honestly tho that scene in the incredibles where mr. incredible sees the names of all the old super heroes that used to be his friends / that he knew from Back in the Day and how every one of them has been killed by syndrome is such a chilling scene for so many reasons
like for one, everyone he knew is dead at this point and has been killed on the same island he’s at now and two, its heartbreaking bc that means that almost every hero wanted to try out being a hero again despite the laws against it and wanted to try and help someone out and relive their glory days, only to be straight up murdered like fuck that scene is just so fuckin intense
I think the core of that scene for me is, when you’re insane like me and you go through it frame by frame, you can work out that Gazerbeam defeated the omnidroid twice - the only super we have enough information to confirm did so. I always wondered about his body in the cave, how and why he got the password… But it makes sense. This thing goes haywire, gets an upgrade, and goes haywire again? He must have been hella suspicious! So he does what any good superhero would do - tries to get to the bottom of what’s really happening on Nomanisan Island. During the process he’s clearly caught and wounded but has just enough time to get himself somewhere he can leave a final message, just praying that the next super to come along will find it and break the cycle. Gazerbeam is my hero.
Incredibles 2 has a lot to live up to
All of this and…
I’m just realizing that the name is No Man Is An Island???? As in, everyone needs someone to depend on and connect with, no one is ever completely alone or should act all on their own.
Also Gazerbeam probably has X-ray vision–so he not only survived long enough to defeat the Omnidroid, he had the ability to see Syndrome entering the password.
Holy guacamole! I should pay more attention, I don’t think I got any of that stuff!
does anyone think about the fact that now mr. incredibles has to live w/ the fact that all his friends getting killed by syndrome could have been avoided if he had just been nicer to syndrome from the beginning
^I was thinking that from the beginning reading this and was shocked it went through so many comments before anyone pointed that out.
Syndrome waited until his machine was almost ready to go before asking Bob to come to Nomanisan. He also was surprised to find out that he was married to “Elastigirl”, which means he likely built his list and went through everyone else before finally deciding it was time to kill Bob.
Also, Syndrome literally didn’t find Bob until the start of the movie. He found Frozone and was stalking him. If Lucius hadn’t hung out with Bob, then Frozone was going to be the next one lured. There’s literally a scene of Mirage realizing that the guy in the car with her target is Mr. Incredible. He wasn’t going through the list, he was stalking and finding every former Super he could, luring them to the island, and then killing them, for the sake of improving his robot. Finding Bob was just a happy accident, and Syndromes obsession with him meant that upon finding a bot that could beat Bob, he figured he’d hit perfection and was ready.
and like, let’s be real here in the intro Buddy was crossing the line the second he showed up, Mr. Incredible mentioned he’d been very nice to Buddy, via signing a ridiculous amount of autographs and doing pictures and stuff, and that he was not going to risk a childs life as a sidekick (albeit in less words). Buddy literally showed up by breaking into his car, and then stalked him all evening until he was arrested. That’s disturbingly obsessive behavior, there’s no amount of niceness that would stop Syndrome, it was an impossible situation. No amount of nice was going to appease Syndrome, the second he faced any sort of rejection from Mr. Incredible he was going to lose it and go supervillain. After his arrest he should have gotten put into therapy, but yknow, set in like. the 50′s. so it makes sense he fell through the cracks when the cracks were a goddamn canyon. Don’t victim blame Mr. Incredible.
reblogging for the last comment because blaming mr incredible for the deaths of his comrades is honestly such a weird take and i dislike how it’s framed as “fact” when it’s not. it’s syndrome’s fault and syndrome’s fault alone. full stop. he murdered them because he was selfish, entitled, and obsessed with mr incredible to a fanatical degree.
You know what’s really great
In the beginning when Mr. Incredible says, “Go home, Buddy. I work alone.” He’s holding up Bomb Voyage
In Syndrome’s flashback, he’s looking down on him, no bad guy in sight
Do with that info what you will
oh
damn
This is such good analysis, but it’s also worth mentioning the difference between these two scenes which, supposedly depict the same thing. In the first, Bob is clearly busy, trying to keep his eyes on Bomb Voyage (a fantastic supervillain name!!!), so he is distractedly telling Buddy that he is busy and that he doesn’t need help. The lighting is realistic, and although he is CLEARLY fed up with dealing with this obsessive and toxic fan, he keeps an even tone and doesn’t snap at him.
