[SPOILER TALK] Incredibles 2 - How I Would Have Handled Screenslaver

Just for fun, I started thinking of how I would have handled Screenslaver in Incredibles 2. This is just a fun thought-experiment, because I felt there was more potential to this villain than we wound up seeing. I'm nowhere near as good a storyteller as Brad Bird is, so take everything I say with a grain of salt.

Mostly I just really like playing around with villains, and this is a thinly veiled excuse for me to do so, disguised as some sort of critique.

Also, as the title suggests, spoilers ahead. Don't read this if you haven't seen the movie and don't want some twists spoiled for you.

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Are they gone?

Okay, we can continue.

How They Did It

Now, The Incredibles 2 does some fun stuff with Screenslaver, but I felt like they could have done more if they went in a slightly different direction.

In the movie, Screenslaver hypnotizes people through screens, and even has a pair of goggles that can hypnotize people, so long as the goggles are on. If the screens or the goggles are broken, then Screenslaver's control is broken.

Secretly, Screenslaver is a hypnotized pizza delivery guy, being controlled by Evelyn Deavor (she literally has Evil Endeavor in her name, by the way, which as foreshadowing goes is just shy of putting up neon signs) for the purpose of making the supers illegal forever. She wants to destroy Supers because her father was killed, though he relied on Supers coming to save him.

How I Would Have Done It

Depending on what you want, you could have Evelyn or Winston turn out to be Screenslaver in my version. Personally, I'd like Winston to be the face, because that's what he does, and Evelyn to be the support, effectively making them both Screenslaver. Like the Parr family plotline revolving around how they're stronger together, you could have Winston and Evelyn be a powerful villain, but only when they're working in concert. Their motives are aligned, and neither of them can truly be effective without the other. Winston is enough of a geek to know the weak points of various heroes, and also understands human psychology well enough to be able to sell them on anything, while Evelyn is the mind behind all the tech.

Hypnotism still works through screens and goggles, providing an instant override of another person's mind. However, hypnotism works more like it does in real life, where responses and behaviors can be programmed into a person's mind, even after the hypnotism has concluded. Breaking the glasses and the screens disrupts direct control, but programmed responses still remain.

Why this change? One, it means that the problem of hypnotism isn't easily resolved. Two, it works into this new Screenslaver's master plan.

See, bitterness against superheroes is kind of bland, I think. We've already basically seen that done much more thoroughly in Captain America: Civil War. So part of my idea is a villain overhaul, an overhaul that will, hopefully, tie all the plot threads of The Incredibles 2 together in a much more satisfying way.

I'd write Screenslaver's motives as being to make sure Supers succeed. Not to take their place or supplant them like Syndrome wanted, but to make sure all Supers everywhere succeeded, became popular, became...well, marketable. With screen-based hypnotism, and a very public face of villainy, the Deavor siblings could effectively generate their own conflicts, creating the threats and then dispatching heroes to deal with those threats, all while serving as the main advocates for the supers, the only ones willing to give them a break when no one else would. A lot of power and influence would come with that. But on top of it, it gives the supers brand recognition.

The main thing we're told about Winston is that he can sell just about anything. Whatever he gets his hands on, he markets. Later in the movie, we see the Incredibile (really should have been Incredicar, just saying) in some rich guy's living room. Bob gets really upset, noting that he was told the car was destroyed, but this guy was able to buy it anyway. As it is, this is mainly used as comic relief, as well as a way to get the kids out of a messy situation later. The car is little more than a plot device.

But what if the car was on the market for a reason? What if Bob being told the car was beyond all repair actually had bearing on the plot? What if this reveal leads to someone (say Dash, he needs more to do) discovering that superhero paraphernalia is being auctioned off at insane prices. In the wake of Supers being declared illegal years before, surely all those devices and vehicles and gadgets wouldn't have been something people wanted to keep around. So Winston was able to snatch them up for pennies. Maybe he believed that Supers would come back on their own, but now he's realized he needs to take a little initiative. In the wake of Syndrome's attack, the time is perfect for Supers to make a comeback.

Whereas Syndrome did what he did for status and revenge, and Evelyn in the movie did things out of bitterness, this new Screenslaver does everything for gain, for profit, effectively, for merchandising.

