Hello Internet! Welcome to Film Theory.
The anti-hero of your childhood.
Shooting down your favorite movie franchises
and being a bigger try-hard than Syndrome himself.
Today, much like Pixar, we're going back to the
Incredibles. And, in case you missed our last episode on them,
make sure you check it our by using the 'i' icon in
the upper right hand corner of the screen. I got to say it has one of my favorite
titles on the channel. Which of the Incredibles
is THE MOST Incredible? (Disney Pixars's The Incredibles)
Man, way to ride those search terms, MatPat.
Anyway, it's an episode where we actually prove, based on physics
which Incredible is the most powerful. It's REALLY fun. I'll link to it
during the endscreen so you can watch it after this one. But today, we're not
calculating laser strength or Violet's power of
teen angst. No, today, we're laying down the law and testing out the Incredibles'
superpowers where they REALLY count:
The American legal system.
Now, wait, wait wait wait wait!
I see your eyes darting to the suggested video feed right now
because you're totally like, ugh
American legalese? I need to G to the FO and
watch more dank Star Wars memes. But you're gonna want to stick around for this one.
Because this theory literally changes
the entire Incredibles movie, based on what would actually happen
if heroes like the Incredibles existed in the real world. And, as a bonus,
you'll be that know-it-all in the room with your friends when you're watching the sequel.
So, if you thought a real-world analysis of Willy Wonka's
Chocolate Factory completely changed your perspective of that
childhood movie, well, get ready, because we're about to learn
what the government is actually doing to kill off our real-world
superheroes. Firstly, we need a quick recap based on where the
Incredibles started when it was released in the Paris Hilton-plastered
fever dream that was 2004. The movie starts
by showing us a flashback to the Golden Years when supers
roamed the streets stopping crime with reckless abandon. But all
of that comes to a screeching halt when one man jumps off a building.
Mr. Incredible, being the hero that he is, stops the suicide attempt,
but the man suffers a neck injury
in the process. This leads to a lawsuit,
and a wave of legal action against Supers,
holding them accountable for all the property damage
and injuries that happened as a result of their battles against villains. The ripple
effect from this lawsuit makes the government realize that Supers
are a huge liability. Anti-Super sentiment
reaches an all-time high, and the government actively decides
that they're better off with Supers working in
cubicles, rather than fighting crime. But is this
actually the way that this would play out? Legally,
could you just kill off superheroes by just suing them
out of existence? If you think about it, almost every superhero
franchise from the past ten years has tackled this in
some way or another. From the mutant phobias of X-Men, to the
collateral damage that kicks off Batman's quest against Superman,
or even the Sokovia Accords from Marvel's Avengers.
So, honestly, it's time to put this issue to bed.
To see just how Supers against their greatest
nemesis of all, the American justice system.
The first, big red flag in this situation is
the Good Samaritan Law; a law in the U.S. specifically designed to protect
people who are trying to save another person who is injured
or whose life is in danger. Basically, if you're trying to help,
you can't be sued later on. If you've ever taken a
CPR class, one of the scenarios that they always give you is that you just
come across someone who's unconscious. And you have to save them
without knowing anything about them, or even whether they need
saving. With Good Samaritan Laws, you know that as long as you're
honestly trying to help someone in danger, you don't have to worry about injuries you might cause them, like bruising their
ribs when giving them CPR, or mistaking someone who's unconscious
because they're injured for someone who's just sleeping off
last night's bachelor party face down in the street. Good Samaritan
Laws are based off the idea that when someone potentially only
has seconds to live, the last thing you want is for a bystander to
hesitate or not help because it might get them in trouble. And there are
plenty of examples where not having these laws in place
is really tragic. In one of the most famous examples
from China, back in 2006,
a man named Peng Yu encountered a woman who had fallen
and broken a bone in her leg. He helped her to a hospital,
but then she blamed him for her injury and then sued him!
The court even ruled in her favor, leading to the infamous Peng
Yu verdict, where an innocent man ended up punished for his own
good deed. The outcome of this case sent a very clear message to
other citizens in China: Don't help people who are in trouble.
One of the scariest ways that this played out was in
2011, when a toddler was the victim of a hit-and-run.
