Incredibles 2. Listen - I enjoyed it.
The humor was on point, all the action scene were well thought out and fun,
and some of those scenes were directed incredibly well, like nothing I've ever seen from an animated movie.
But I think the plot was messy.
And I've done a bunch of these videos and about half of the time,
the change that needs to be made has to do with the film's villain.
And Incredibles 2 is no exception., specially since Incredibles 1 introduced us to Syndrome,
one of the most interesting comic book movie villains ever.
I mean, he never really even fights the heroes and he's still great, isn't that weird?
Syndrome is a great character because everything about him makes sense: his motivation, his plans, his ideology.
It all adds up.
Screenslaver, on the other hand, does not.
Spoilers for Incredibles 2 from here on out.
So the Screenslaver, who we will learn is Evelyn Dever.
Her origin story is comically stupid,
her plan is unnecessarily convoluted,
and her ideology is all over the place.
But it didn't need to be that way.
There is one small change you can make to Evelyn's backstory that would give her a relatable motivation,
logical plan, and clean up her ideology, giving her something new and interesting to say.
And that change is:
The Dever Household should have been robbed when Winston and Evelyn were children,
and their dad shouldn't have gone for the phones.
He should have done something different.
What should he have done? I'll get to it. Eventually, stay with me.
Here's how the movie would change.
First, I want to start with people watching the news and specifically watching a report about this Screenslaver.
Usually I think news footage is a lazy way to start a movie
but here I think it does two important things.
Number one, it's setting up this "screens are everywhere now" theme.
It's easy to forget, but these movies take place in the early 60s so that's a big deal.
The television as a fixture of the American household was a relatively new phenomenon in the 1950s and 60s.
In 1950, there were around 4 million American households with TVs.
And by 1960 that number had jumped to 45 million.
TVs were influencing elections and changing the way people saw the world.
So, I want to be driving that home from minute one.
Also, I don't want to nitpick
(Not unlike my podcast, Mostly Nitpicking. It's good, listen to it.)
But I was curious: why is the Screenslaver named the Screenslaver?
It's clearly a play on the term screensavor, but those were invented in the 1980s,
and they were invented for computers.
Now, a couple of computers exist in the Incredi-verse.
But, like, is screensaver that common of a word
that that word play makes sense to anyone but the handful of people that have and use computers?
Anyway, and more importantly, the second reason this intro is important
is we are demonstrating that this Screenslaver has been around since before the events of Incredibles 2.
One big problem that I have with The Incredibles movies
is that they are both about superheroes dealing with the fact that superheroes are illegal.
Our heroes believe that the law that prevents them from using their abilities is wrong.
Back in the day, supers saved people and were helpful and great and everyone loved them.
And we agree, but the government disagrees.
They see supers as dangerous and the damage they cause spurs a torrent of lawsuits
that force the government to outlaw supers.
And at the end of Incredibles 2, a law is passed that makes supers legal again.
The problem is these movies have never made the case for supers.
The public shouldn't trust them.
Incredibles 2 starts with the Underminer incident, which is a failure,
And then the two big villains of the franchise - Syndrome and Screenslaver -
both exist because of the supers.
If Mr. Incredible didn't exist, Buddy's life would have gone differently.
Either buddy would not have been inspired to be a hero in the first place,
or Buddy would have been inspired to be a hero by someone else,
who may have encouraged Buddy to fight crime, no Syndrome.
And if Mr. Incredible, Elastigirl, and Frozone didn't exist,
the Underminer incident would have gone differently.
And Winston would not have been inspired to bring supers back into the limelight,
reigniting Evelyn's hatred of supers: no Screenslaver.
And I'm not saying The Incredibles are the bad guys here,
they can't be responsible for unhinged geniuses like Buddy and Evelyn.
But, from the government's perspective, all of the modern super events
have been disasters the supers made worse, or villains that have an axe to grind against supers.
Supers really are more trouble than they're worth.
If this movie wants to end with supers being legal again, and I think that's fine,
we need to, in this movie, introduce a threat that exists independently of the supers.
That way supers can demonstrate their value to the world.
So, the Underminer incident is the same.
Big mess, bureau shutting down,
Lucius meets Winston's driver and brings Bob and Helen to DevTech to meet Winston and Evelyn.
Next change, Winston gives the supers his pitch:
"I want to make wrong things right and bring supers back into the light."
He talks about his company and his dad.
He founded the company, loved stories about heroes, cowboy, supers.
And one night, he was shot by muggers.
That's all we say about that for now.
Maybe Evelyn can react a little to the story, but nothing big.
Winston says that he knows the mayor of Municiberg,
and the mayor is gonna look the other way while the supers fight crime.
And they can change the public perception of supers.
And then, big change:
"I'm sure you've heard of the Screenslaver that popped up a few months ago.
