Hello everybody and welcome to the Marxist analysis of the 2004 movie the Incredibles
which is definitely entirely serious, and fact based. The movie is about a family of superheroes
who are forced to remain undercover and not use their powers, until they encounter their rival
syndrome. It may seem like a generics early 2000s children’s superhero movie.
Anyways I am going to force it into a leftist framework and you cannot stop me.
At the start of the movie, we see superheroes like the main character mr incredible
doing superhero things like murdering a criminal who is driving. This takes place before the heroes
were made to go undercover. We are introduced to a character who calls himself incrediboy
and who wants to be Mr Incredibles sidekick. Mr incredible is visibly annoyed at this,
he says that he recognises the kid from the fan club, says “I’ve been nice, I stood for photos”
and then fucking ejector seats the kid out of the vehicle, which if you ask me is child abuse. This
is because the kid is not a superhero, he has no superpowers, he is just a kid who admires a hero.
And that hero rewards him by being so cruel. This is the first instance of the movie making
parallels to reality. We see that the so-called heroes consider themselves more important than
the average citizen, they don’t even want to associate with them at fan meetings,
they consider themselves a superior group, or as a Marxist would say, a separate class.
And that is a class that has more power than the rest of the population, a minority with
such abilities and no respect for the majority. It is obvious that the superheroes represent the
capitalist ruling class. Mr incredible continues to do hero things, he fights someone called “bomb
voyage” which is a pun that did not work out when I watched this in German as a kid.
Incrediboy shows up again with his rocket boots but is immediately dismissed by Mr incredible.
I see this as continued elitism, even when incrediboy has the ability to rise above the
masses and become stronger than most he is still dismissed. This may be a reference to the fact
that many self-made rich people are belittled by those who were born rich because they don’t know
the made-up social rules rich people use. In the end Mr incredible blows up a train
track and injures many. Of course he blames incrediboy, And he delivers the kid to the police.
When the kid says he is incrediboy Mr incredible angrily answers “YOU ARE NOT AFFILIATED WITH ME”
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The people inside the train that Mr incredible blew up get angry and sue him. Which causes the
government to take action and ban superheroes from using their powers. This is the most obvious real
world parallel in the movie. We have the capitalist class acting in ways that harm
the average person so the average people use the state to take action against the capitalists. This
is the same thing as states guaranteeing minimum wages and safety regulations. The politicians do
not remove the capitalists or the heroes, they just try their best to keep them in check.
Which is not working because after we skip 13 years we immediately learn that mr incredible
is secretly continuing his hero work which includes running into burning buildings and
killing a police officer by freezing him. This represents the fact that capitalists do not give
a shit about laws and just do whatever anyways, no matter how hard a state tries to intervene,
they can’t stop exploitation and they can’t stop heroes. It is the nature of a society
with capitalism to have people suffer and it is the nature of heroes to fuck up saving people.
He then argues with his wife how dumb it is that he and his superior
family are not allowed to act like they are superior to everyone else, self-explanatory
I suppose. Same story as millionaires trying to found their own countries to dodge taxes they
think they would be better off without that damn government meddling in their business/hero work.
Then Mr incredible gets angry at his boss and throws him though about 5 walls which I think
is praxis, but it costs him his job because you aren’t allowed to go mask off like this.
With perfect timing he is secretly contacted by a group that needs his powers, they say that he
needs to destroy a killer robot loose on an island by people who claim to be the government. They say
they will pay him, so he writes down the crucial information of the message which apparently is
“Prototype, Equipment, Robot, Private, Damage, BIG $” Nice to see that he has his priorities right.
Since mr incredible wants to show off his abilities he immediately accepts. He lies to his
own wife about what he is gonna. And capitalists also, lie. “Coincindence I THINK NOT” Eventually
Mr incredible finds the robot and destroys it. This makes him feel good so in the following
weeks he starts working out, buying expensive cars and gets a new suit which is less blue.
The suit is in fact red, the colour of the worker’s movement. This may represent
companies trying to appear leftist like when amazon asked for a 15$ an hour minimum wage or
when thy sell the Che Guevara shirts, or it could represent capitalists being entirely oblivious.
He is called for a new mission to the island. At this point his wife learns that he is secretly
doing hero work again and begins spying on him. When he arrives, he learns that it was a trap!
