence/death of so many heros create a vacuum for supervillans?
4.) Was Mirage really a super? She tells Mr. Incredible she is, but she doesn’t demonstrate any powers. What exactly is her relationship with Syndrome, are they lovers or something?!
Unknown. I just assumed she was one of Syndrome’s many employees.
Was I the only person that thought Mirage would turn out to be a robot?
Then she would become what they claimed happend to the bot that Mr. I was brought into fight. She became intelligent enough to not take orders from him. Besides, I think Syndrome would build a ‘Girl Robot’ as soon as he was able.
That does sound plausible, but it would render the whole “contempt/respect for life” subplot superfluous. After all, why worry about Mr. Incredible taking Mirage hostage when Syndrome could just as easily build another one?
My cynical take on #3 is that the government would rather see people harmed or killed by supervillians than pay out the lawsuits for damages from superheroes.
Were there necessarily any supervillians? Other than Syndrome, the only evil costumed freak we see is Bomb Voyage, who’s just a guy with bad tastes in clothes who happens to carry around a lot of explosives. If the day shown in the beginning of the movie is any indicator, a superhero’s typical workload is pursesnatchers, building jumpers, kittens in trees, and competing supers.
And I think that Mirage = robot is an interesting idea, but we already saw one example in the movie of a robot which genuinely decided not to obey orders. I can very easily see Syndrome deciding to build a girl robot, and he could probably do it, but there doesn’t seem to be any indication of such in the scenes with Syndrome and Mirage alone. It seems to me that the oh-so-mature and oh-so-subtle Syndrome would have blurted out “I made you!” or “You’re not even alive!” or the like, during that argument about respect for life. On the other hand, if there’s a sequel, Mirage being jealous of a genuine girl robot might make for an interesting subplot.
And when Frozone & Mr. Incredible are sitting in the car, listening to the police scanner, Frozone remininces (SP?) about a long-ago fight with another supervillian.
I think by the point the movie starts, it’s gotten kind off like the situation in Mystery Men, where all the major villains are dead, in jail, or in the insane asylum.