This would put the Incredibles into conflict with someone who, effectively, is trying to use Supers for financial gain, effectively generating superpowered battles for popularity, merchandise, maybe even good TV somewhere down the line. Rather than someone who is trying to destroy what the Incredibles stand for, you have someone who is trying to give them everything they want, pre-packaged, but working with them would potentially corrupt the very idea of superheroes.

If behaviors programmed into people during hypnosis stick around, then they can effectively use TV coverage of heroes to program their audiences into buying more merchandise, maybe even program troublesome supers into going along with it. Effectively, it makes Screenslaver less about destruction and more about gaming the market. Less about a somewhat transparent "let's discredit heroes by having them robotically state their intention to turn evil while wearing these mysterious goggles that are identical to the ones on the supervillain that controls minds" plot, and more about manipulation, subtlety, ruthlessness.

I feel like that kind of villain could have been truly interesting, if done correctly. And when the Incredibles start to unravel Screenslaver's plot, the screens could then be used to turn everyone against them. Not just the people wearing the goggles or watching the videos at that moment, but everyone.

This would grant the Incredibles a chance to choose:

Go along with Screenslaver's plan, amass fame and fortune, be beloved by everyone...

Or be hated and hunted by the very people you're trying to protect, all in the name of doing what's right.

There's a line that Rick Dicker says early in the movie. "People in power don't understand people like you, people that do good just because it's the right thing to do." This line could have come back, even been the driving theme of the movie. The Incredibles would have to deal with real consequences for their actions, they'd have a choice to be heroes, or to become a part of the evil plan, and see exactly what the consequences of that choice would be. Effectively, they'd have a chance to prove that they're the sort of people who do good, simply because it's right. It doesn't gain them anything. In theory, they could lose everything they have. The fancy house Winston gave them, the cushy life, the adoration of the public, the middle-class existence they've grown used to...they could lose all of it. But they choose to do what's right anyway.

And Winston and Evelyn Deavor are powerful people. They could very well think that Supers are just trying to get ahead. Towards the beginning of the movie, they're effectively able to buy Mr. Incredible, Elastigirl, and Frozone. The only real weakness Screenslaver would have in this version, is what Agent Dicker said.

Not everyone is in it for the reward or the money. Some people do good solely because it's the right thing to do. That's not something Screenslaver would understand.

Anyway, that's just me playing around with the concept of Screenslaver. What do y'all think? How would you guys handle a villain like that, given the chance?

Incredibles 2 - The Middle of the High Road

Pixar has an uneven track record when it comes to sequels. Sure, you've got gems like Toy Story 2 and 3, movies that are arguably better than the original in a lot of ways, while still expanding on the same formula. But you've also got Monsters University, a pretty fun movie that really didn't need to exist, and Finding Dory, a...less fun movie that needed to exist even less. And let's not even discuss Cars 2, a spy/action movie with race cars that somehow managed to have exactly one entertaining scene. Add to this the fact that Pixar's quality of late has been equally uneven (full disclosure: I heard Coco was good, but have yet to see it...it's on my Netflix list, okay?). For every Inside Out, it seems like we get at least one Good Dinosaur.

So where does Incredibles 2 fall on that spectrum?

Kind of...in the middle, actually. It's way better as a movie than Finding Dory, and it's a million times more fun than Cars 2 could ever hope to be, but it doesn't quite manage to replicate what the Toy Story sequels pulled off.

To really give a good idea of what's going on here, I'm going to break this review down into some sections.

The Good

Same Formula, New Story

A good sequel either expands on the original (effectively doing more of the same, but enhancing each aspect) or continues the story (think The Two Towers). This movie effectively does both. You can tell that, in many ways, it's a beat-for-beat retread of the first one, but it tackles just about everything from a different angle. 

For example, Elastigirl's story is basically what Mr. Incredible's was from the first movie (minus the fat jokes, obviously), starting with a wealthy benefactor (composed of a male-female partnership) that pays for just about all their needs while giving them a chance to cut loose and be heroes even though society doesn't understand them. There's a couple switchups in there, namely the volcano being swapped out for a skyscraper, but the premise remains just about the same. Meanwhile Mr. Incredible is dealing with the kids at home. The just power through it brand of problem solving that Bob had in the first movie is applied to entirely different situations in this one. Instead of figuring out how to take out a killer robot, or working out how to hide his hero work from his wife, he's trying to wrap his head around Dash's math homework and Violet's relationship problems. Just like in the first movie, Bob initially gets thrown off-balance, but eventually manages to work out a solution. 