In the flashback, it’s a different scenario completely!! The lighting is all focused on Bob as if he’s under a spotlight and it is only the two of them. Bob’s pose here is also ridiculously condescending. He has his hands on his hips like a superhero and is looking down at Buddy with contempt and scorn. In addition, when he turns to leave, he dismissively waves his hand as if saying “Get out of here.”
It’s also interesting to note Buddy’s position here. His arms are extended either in worship or as an expression of all he has to offer in this relationship. He sees himself as a victim because he thinks he gave all of himself to Mr Incredible, just got him to reject him.
It’s also amazing to me how much Buddy’s suit is a reflection of himself. Everything from the black and white color scheme representing his black and white way of thinking, to the huge S because here only thinks of himself.
Bob’s suit, however, is blue. In addition to being associated with a calming and rational thought process, I think it’s also to represent that he’s on the side of the police. He’s not here for his own glory, he’s essentially working as an extension of the police force
Also, let’s not forget when Bob is catching Bomb Voyage and trying to keep Buddy from yeeting himself towards almost certain death, he’s on his way to his own wedding.
That makes two things abundantly clear:
Bob doesn’t have an aversion to working with other people. Remember when he runs into Elastigirl earlier in the day? She reminds him not to “forget”, and he promises he won’t. They were standing over a thief they ended up accidentally nabbing together, or so we thought. They bantered back and forth about working alone, yet they nabbed that thief so seamlessly, you’d think they’d done it before. Then you find out later, Elastigirl is the woman at the altar. Making it clear that they had to have worked together, very frequently, enough to end up trusting each other to the point that they revealed their secret identities and had a romantic relationship outside of Super work, culminating in literally marrying each other. Bob is more than fine with a partner because he marriedhis.
The other is that, Bob is trying to protect Helen. She may be more than capable of handling herself, as she flirtatiously reminds Bob on the rooftop just hours before their nuptials. But the one thing that’s priceless to the Supers are their secret identities. With Syndrome following Bob begging to partner with him, it puts Helen in danger. A fanatical fan like that can end up possessive, meaning once Syndrome discovers her, could see her as a direct threat stealing “his” position working with Bob. And because he obviously has a knack for following people undetected (he was right on Bob’s heels all over a huge metropolitan city for literal hours), he could very well stalk Helen, discover her secret identity and expose her in order to eliminate her, putting her directly in danger. Bob isn’t an idiot, he knows working with this kid doesn’t just put this child in danger, but also his own wife and their identities. It’s better to say he works alone and let this kid down as gently as possible, hoping to finally shake him off for good so he can work in safety and peace.
Which leads me to my next point. Blaming Bob for all his friends getting killed is buying directly into Syndrome’s revisionist history of Bob “rejecting” him. Remember, if Syndrome hadn’t shown up to Mr. Incredible busting Bomb Voyage, none of the ensuing chaos with the bomb on the rocket boots getting dropped on the train tracks and blowing them up, causing Bob to lose Bomb Voyage, then forced to stop a speeding train, resulting in the passengers getting injured, the attempted suicide being thwarted which injured the guy, and everybody suing Bob for it, ultimately culminating in the Super’s fall from public grace and forced retirement. All of those consequences are because Syndrome refused to listen to Bob and meddled in dangerous affairs, making everything indescribably worse. If he had never showed up, none of the above would have happened and Supers would have never been forced into retirement, meaning none of Bob’s friends would have been lured from said retirement by Mirage and Syndrome’s private contract offers which resulted in their deaths.
this post got SO much longer AND better
Not sure if this matters by now but
A couple of things:
- The reason Syndrome found all the other supers first (including Frozone) was because Bob kept getting fired from his jobs, forcing the government to wipe his existence from multiple companies and forcing his family to move each time that happened. He unintentionally saved his family by forcing them to relocate so often.