The mayor wants you to catch him."
So now, as long as The Incredibles stop Screenslaver, everything they do at the end of the day is a net positive,
since this Screenslaver would have just kept committing crimes whether the supers showed up or not,
demonstrating their value.
So then you might ask if the Screenslaver isn't motivated by a hatred of supers, what is the Screenslaver's deal?
Well, the Screenslaver hates screens.
And I'm aware that the movie does take a swing at this motivation, mostly as a red herring,
mostly as a red herring but I want to do that motivation for real.
That's the entire character.
Supers will factor into the equation eventually,
but from the beginning of the movie to the end, Screenslaver's goal
is to erode people's trust in screens by using screens to hypnotize people and cause disasters.
We'll get to "why" later.
So the rest of the movie goes the same way for a while,
but now the dynamic between the Dever siblings is different.
Winston is trying to help Elastigirl stop the Screenslaver,
but Evelyn, secretly as the Screenslaver, is genuinely trying to cause disasters.
She isn't setting up scenarios to show off Helen.
I understand what Incredibles 2 was going for with Evelyn's plan, but it doesn't make sense.
Supers were already illegal, so Evelyn was setting up scenarios to make Helen look good,
so that when the supers turned evil supers would be...double illegal?
You need to jump through some pretty silly hoops for that to not only make sense,
but be the best version of that plan that a smart person would come up with.
Like Evelyn is trying to make supers look bad, right?
Why not set up the magnet train incident in a way that makes it look like Helen made it worse,
Like the Underminer incident?
It would be a very different movie, but when the villains plan is as convoluted as Evelyn's is,
it makes the rest of the plot a lot harder to buy into.
So, this Evelyn isn't creating scenarios to make Helen look good,
she's trying her best to cause a magnet train crash, but Helen is foiling her plans.
So then, how does Winston know where to send Helen if Evelyn isn't setting up these scenarios?
We could chalk that up to theatricality.
Yeah, Screenslaver could just have a train crash and then afterwards say "it was me, the Screenslaver,"
but Screenslaver knows it's way more impactful if people see the train crash live on TV.
So, that set up puts Helen in a position to stop all of the Screenslaver incidents
and there really isn't much Evelyn can do about it.
And maybe, as more of these events start happening, people do become fearful of screens.
And maybe Winston, and Evelyn faking it, are frustrated because DevTech sells TVs or ads on TVs,
or something and no one is watching, causing DevTech to lose money.
So we're setting up a selfish reason that can throw you off the Dever scent.
Why would they be the Screenslaver if the Screenslaver's actions are causing them to lose money?
It must be someone else, or if it is them there must be something else going on we don't know yet.
This could even drive you further into the "Winston is doing this by himself" camp.
Winston loves supers so much that he's willing to bankrupt the company to bring 'em back.
So the rest of the plots pretty much the same.
I would maybe cut the scene where the new heroes are introduced to the world.
We can meet them, but I think for other reasons, it might be more useful to keep them secret to the public.
But then Helen has that realization, goes to examine the footage, Evelyn's hypnotizes Helen.
We learned that Evelyn is the Screenslaver, Evelyn freezes Helen, and then we get the speech.
But it's different.
Helen says, "Why would you do this?"
Evelyn says, "That story Winston told you about our Father? He left some things out."
We were at home in the middle of the night. Mom woke Winston and I up."
She said some men were trying to break into our house. We had a panic room on the first floor."
All we needed to do was run down the stairs into the panic room and we'd be fine."
But Dad had a different idea. See Dad started DevTech a long time ago by writing those radio serials."
Cowboys saving the day, damsels in distress, you remember. Simple. Kid stuff."
But Dad didn't just write those stories, he loved them. We listened to 'em all the time,"
gathered around the radio as a family like everybody did back then, it was nice."
But that night, Dad decided that he was gonna be the hero, he was gonna stop those robbers by himself."
My mom pleaded come with us to the panic room, but Dad didn't listen."
He'd been brainwashed into thinking he was some cowboy and they shot him and he died, for nothing."
Because he couldn't separate reality from fiction."
Winston grew up wanting to continue Dad's legacy, more stories about heroes."
And now, Winston's putting that stuff on TVs in every house in the world."
Because he wants heroes back, like he wants his Dad back, and everyone is gonna grow up just like him."
Dumb, childish, not able to live in the real world, thinking he's a cowboy."
(Nando-as-Elastigirl:) "But heroes have been around forever."
(Nando-as-Evelyn:) "Yeah, but not like this. It used to be just books, you had to be old enough to read."
And then you had the radio, but even with that you needed to be able to imagine."
But now, with these screens, every kid on Earth can see this stuff."
And they never grow up, never learn what the real world's like. So I'm gonna make sure they never look at another screen again."