It makes things feel very familiar, but not stale.

Fun, Creative Action

There's a lot of creative action in this movie, even when you're not in a fight scene, that really helps make the movie feel fun. Jack-Jack's craziness is played up mostly for laughs, especially against a poor raccoon that he mistakes for a movie criminal. Elastigirl uses her ability to stretch in about a million different cool ways over the course of about five minutes. Edna is both over-the-top and hilarious as always. Violet has a pretty awesome fight scene where she manages to use her force fields in new, impressive ways.

Humor with Heart

Just about every crazy thing that happened in this movie garnered a laugh in my theater, almost immediately followed by an audible "aw". Bob's struggles (helping his kids, feeling useless, resentment) are relatable as always. Edna has some surprisingly sweet moments. Basically everything that made the humor work in the first movie comes back again.

The Visuals

Need I say more? It's a Pixar movie. The visuals are gorgeous. The backgrounds are just about photorealistic. And even though you can tell they had difficulty finding the line on a few characters (*cough* Brick and Reflux), they do a really good job of staying just out of the Uncanny Valley.

These two can sometimes look a bit weird,
depending on the shot...

I think it's more a problem of balance with these guys though. Balancing cartoony designs with realistic textures is hard work, after all, so I don't really hold that against them.

The Family

Especially towards the end of the movie, just about every scene with Bob and the kids is great. Bob and Helen still fight, but it's more because they're pushed into a corner. When push comes to shove, both of them are actually really supportive of one another. Dash and Violet still bicker, but their development from the last movie carries over. Bob might resent Elastigirl getting to go out and be a hero instead of him, but he still supports her 100%, while doing everything he can to help his family succeed.

The Bad

Okay, the bad stuff here isn't that bad. This movie's one of those "just a few steps shy of being great" situations. As a result, these points will be nitpicky.

The Threat

The first Incredibles did a great job of establishing Syndrome, and his plan, as a very real threat to the Parr family. We see the giant robot fight Mr. Incredible twice, both times it nearly kills him, and we see how obviously it's been improved between iterations. We see that Syndrome, despite his lack of powers, can hold his own against the Incredibles through his gadgets (rocket boots to stay out of range, zero-point energy gauntlets to immobilize them, etc). On top of that, Syndrome clearly has an organization at his back, which means that he can effectively be an omnipresent threat in the second half of the movie. We also know exactly what his plan is and where it's headed. And, on top of that, he clearly has a bunch of backup plans and contingencies, in case things go wrong. If the heroes get  a hit in on the robot, it learns; if robot goes wild, he has the gauntlet (which, granted, doesn't work because the robot learns, but still); if the robot gets beaten, he can go after Jack-Jack. Until Syndrome is dead, he remains a constant threat.

The threat in the sequel is a bit...well, less. Not to spoil anything, but Screenslaver's master plan is an okay one, but once things start going wrong, the villain clearly has no ability to adjust to it. So once the Incredibles start doing their thing, there isn't much Screenslaver can do to stop them. 

There are some henchmen involved, and they're established as a credible threat, but they get removed from the board very quickly and, above all, very easily.

Just about everything Screenslaver does to take on the heroes has a fairly quick and easy solution, and is always resolved quickly and easily. At least in the climax. It's basically the Batman: The Animated Series problem. The villain only has the one trick. Once you work out what it is and how to counter it, the villain doesn't have anything else to fall back on and quickly becomes a pushover. 

Again, I don't want to spoil too much here, because it's still a good movie and you should see it, but if you thought the "cognitive recalibration...I hit you really hard in the head" solution was too quick and easy in Avengers, well, you ain't seen nothing yet.