- Two of the biggest differences between the two versions of “go home, Buddy” is the focus, and length. In Mr Incredible’s version, “Go Home, Buddy” is a midpoint, a random event that just happened to stick because it was weirdly specific, and it was right before the important parts. The attempted suicide, train crash, and wedding are much more important because those were more important to Mr Incredible (since the first two ended the superhero movement, and the last was his wedding). Buddy, on the other hand, only flashes back to “Go home, Buddy”. Which is weird because Buddy almost died later that night from a bomb on his cape, and he almost killed dozens of people on a train by dropping a bomb on them, and because of that, he was indirectly responsible for the death of supers. All three of those things should be much more important to Buddy, but it’s a sign of his psychosis that the one thing he remembers is not Mr Incredible saving his life, or his life being in danger, but instead Mr Incredible rejecting him. Buddy was unstable, and an extremely unreliable narrator who edited out massive chunks of his own story to better justify his hero syndrome.
- Also, on a more sobering note, some have brought up how Incredibles 2 seems a step down from Incredibles 1, and while that’s arguable, there’s some related bits in there I’d like to mention. You know how there were a slew of superhero’s in the movie for when they made superhero-ing legal again?
Notice anything funny about that lineup? Anything at all? Okay, here’s a hint then. How many of these heroes were working before heroes got banned? How many of these new heroes are from Mr Incredible’s era?
Answer: None.
Frozone, Elastigirl, and Mr Incredible are the only ones who were active before the ban, or more specifically, were left from those active before the ban.
Think about it, Elastigirl was on the news basically continuously, there was a UN declaration on supers, any super left who had even been five degrees of separation away from Elastigirl back in their heyday would’ve come up to talk to her and her movement. But when Elastigirl was brought in to meet other supers, she didn’t know any of them.
And it’s not like she and Bob were loners who never interacted with anyone, look at their wedding day, it’s packed to the gills with capes (and possibly some secret identities too):
So…what happened?
Syndrome happened. This isn’t just some serial killer picking people at random, Syndrome systematically wiped out an entire community of people, arguably, an entire generation of supers, since Violet, Dash, and Jack-Jack seem to be the only kid-supers in existence.
That’s why Elastigirl is so emotional when she’s introduced to these new supers, she thought her people, barring her family and Frozone, were wiped out by Syndrome. And in a way…they were.
Nobody’s left from her era of superheroics. None of her old friends survived. It’s just her, Bob, and Frozone left out of what was once a thriving, vibrant community. All those bright lights snuffed out because some kid couldn’t handle being rejected but his hero.
- Honestly, this allegory kind of brings to mind the AIDS crisis and the gay community. A “syndrome” almost specifically targeting a subset of the population with a flair for dramatic outfits and superheroics, picking off members one by one until the population is decimated. The members of the community have to intervene themselves to slow/stop this “syndrome” because the government, which was supposed to protect them, is unaware of, or is blatantly ignoring the crisis until it starts hurting the “normal” community. Because of this “syndrome” there’s just this gap in this community, where an entire generation is just…missing…with the few survivors having to counsel the new, untouched generation, and helping them achieve widespread support and acceptance they could only dream of.
- Side note: I just realized something. Take a look at Syndrome’s kill list:
And take a look at that wedding shot again.
Anyone look familiar?
If it’s to hard to tell, at least four of the people Syndrome killed were at Bob’s wedding.
Mr Incredible wasn’t watching supers getting killed, he was watching his friends getting killed. People he trusted enough to share his secret identity with people he trusted enough to share his wife’s secret identity with. Hell, our poor boy Gazerbeam got a front row seat with Edna and their NSA agent that’s usually reserved for family only.
And that’s bad enough, but something else occurred to me, Bob and Helen clearly haven’t been keeping in close contact with their superheroic friends, Bob asks Frozone if he’s been keeping in contact with Gazerbeam, implying they haven’t talked in a while.