He is attacked by a larger stronger version of the robot he fought last time, and in addition to that
there is a man with an amazing hairstyle who calls himself syndrome. Mr incredible recognises him,
it is the man who used to want to be incrediboy. My incredible is powerless, the robot has him
in it’s claw and Syndome seems to have invented some sort of paralysing anti-gravity laser thing.
This scene is rich with meaning. First of all, the reason Syndrome is trying to kill Mr incredible
is because he was so mistreated and rejected by the elitist superhero
he used to look up to. It was mr incredible who sowed the seeds of his own destruction.
This parallels capitalism, ever since marx leftists have said that capitalism is sowing the
seeds of it’s own destruction, by bringing workers together in factories and mistreating exploiting
and underpaying people they are allowing socialist thought to spread which will one day lead to the
overthrowing of capitalism, the same way that Mr incredible’s, literal child abuse
lead him to being caught by Syndrome. And yes this analogy means that Syndrome represents socialism,
or possibly an individual socialist maybe Lenin.
Syndrome rejects the authority of the state, as we explored the state tried to make super heroes
stay undercover, but as we know the state was too weak and could not prevent them from doing their
destructive work against the will of the people. Syndrome represents the fact that socialists
reject liberal states for being too soft and weak to stand up to the forces of capital.
The state is clearly not capable of controlling the heroes, just as moderns states have no control
over free market capitalism and the actions of the rich. Remember, “punishable by a fine”
means legal for the rich. Syndrome instead of controlling heroes like the government
seeks to destroy them, leave none. This again echoes the will of socialists,
we are not content with controlling capitalists with the law, that is social democrats,
we want to abolish the capitalist class and create a greater better society without them,
just like Syndrome wants for the so-called heroes. Later on he says that his technology will make
everyone super, clearly his goal is equality. The fact that syndrome is superior to Mr
incredible also has meaning. Mr incredible was born this way, he never had to work for it.
He never needed to use his brain because he was given everything on a silver platter.
This contrasts with Syndrome whose entire power comes from his education and smarts. He invented
massive robots, laser weapons, boots that let him fly and much more.
And ultimately it is his education that brought Mr incredible down. Just like how increased education
standards among Bolsheviks was ultimately the reason for the downfall of the Tsar in Russia.
Educated socialists are superior to capitalists. Sadly, for socialism syndrome accidentally loses
Mr incredible and throws him into the air. This represents a deus ex machina.
While hiding Mr incredible comes across the word kronus which later turns out to be the
password to Syndrom’s entire secret plan. This represents a plot hole AND convenient writing.
The woman who made Mr Incredibles suit now also made suits for his family,
including the children, which represents child labour as well as child endangerment
and a good reason to have the kids taken away by child protective services. Also, these character
designs are encouraging my anorexia more than anything I’ve seen before in my life…..oh
maybe I should have trigger warned that Meanwhile mr incredible infiltrates Syndromes
base and using the password Kronus he watches a very convenient animation that visually explains
Syndromes plan for some reason, that plan shows how many heroes were already defeated by Syndrome.
Representing the success of socialist nations in the early parts of the 20th century
when it came to eradicating capitalist classes. Then mr incredible is captured anyways.
Sensing something is wrong his wife called Elasticgirl borrows a private jet from a
friend who conveniently owes her a favour. So, she flies to the island, the most interesting part
about that scene is that she uses the right radio guidelines when talking to ATC. Meanwhile syndrome
is being mean to Mr incredible representing me being mean to rich people on twitter.
Syndrome eventually realises that the people in the plane are supers
so he sends our missiles to shoot them down. But it turns out that their bloody
private jet has a combat radar to detect these missiles along with flairs and an afterburner.
But despite this the plane is shot down after a short tense scene, then
Elasticgirl turns into a parachute, which I think represents the concept of a golden parachute.
Essentially when capitalists are punished for their crimes like employing children
they lose their job, but they are given a lot of money as compensation,
that money is called a golden parachute, it protects them from the consequences of
their actions, just like Elasticgirl is protecting her children from the fall.
Hearing the plane was shot down Mr Incredible decides to threaten to murder Syndrome’s
secretary, representing capitalists being fucking monsters. Eventually Elasticgirl infiltrates the
facility where Mr Incredible is kept and arrives just as the secretary is releasing Mr incredible
who immediately tries to kill the secretary again, which again represents that capitalists are dicks.
Eventually the two of them get out of the facility again.
There is a huge fight involving not only the adults but also the children of the family.
