14 years ago, the world was starting to see signs of a superhero film genre that would soon balloon up to unimaginable heights of success. One such notable film was the Incredibles. It was the perfect movie at the time, one which revolved around a family that was regressed by society and had a dysfunctional dynamic as a result, but found a way to rise out of their mundane lives, thus catering to audience members of all age groups. I mean, it was so easily relatable to family structure back then right?
Naturally, we all hoped for a sequel to such a great movie, and after more than a decade of waiting through our mundane lives, we finally got one aptly named “Incredibles 2”.
This new film however, was highly different in tone and plot than the first.
It delves into completely new territory, and ignores the previous movie almost entirely, except for the underminer and a casual reference here and there. Not to mention that the mansion they stay in used to belong to a billionaire who liked to come and go without being noticed. (Syndrome anyone?!) But that’s a whole other conspiracy involving the U.S Government and Syndrome, which I’ll get into another time. Or just look it up on google I don’t know.
Incredibles 2 was highly praised upon it’s release, but not for the obvious reasons. People actually found the plot to be insignificant, but the movie still did fantastic. Here’s why.
There is no villain, not even in the first movie. At-least not in the form a physical person. Syndrome was nothing more than a top secret weapons supplier for the U.S. government (mansion theory), who was so motivated by Mr. Incredible that he ended up being an unwilling antagonist, simply because he wanted to be a hero. His entire adult life was crafted around this idea, and as such, collapsed under the weak structure that formed it. In other words, he was a victim of societal illusion, much like youth who find themselves motivated by the “grandeur” of celebrity life. (Will get into this later on.)
The sequel delves even further into this. Everyone thinks that the main theme of this movie is how screen’s control our lives, but it’s really just a physical interpretation of a more pressing problem: people losing touch with reality, and thereby their identity. To understand this better, the Deavor siblings are a brother-sister duo who run their parent’s company Devtech, which deals with telecommunications. As such, they have the capital and technology to help make superheroes legal in the public space once again, a move that is spearheaded by Winston as a means to avenge his parent’s death, which he feels could have been avoided. His sister Evelyn on the other hand, secretly transpires against supers as she thinks of him as naive and a believer in a false ideology, especially after the Syndrome incident. She uses his technology to try and paint supers in a bad light, but ultimately fails to do so because well, supers.
However, her motivation is not to go overlooked. She believed that her parents could have very well survived their murder by hiding and calling the authorities, instead of believing in people that were no longer there. She believes that society is easily swayed when it gets to sit back and enjoy life without concern, that we are becoming ever ravenous consumers who get the world offered to them on a plate rather than go out there and experience it on their own. The “Screenslaver”, a villainous figure that she uses as a means to hide her identity and agenda, fits perfectly with the world she’s trying to get rid of, indirectly showing the public the real enemy. The screens we surround ourselves with on a daily basis show us a world in which everything is perfect, or at-least a world that we wish to be a part of. People today have different perceptions of reality than they did in the era before screens were so widely available, which is why she chooses hypnotism and mind control as tools to aid in her mission, subliminally hinting at how lost we are as a society.
This is more than just an analysis of the movie, it’s practically how Winston aimed to make Supers legal again. By installing cameras in their suits which record footage for news channels, he was literally “shaping people’s perceptions of superheroes”. While that’s totally fine, Evelyn knew that there was also a dark side to when people get the best of everything delivered to them, without having to put the effort in themselves. This is made clear when a potential Screenslaver says the line “You don’t talk, you watch talk shows. You don’t play games, you watch game shows.” The screen has become a window to a reality where people find joy and solace much more than the real world right outside their door. She sees supers as just another screen, as an experience that most people are afraid of indulging in themselves, but still choose to enjoy and believe in anyway, viewing them as being above everyone else. Evelyn uses this flaw in society to fulfill her goal, even swaying someone as sophisticated as Elastigirl. She does all this just to snap people out of the trance they’re in, to get society to see that real truth is not what is sugarcoated and displayed on their screen.
The supers are a direct comparison to celebrities, who live lives much more exciting than the average consumer/middle class citizen, wear designer clothes and makeup that teenagers all over would die to have just so that they can resemble these icons on their screen, and seemingly live in an alternate universe other than our own, one in which everything is perfect. Much like how celebrity culture is a phenomenon that society views as real and authentic and desirable no matter how much their mind tells them otherwise, Supers have the same effect in Evelyn’s universe or at-least in addition to regular celebrity culture. The similarity being that much like celebrities, people will always hold supers up on their shoulders, regardless of their personal flaws, and blindly believe in them like sheep. Evelyn knows that supers can’t always save the day, and wants people to realize that they have to be able to save themselves.
Reality will always be different than the one that’s sugarcoated for an audience, but for the souls that perceive it solely through their screens, their own lives will never be acceptable, which inherently would make them less prone to deal with crisis. If everything is perfect and readily available, then how can one deal with problems and shortages? There is even a theory stating that since all the pixar movies take place in the same universe(or multiverse/dimensions), the dystopian future we see in Wall-E where earth is a garbage dump and humanity lives on a giant spaceship using electric chairs with inbuilt screens to commute, is what happens when humanity doesn’t break free of it’s false sense of reality and consumer excess.
Evelyn Deavor might have been wrong about how she planned to achieve her mission, but her motive for doing so was just to wake society up and live in a world where reality wasn’t dictated to them on their screens the way they would want it.