Additionally, Bob’s life, and the superhero community’s life, went tits up basically immediately after his wedding night. So if there was any point for them to stop talking with other supers, it’d be then.
So what does that mean?
It means, in all likelihood that when Mr Incredible looked at that list of dead friends and superheroes, he realized with growing horror that, his wedding?
The happiest point of his life?
That was the last time Mr Incredible saw his friends alive.
Also like to point out that in the scene where he’s seeing all of his friend’s and their identities exposed and that they’ve been killed, he IMMEDIATELY in shock and horror realizes that elastagirl could be a target and SEARCHES her super identity. The relief on his face when he sees that she’s unknown is honestly so raw. Incredibles, both of them, are just absolutely stunning films.
before i was a marvel fan i was head over heels for the incredibles. before i wrote marvel fanfic, i wrote incredibles fanfic. this post would have been pure gold to me back then
Harry isn’t quite out of his teens when it fully hits him—the war, the blood and the guts spread across the corridors of Hogwarts, the screams and sobs, the nightmares, the shadows that never seem to leave him.
It’s too much.
He gets a flat in London—MuggleLondon. Hermione and the Weasleys give him space. Kingsley ensures the wizarding world gives him privacy. Not that some aren’t reluctant. Rita Skeeter releases articles every day, wondering when their Boy Who Lived will return.
But Harry doesn’t see those articles.
He tries to forget who he is for awhile.
His flat is cozy. He stuffs it with plants and paintings and books. He has a cat (or three). He wears sweaters and blazers with corduroy pants. He goes to the market every morning to buy fruits and vegetables. That’s where he meets the kindly old woman who lives down the street.
She lived through World War II and so many other wars, wars that Harry has never experienced but can only imagine.
She goes to his house and she goes to hers. There’s always tea and small cakes and dinners and cocoa—apparently she believes that a teenager needs cocoa—and baking and reading and knitting.
Harry uses magic to brew the cocoa one day, not realizing that she’s standing in the doorway. She calms him by telling him that she knows all about magic.
Their conversations shift after that. They talk about their favorite creatures and how hard it was to watch them perish before their eyes. They talk about the wall that seemingly gave way to let them enter the magical world. They talk about lions and friends and family and love and betrayals and life and death.
“When did you leave?” Harry asks one day.
She pauses, a hand resting on his cat’s head. After a moment, she looks up with a heaviness in her eyes, a heaviness that Harry sees when he looks in the mirror everyday.
“I was young,” she says. “Younger than you are now. But I had already grown up. I didn’t want to leave, not really, but it became too much.”
“Do you regret it?”
“Some days I do, some days I don’t.”
“Yeah…”
It’s a few months later, when he’s helping her shovel the first snow from her walkway, that he asks, “Did you ever try going back?”
“Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t,” she says, shoving a cup of cocoa into his hands. “I was shut out as soon as I hesitated.”
He pauses, nearly dropping the cocoa, before whispering, “That’s horrible.”
“What about you?” She escorts him inside, her cane tapping against the floor that he’s magically heated to warm her feet. “Would you be welcomed back?”
“Oh, yeah,” Harry says. “Til they turn on me because they don’t like the color of my shirt or because I sneezed the wrong way or because—you name it.”
She laughs and he smiles.
“Imagine that,” she softly says. “Rulers of our worlds and we’re not even allowed in them.”
“Imagine that.”
He does go back to the wizarding world, of course, but he never forgets his London flat. He visits the street from time to time, knowing that Susan Pevensie will be there, ready to push a cup of cocoa into his hands.
cant stop thinking abt ursula k. le guin’s essay abt the carrier bag theory….. she’s like, maybe the first human tool was not a weapon, but rather something that holds, a bag, a pouch, a vessel, something for gathering and storing and sharing. let’s shift the narrative of humanity from that of violence to that of safekeeping. and i’m like
and THEN she’s like, a novel is also a carrier bag. there’s the Hero’s story, sure, but there’s room enough in fiction for every experience, for every little thing, and it’s that other story, the life story, that she seeks……. o|-<