And then maybe more kids won't grow up fatherless because their dad thought he was a cowboy."
So that's the big idea of this movie.
Incredibles 1 was very subversive for its time:
there were barely any superhero movies, so the idea of a superhero movie
where the superheroes were already outlawed
and the villain was a fan of superheroes who wants to replace them and live out his superhero fantasy,
was a pretty revolutionary premise.
But now, 14 years later, every single imaginable superhero movie plot has been done.
They've been disillusioned, split up, vaporized.
It's difficult to come up with something as new and interesting as the original Incredibles was at its time.
However, it there is an idea that I believe might be worth exploring,
and it's a conversation that every superhero movie fan has been a part of at one point or another.
Are superhero movies good for society?
I have heard so many versions of the same argument over the years.
"Superhero movies infantilize adults."
"They let them live in a fantasy world that prevents moral maturity."
"All these superhero movies are making the kids dumb and making the adults kids."
So, let's have that be the Screenslaver's main argument.
Evelyn believes that her father was brainwashed by the cowboy radio serials into thinking he was a cowboy.
He couldn't do the sensible thing and get in the safe room; he had to do the childish thing.
And this is a departure from Evelyn's motivation in the movie, but not really from her character.
in the Screenslaver monologue, Evelyn says that she believes TVs and heroes make people weak.
They don't want to do things by themselves anymore.
And this sentiment is echoed by Bob, Helen, and Lucius under mind control when the supers take over the hydrofoil.
But that motivation is still rooted in the same ideology:
Evelyn wanted her dad to do what she believed was the smart thing: go to the safe room.
And in the original movie Evelyn is 100% right. Her dad is a moron.
First, the movie doesn't give us a compelling reason why he couldn't go to the safe room.
Second, he knows that the heroes are outlawed at that point, right?
Like he's their biggest fan, shouldn't we know they won't answer?
And then, third, he two he calls are Fironic and Gazerbeam,
who are essentially the Cyclops and Pyro of that universe.
Unless they live next door, there really isn't much they can do to help with the mugging
that's going on at that moment.
And this dumb origin is a problem because it makes Evelyn's motivation boring.
Instead of a real moral dilemma, Evelyn's dad did a dumb thing.
So her argument that takes it to the extreme is pretty weak
Yeah, supers solve problems for people but better supers wouldn't have saved her dad.
And if there weren't supers, he probably would have just called the cops,
who also wouldn't have been able to save him.
Her dad was just an idiot in that moment,
and, in Evelyn's mind, her plan shouldn't create a world where he would have been safe.
If anything movie!Evelyn should have wanted her dad to fight the muggers,
since that's what she wants for the world.
She wants people to solve their own problems. So hypothetically that's her ideal scenario.
But this new motivation works differently.
If Evelyn believes her father's problem was that he couldn't separate fiction from reality
then Evelyn's plan could hypothetically solved that problem.
No screens, no TVs.
No TVs, less people living in a fantasy world.
And like I said, this changes her motivation and plan,
but it gels with the Evelyn created in Incredible 2.
She's a realist.
Evelyn believes her dad should have done the practical thing,
just in this case her dad's decision kind of makes sense.
And then later in the movie, we get to have a confrontation between Winston and Evelyn,
where Winston can make the case for superhero movies.
Evelyn will capture Winston so he doesn't interfere with her endgame,
And he can explain to her that she doesn't understand what their father really did
(Nando-as-Winston:) "Oh, you don't get it. Dad was trying to protect us."
He thought the safe room was our best bet,"
but he wasn't sure we were gonna be able to make it before the robbers got in."
So dad fought the robbers to buy his time. He knew he wasn't going to stop them."
Dad just wanted to make sure we were safe."
(Nando-as-Evelyn:) "That's not true. Those stories warped his mind."
(Nando-as-Winston:) "You never did get them, it's a shame."
Stories about heroes aren't about beating up bad guys."
They're about sacrifice and doing what's right. Those stories make people believe they can be better."
They give us strength to do the hard thing, even if that means losing everything."
Gives people the courage to die so that they can save the people they love."
Dad gave his life to protect us. He didn't think he was a hero, he was one."
And you still can be. You just need to let them go and we can fix this together."
(Nando-as-Nando) And that will be the moment that Evelyn gives up,
turns good and deactivates the supers' mind-control goggles,
completing her character arc and explaining why superhero movies are important,
and why they have become the dominant genre of our generation.
But wait! You're saying, "deactivates the mind-control goggles? That's not how the original finale works?"
The Incredibles get the glasses off the other heroes, the big challenge is stopping the hydrofoil.
Well, I think that was a mistake too.
I don't think the hydrofoil finale was the most effective way to end the movie.
And I'll explain how I would change that in Part 2 of this series, "Fixing the Finale."
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