A tape of the incident showed that 18 people
walked past, and none stopped to help.
The girl died in a hospital 8 days later. A survey
of Chinese people at the time found that 71%
of people thought that the people who were passing by were doing so
because they were afraid of getting into trouble if anyone stopped to help.
So it seems that the opening premise of the
Incredibles woulld just fall apart, since
Mr. Incredible would be protected by Good Samaritan Laws in saving people.
But there are a couple wrinkles here that might
complicate things a bit. First, what about saving someone from themselves? I mean, if you saw me choking in the
middle of a restaurant, you can guess that I probably
want to finish that bowl of crispy wontons
I'm chowing down on and would be pretty grateful if you would swooped in
and saved my life with a Heimlich maneuver, but in the movie
the person who jumps off the building specifically intended
to die.
So, what happens now? Well, legally you're still in the right to
save them. According to a decision by the Supreme Court of Minnesota,
Quote:
End quote.
And this totally makes sense, especially the more we as a society understand that suicide
attempts often stem from mental illness that are out of people's control.
Meaning that with appropriate help, this person may not
have wanted to make such a final decision.
Because suicide is something you can never take back, it always makes
sense to err on the side of saving someone's life.
This means that if you restrain someone in a room when they announce that they're gonna jump off a
building, you aren't guilty of kidnapping. And if you
tackle them in the air to stop them from jumping off a bridge,
you're not guilty of assault. In short, there is no way that
anyone trying to prevent a suicide attempt could get sued
into hiding, including superheroes.
So those of you who secretly have gills and can breathe underwater,
or have some sort of super-sonic
farting ability, don't let this movie scare you away from saving us all.
If anything, let your crippling embarrassment from your awkward superpower
keep you in hiding, Fartboy. But...
wait. We're still missing huge piece here.
Play that clip again
In the movie, there's another crucial distinction:
The apartment jumper sues the government, not the
Super as an individual. This last twist is
where things get really interesting. In the movie, we're told that
the Supers received amnesty for their past actions
as part of their agreement to go into hiding.
"The government quietly initiated the Superhero Relocation Program.
"The Supers would be granted amnesty from responsibility for past actions
"in exchange for the promise to never again
"resume hero work." But in reality, Supers
aren't liable in the first place. See, the Supers Program
is a government program and falls under a
doctrine in the United States known as Qualified Immunity.
which protects states and private officials from getting sued
except in specific cases like discrimination, or when they
use unnecessary force. It's clear from the moments we see
the Supers working with the police that they are a kind of special branch
of law enforcement, kind of like the FBI. And they're
acting under similar principals as the police, prioritizing
civilian safety, taking every available action to prevent casualties,
and so on. So when the jumper sues the Supers,
he's basically suing a government agency,
or a branch of law enforcement. Which then begs the question, can you even
do that? In our modern society, we've pretty much taken for granted
that you can sue anyone. But for most of U.S. history,
you couldn't sue the government at all. Seems... fishy,
right? Especially given that the government gets involved in some kinda
questionable situations from time to time, everything from the bizzaro
conspiracies of MK Ultra to the very up-to-the-moment
protests around police discrimination. The law
that protects governments from suits is called
Sovereign immunity, and quite frankly, sounds like something you'd hear
coming from King George during the musical, 'Hamilton'. It basically
says that a sovereign state cannot commit a legal wrong
and has immunity both for civil lawsuits and criminal
prosecution. If that seems like the government's a little OP for you,
well, most of the U.S. agreed, and decided
back in 1946 to pass the Federal
Tort Claims Act, which made it possible to sue the government for
damages, negligence, and other governmental
wrongdoings. That doesn't mean that actually pulling off a lawsuit against
the government isn't INCREDIBLY difficult-- (no pun
intended--maybe pun kind of intended)-- even in situations we see
every day, like a car that gets damaged by police in a
high-speed chase, or a window that gets broken in a police shoot-out,
taking the government to task-- or, more specifically,
taking the government to court because of the collateral
damage-- is still super difficult and costly as a
regular citizen or small business.
In reality, suing a super for trying to save someone's life,
even if they destroyed private property along the way, it would be
almost impossible. So, there you go.