On top of all that, most of the intense scenes lack that special flare that Bird's action scenes are so great at: making a powerful and capable hero look out of control and vulnerable. Look at how out-of-control Ethan Hunt is, and how narrow all his victories seem to be. He has to work hard, incredibly hard, against impossible odds, to pull out a close win. With how short the action scenes are, and how easily things get resolved here, Incredibles 2 can't quite replicate that. The heroes rarely seem like they're on the back foot. And, if they are, it's over very quickly.

Screenslaver's Plan

"From now on we'll call it the wedding plan, the evil plot,
and the color scheme. Got it?"

Screenslaver's plan also has the problem of being much more elaborate than it needs to be. When we finally are told what Screenslaver is really after, I mostly sat back, frowned, and said, "Yeah, but you could have gotten that much easier, right? You didn't need to do all this." It works for Syndrome, because he's characterized as a little kid, intentionally creating a melodramatic, elaborate villain plan because that's what villains do, and he gets to foil it anyway. Here, this is Screenslaver's actual plan.

The Climax

With a sort of lackluster threat comes a lackluster climax. Screenslaver's plan falls apart very quickly, resulting in the typical villainous act of spite. However, while Syndrome's act of spite was to kidnap Jack-Jack and taunt the Incredibles about it, Screenslaver's...well, probably would have done minimal damage to begin with. I'm pretty sure the Underminer accidentally does more damage to the city than this would have done. 

It's also a fair bit too short. While the first movie's climax begins with the robot landing in the city and the Incredibles escaping, and escalates continuously from there, the second movie's climax takes a while to get going. Once it does get going, it looks intimidating for a while before immediately falling apart, gradually bleeding tension until the problem is totally solved.

The Boys

While Violet and Elastigirl get a lot of moments to show off how cool their powers are in fun fight scenes (all of which are too short), the boys...don't really get to do much. They get some of the best character scenes in the movie, but when it comes time to start fighting, both Mr. Incredible and Dash wind up being a little bit useless.

Which is weird, because the two of them are incredibly (see what I did there?) powerful. Dash had pretty much the highest bodycount in the first movie, even when he was just running away, while Mr. Incredible was capable of stopping a train with his bare hands. For this movie though, they don't really contribute much.

Part of it seems to be that they were both depowered a bit (maybe to make the girls stand out more). There's a scene near the beginning when Bob seems to be a lot less strong than he was in the last movie. Where he was casually exercising with freight cars before, now he has trouble bending a rudder, breaking a set of treads, or ripping out a boiler. Where Dash was outrunning cars and those cool spinning-blade-vehicles in the first movie, here he just seems to run...slightly faster than an average human.

Given that both of them have plotlines revolving around how they feel useless for not being able to use their powers (Dash) or be out doing hero work (Bob), it's weird that the movie doesn't give them any real payoff or catharsis by finally giving them a chance to be epic. 

On the one hand, this might be an attempt to balance things out after the girls getting less screen time in the last movie. But it's interesting, because the girls still got a fair amount of chances to show off their powers, which Bob and Dash never really get here.

Incredibles 2, Not Featuring The Incredibles

Part of the fun of any superhero team movie (and The Incredibles in particular) is seeing each hero be cool on their own, with the promise of all of them being even cooler when they finally team up at the end of the movie. The Avengers and its sequels revel in this. Each one starts with the heroes spread out, fighting amongst themselves, trying to handle things on their own, but by the climax just about everyone is together, fighting side-by-side in perfect sync, resulting in some very famous "money shots".

The first Incredibles movie has a couple moments like this. Moments where they set all their bickering aside and become a team. A team capable of amazing things (no, you don't get two Incredible puns in the same review), coming together as the theme song swells and the bad guys change into their brown pants.

The second movie...it kind of gets there, but not quite. Aside from the fight against the Underminer at the very beginning, the Incredibles don't really work much as a team. You get little moments of Elastigirl holding a dude while Bob punches him, or Violet shielding Dash from an enemy attack, but we don't really get any moments when the whole family is working and fighting together. Which, given that the team up is the whole point of a team superhero movie, seems like a shame.

The Indifferent

Jack-Jack

Jack-Jack got a whole short to himself, and it was one of the best things on the Incredibles DVD, so you might think that, when I say, "Jack-Jack gets significantly more screen time than he did in Jack-Jack Attack" that it would be a good thing. In some ways it is. Jack-Jack's scenes are some of the most fun in the movie.

