What robot was that? The bot that he and the other villians fought on the Island was programed to fight them. It was a lie that ‘wasn’t obeying orders anymore’ told to get the heros there.
Of course if Mirage didn’t know she was a robot and for some reason should not be told she was then Syndrom wouldn’t have said it and it explains why he wouldn’t care if Mr. I broke her.
But then again with the ‘success’ of The Stepford Wives and Sky Captian, the idea of girl robots seems to not be a very good one for movies.
I think the robot was programmed to wreak havoc indifferently until Syndrome put it under his control with the remote. It was purely by chance that it happened to shoot at him at just the right moment (or wrong moment, depending on your perspective), upsetting his plans.
No, it very clearly scanned him to discover how he was preventing it from acting, targetted the remote, and deliberatly shot it out of Syndrome’s hand. (Or off his wrist, more specifically.) I just got back from the movie, and there’s a POV shot from the robot where it shows it doing just this, complete with Terminator-style targetting prompts.
definitely. basically he hadn’t put a failsafe in. he thought he was going to waltz in with the remote and save the day. He must have forgotten that the robot learnt from it’s opponent and adapted to fight better.
My thought exactly. We already knew that the whole point of getting superheroes out to that island was (a) to bump them off, and (b) to test his series of mega-robots for maximum efficiency when he finally decided to make his public debut.
We also know that there were superheroes Syndrome couldn’t find – Elastigirl, for one – and I figured that’s why he wanted that robot to be such a monster – in case any of them showed up to queer his deal. Perhaps this is why he left the “learning” feature intact in the final robot. Admittedly, considering he also intended to play with it for drama’s sake before “saving the city,” this was a remarkably stupid thing to do.
Then again, pride goeth before a fall, and Syndrome’s pride approached psychosis in its sheer intensity.
As to “supervillains,” well, Syndrome had no powers… and he sure qualified. When you think about it, Doctor Doom’s a pretty good example, as well. Hell, so’s the Mole Man – his only superpower is the trick of seeing in the dark, but both he and Doom have threatened humanity on any number of occasions that required superpowered opponents to stop them.
“And then, when I’m old and have lived out my years, I’ll sell all the super technology I’ve developed for myself. Then anybody can be super. And when everyone is super … no one will be!”
His ultimate vile, despicable act of villainy was going to be destroying super heroes’ elitism by allowing anyone to do what they did. And we in the audience were supposed to think of this as a terrible crime against humanity. No mention was made about what a boon to the future of humanity the Zero Point Energy ray would be. Or giving the average commuter flying boots. Brains themselves may not be evil in the comics (or in the movies derived from them), but technology sure as heck is!
Perhaps I’m wrong, but I thought the line was, “And when everyone is special… no one will be.”
This was a reflection on the earlier dinnertable conversation between Dash and his mother, about the nature of “special-ness.” I figured it was more in the nature of drama than a reflection on the glory of making everyone special (or not special).
I don’t know about any of you, but I sure wouldn’t want to live in a world where any moron could go out and buy a paralyzer ray… or a disintegrator gun… and ghod help us all when thousands of commuters suddenly gain access to flying boots. There are no yellow lines in the sky, and the idea of the average idiot suddenly being able to fly, en masse, at any given speed, gives me nightmares.
Car wrecks are bad enough. What happens when two unshielded human beings collide in midair at 80 mph?
Did anyone else notice in the opening sequence when Buddy is in Mr Incredibles car Mr Incredible says ‘Hey, you’re that kid from the fan club…Brodie, bu…bu…BUDDY! Yeah!’ and break up laughing?
‘Brodie’ was Jason Lee’s character in Mall Rats who was obsessed with Super Hero sex organs.
Oh yeah, definitely caught the “Brodie” thing. Made me chuckle, and I couldn’t even begin to explain it to my GF.
But getting back to Mirage: I caught a lot of references, in style at least, to 60’s spy movies - Bond, Matt Helm, Flint, etc (yeah, some are paradies of the others - stay with me on this and don’t get hung up on that detail.) But in a lot of those, the girl who was working with the villian always changes sides by the last reel, helping the hero win. It’s a trademarked plot twist, it seems. So her helping in the end was pretty obvious to me at least, and expected.
Technology he tested by killing innocent supers. Tech he was hoarding for himself, and only planned to pass along (at a tidy profit) after he was done being teh one and only super on the planet. Hell, Mr. Incredible can’t mass market his powers, but Syndrome could! He just didn’t want to. And most of it was weapons. Brad Bird hates weapons (see also the Iron Giant). It’s not like he had a cure for cancer.
You have a point, though. Most comics ignore the tech advances super-technologists (or even just regular sciences studying supers) would have on the civillian world, often without good explanations why. Sure, the JLA, STAR labs, and shadowy government organizations have teleporters, but why isn’t there a commercial teleportation company? Why hasn’t someone cloned Barbara Gordon a new spine? The answer is, it isn’t super-heroes if everyone has access to the powers.
The Mad technologist trope does rub the hero’s face in his own essential elitism, but at the end he still proves that he’s a hero throgh his actions. Not in that they are so powerful, but that they’re heroic.
Did anything in The Incredibles say that Mirage was a super? The only indication I can think of is when she says to Mr. Incredible that according to the government, neither of them exist.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean she’s a super, just that the’s off the grid.
I thought she was a shapeshifter. In my mind she changes color (hair color, skin color) and hair length a few times. But perhaps its my imagination? I just figured she didn’t do much more than change skin tone because it would have been confusing and needed more explaination than they were willing to give a minor character.