Based on the laws that exist, it seems like this is a pretty open-and-shut case.
You can't be sued for trying to help save someone, even in the case of suicide.
Government officials all have qualified immunity, and
it would be pretty impossible to show that supers are
violating the few laws that they can be sued over. In short,
you can't sue supers into hiding-- if the case
is brought to court today. But remember, this
didn't happen today. It happened during a flashback
at the beginning of the movie. A flashback that takes place
in 1947. You see, here's the
thing, friends: Laws evolve over time.
It turns out, a lot of the things I've mentioned in this video
are actually recent developments. Good Samaritan laws vary
by state, with some of the current Good Samaritan laws being
enacted as recently as 1996.
The Minnesota Supreme Court case that made it okay to save
someone trying to commit suicide? That was passed
in 1975. And Qualified Immunity Doctrine? 1971.
None of the laws that I talked
about today were on the books back in
1947, which is when the lawsuit against
Mr. Incredible takes place. "But wait!" I hear
an incredibly observant commenter writing right now. "Earlier, you mentioned that
Tort laws, the ones that let people sue the government,
passed in 1946!" And, yeah,
this is totally true. In what I think is an incredibly smart move on
Pixar's part, the Incredibles is set just
one year after the Tort Laws that allow everyone to
sue the government, but before all the laws that went in
to protect the supers. I mean, I love this movie already, but
the way that this
situation works out is so much smarter than any of us
could have ever realized. The original lawsuit against Mr. Incredible
happens in 1947, as soon as us
lawsuit-happy private citizens
can start suing the federal government, and
his suit serves as the first high-profile case of private citizens
suing the government for damages. At this point,
the government is totally unprepared for a suit like this
which may be happening in an area without enforceable Good Samaritan Laws
to an agency that isn't protected by Qualified Immunity.
The suit starts the ripple effect that the movie directly points to and the
government without any insurance against lawsuits like this
sees how much the Supers Program could end up costing them.
Their knee-jerk reaction is to shut down the program,
which never re-opens, even after the protecting laws
go in place decades later. Clearly, this timeline
isn't an accident on the part of Pixar, which completely
blows my mind based on how thoughtful and detailed it is.
It also goes to show how we take laws as being so iron-clad in life.
But they change so much that what we define as a crime now
may not be a crime at all in
fifty, or even twenty years. I am definitely not saying that you should go out and rob your nearest
Seven-Eleven in the hopes that by the time your case hits the court room,
theft is no longer a crime,
but it is a pretty cool reminder to look at the rules around you and
think a bit more critically about whether they should actually
be firm rules. And, hey, the best news of all, now that we have some decent laws in place, we could
revive the Supers Program! I think I qualify. MatPat:
Superpower: Mind-blowing theories and the ability to land himself
on every conceivable watchlist because he just taught everyone
that they could sue the government....that's not a good superpower. In the meantime!
Remember! That's just a theory.
A Film Theory!
Aaaaaand... you know, it must be nice to be
an Incredible. With your own set of special abilities you can show off
and impress your friends and family. Wait a minute!
Maybe you don't have to be a superhero to impress
your mom at all! Maybe all you need is the power of
Skillshare, our partner for today's episode.
An online learning community with thousands of
classes, ranging from design, business, game design,
technology, and more. Let's take a look.
Being an Incredible gives you special abilities! Well,
so does Skillshare! It has literally thousands of classes
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Being an Incredible means you get to wear a cool outfit,
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Eat your heart out, Edna Mode. And lastly,
being an Incredible makes you super famous!
...well, ok, Skillshare doesn't make you super famous, but but the first step
in whatever great things you're gonna do in your future start with the
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So check out Skillshare and start honing your
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But you have to act now; if you've ever done any of these
limited quantity giveaways here on the channel, you'll know that within
hours of this video going live those free passes are gone.
So take advantage of this opportunity,
click the link down below, or just type it into your URL bar:
But hey, if you miss out on those thousand free
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That's awesome! (and it's sure a heck of a lot
more affordable and practical than college) As for me, well,
up, up, and away!
Ow! I hit my head on the ceiling...