Essentially they kick the asses of Syndrome’s workers. But eventually syndrome comes along
and the largest fight scene of the movie comes to an end with Syndrome conclusively winning. I
think this parallels the greatest war in history. German capitalists and fascists were determined to
destroy the socialist world by conquering the soviet union, just like the incredibles tried
to kill all of Syndrome’s workers. The fact that they are captured by syndrome represents
the victory of the USSR over Nazi Germany which proved the superiority of the socialist system.
It turns out syndrome was going to launch a big rocket to fly to a big city with the killer robot
on board, so he does. His plan is to let the robot run around destroying things so he can
appear like a hero when he defeats it. This plan shows that sometimes socialist
leaders will do things against the interests of the working classes. There are many examples,
stalin’s gulags, Deng’s reforms, or whatever Gorbachev did. Syndrome releasing the robot
represents socialist parties turning on the people as they did towards the end of the cold war.
The super family is still trapped in Syndrome’s containment room,
they are held there with some tesla coil laser magic or something like that, luckily one of the
children has the super power to do exactly what the plot needs and releases them all.
Then they decide to go back to their city to fight that big robot. Conveniently Syndrome
built a second rocket in addition to the one he needed. Also, there is no way that a single stage
rocket like this one could launch such a massive payload across the planet. They then notice that
they need a password to launch the rocket because that is clearly the only thing you need.
Luckily the secretary comes along and saves the heroes by providing the information they need.
Just as a reminder this character was almost killed by Mr incredible twice yet still helps
him out. This represents a naïve neoliberal or libertarian, a member of the working class
who still supports capitalism no matter how often they were hurt and abused by capital,
like libertarian views scotty m. Meanwhile in that city Syndrome is pretending to
fight the robot he built, unfortunately the robot is capable of learning, so it quickly notices that
Syndrome is the one damaging it. The robot turns on him and Syndrome face plants into a building.
This represents a tendency towards the end of the cold war where socialist leaders slowly lost
control of the country they were leading, the party became corrupt the planned economy became
content and eventually the general secretaries were incapable of stopping the slow descent of
the USSR and other socialist nations, just like Syndrome was powerless against his own robot.
At this point the Incredibles arrive and they fight the robot which is not that exciting
because they immediately find syndrome’s remote for the robot which allows them to
win this fight easily. The destruction of this robot represents the fall of most real-world
socialism in the late 80s and early 90s. After this fight the public comes out and
celebrates the Incredibles yet again for destroying the robot. This is an obvious parallel
to the fall of socialism. After the USSR fell everyone wanted to switch to a free market system
so their lives could be better than they were under late USSR state socialism.
Which was foolish, because by that point they had forgotten the horrors of capitalism,
unemployment, food lines, insufficient pensions and unemployment payments, economic collapse, drop
in life expectancy and much more. They thought capitalism would save them, but it did not,
and I predict that if the story of the Incredibles continued, they would return to their old ways,
blowing things up, breaking people’s bones and destroying trains, but for now,
at the end of the movie the people are happy. But just because they defeated the robot does
not mean they won, syndrome still exists, and when the heroes come home, they see that
syndrome is there with their beloved baby which so far had 50 seconds of screentime, he is flying to
his plane to raise the baby as his. Creep. Amazingly the baby somehow has superpowers
and fights syndrome while in the air. Mr incredible throws his car at the plane
which causes Syndrome to be sucked into the jet engine and the plane to crash,
just as a note, a jet would not explode from a person being sucked in, Yes the person would
become pink mist, but those engines are sturdy and made to survive lots of things,
a human flesh bag would not cause it to explode. Anyways the death of syndrome represents
the so-called end of history where capitalist historians declared socialism dead. Syndrome is
the last great socialist leader and with him gone the workers of the world are on their own, much
like how the workers of the world were on their own after Gorbachev sold himself to pizza hut.
At the very end a new opponent appears who calls himself the underminer.
This shows the hopeful end which is basically saying that as long as capitalists exist,
socialists will rise to fight them and demand freedom for the people of the world.
So, we have a Grande story of socialism and capitalism. The capitalists consider themselves
superior to all others, which directly leads to them being banned by the ordinary government,
a ban which is not being enforced. Worst of all the capitalists themselves cause their downfall
by mistreating the kid who would eventually become a revolutionary who defeated them
only to ultimately fall to his own creations, like the USSR defeated fascism only to fall
after it’s own party apparatus failed. This interpretation definitely makes sense.
Thank you all for watching, I hope this entertained you a little bit,
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