But, in other ways, it's a weakness. 

Jack-Jack undercuts the sense of danger, especially towards the end, when his powers coincidentally solve a lot of problems. Earlier, they do a good job of making Jack-Jack a liability to his family, but that sort of goes away later.

He also soaks up a lot of screen time. Which, given that part of the problem with this movie is that fight scenes are too short, problems are resolved too quickly, and Bob and Dash didn't get enough screen time...well, as fun as the time with Jack-Jack was, we didn't need that much. Others needed that screen time more. Some great moments might never have happened (because, once again, his scenes are really fun), but the movie as a whole would have been stronger.

The Villain

Screenslaver, unfortunately, is no Syndrome.

Minor spoilers ahead, just FYI.

A superhero movie that has an unpowered supervillain going against powerful heroes is a hard thing to manage. You have to somehow make a normal person seem dangerous to a superteam, and you have to do it convincingly. Again, Syndrome is an excellent example of this, as is Zemo from Civil War. They're both underpowered villains who make up for their lack of abilities through careful planning. The whole point is to prevent things from becoming a fist fight, because the heroes would easily win in that case.

Screenslaver, though, has things devolve into a fist fight a couple times. 

On top of that, Screenslaver's motivation doesn't have much to do with the Incredibles at all. Instead of going the Syndrome/Zemo route, where the villain's motivation and backstory are directly related to one or more of the heroes, Screenslaver's motivations are much more...general. Where Syndrome focused on Mr. Incredible because of the combination of hero-worship/resentment he had for him, Screenslaver targets Elastigirl largely because she's the one available. There isn't anything personal in their conflict. Not that there absolutely needs to be one in a superhero movie, but all the best ones have it anyway, and the Incredibles did that so well.

Also, as mentioned before, Screenslaver has exactly one gimmick, one trick, one weapon. That's it. Once they figure out how to counter it, which they do fairly easily, Screenslaver's plans are done.

Public Opinion

Part of the idea behind this series is that supers are illegal. Supposedly public opinion turned against them. We see this in the first movie a few times, even though the Incredibles are largely embraced when they save the day at the end of the movie. 

Here, at the beginning of the movie, certain events supposedly result in a backlash against supers that results in the Superhero Relocation Program getting shut down. The plan to counter that backlash is with bodycams. As Winston Deavor says, "People don't see the hard choices you have to make. They just see the destruction and they see you. We need to show them your side of the story so they can really understand what you do."

But outside of a couple cops at the very start of the movie, we don't see any real backlash against the heroes. Everyone seems pretty okay with Elastigirl riding around in costume, in public, on her Elasticycle. People wave to her and cheer her on, even before she does anything. But the dialogue tells us that public opinion is that supers are dangerous.

Why don't we really see that though?

Conclusion: The Tomorrowland Problem

Full disclosure, I like the movie Tomorrowland a lot. It's got issues, caused by either too many rewrites or too few, but you can see the real potential in each one of its ideas. It also was directed by Brad Bird, just like this movie is.

When walking out of the theater after watching Incredibles 2, I felt about the same way as I did after watching Tomorrowland. There are really good ideas here. Some really good scenes too. I enjoyed myself. I'd be comfortable with saying it's a good movie, despite its issues. 

But some aspects just needed a little more time to cook, or maybe they spent too much time revising and rewriting, resulting in a loss of focus. In either case, while most of Bird's movies are tight and focused (Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, The Incredibles, and Ratatouille, for example), Incredibles 2 seemed to get a little lost at points. 

That doesn't mean it's a bad movie, or that I didn't like it. I had fun. More fun, actually, than when I watched Tomorrowland. But when compared to Bird's previous films, it lacks just a little...something. The focus and themes and magic that made his older movies work so well. And, when compared to its predecessor in particular, it falls just a little bit short.

If Incredibles 2 had stood truly on its own, I might have a bit of a better opinion of it. As it is, I really like it (I've been humming the theme song all day, as well as the new themes for each character...Elastigirl's in particular), but I know Bird can do better. With a little more focus, by touching up its issues here and there, Bird could have made this sequel more than just a good movie. He could have made it incredible.

Okay, so I lied. One more pun.