this post was submitted on 09 May 2025
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To bring it here, since you pointed me at it, I don't see how Helen's line changes anything.
The movie never contradicts Bob, Dash OR Syndrome. Right after Syndrome brings back Dash's line there is no more debate. He just goes to enact his plan and the family goes to physically stop him, which ends with him getting exposed as a fraud and then killed. By his own incompetence, I might add. Because he's not meant to be special.
Likewise, in Dash's scene that's the end of the conversation.
If the movie was meant to reinforce that, actually, everybody IS special, they forgot to put it in the text.
And hey, I think Bird has conservative views on this front ("there's no school like the old school!"), but I don't think he's a bad writer. If he wanted Bob to learn his lesson he would have had him learn his lesson. He does explicitly learn he should not have lied to his family and that they work better as a unit (itself a heck of a conservative read on the thing), but not because "everybody is special". He wins THAT particular argument pretty spectacularly, both with Helen, who is fully back on his camp by the end, and with the government, who are also back on board with special people being special all by themselves, which apparently yields benefits for society at large, I'm being told.
Syndrome is special. He built himself rocket boots as a ten year old. I'm a grown adult and I can't do that! He doesn't get his ass beat by the Omnidroid due to a specialness deficiency. He gets his ass beat because he invented an AI specifically designed to learn how to fight supers, and then had it fight him. He did a bad thing and the bad thing hurt him. He got leopard face'd. "I didn't think leopards would eat MY face, says supervillain who trained leopards to eat faces." There's nobody in the movie who can solo the Omnidroid. Not Bob, not Frozone, not Syndrome. The Incredibles beat it with teamwork, love, and trust. Syndrome tells his teammate that love makes you weak and he can't be trusted.
The counter to Syndrome's argument is that power didn't make him a superhero. Syndrome says "Oh, I'm real. Real enough to defeat you! And I did it without your oh-so-special powers." Syndrome thinks being a "real hero" is about being strong. Selling his technology to rich people isn't going to turn everyone into a hero. Syndrome, and all other billionaires, are unheroic because of their awful personalities. Powers aren't what makes the difference.
You know who doesn't have powers and is awesome? Edna. Edna Mode is most certifiably, 100% special. And it's all in her personality.
Syndrome doesn't say he'll sell his gadgets to rich people, though. You added that in.
In fact, if he sold his gadgets only to rich people his statement that "when everyone is special, noone is" wouldn't make sense. I mean, you can guess that's how it'd play out in real life, but the movie never does anything to suggest that's the case.
It's the same with the interpretation that it's Syndrome who thinks superheroing is about strength. There's no indication of that. In fact, he says the exact opposite in his first appearance. Admittedly the way he says it seems to imply there are other operating superheroes with no natural powers, but the movie never confirms whether this is true or explicitly show any of them on screen.
And yes, he lost because of a "specialness deficiency". He clumsily loses the gear he has to control the robot and when he has to try to stop it legitimately he gets immediately knocked out. He then tries to kidnap Jack-Jack, gets immediately stomped on by Jack-Jack, has a car thrown at him he can't avoid and finally gets sucked into a jet engine because he's wearing a cape.
None of that is inconsistent the read we're giving you. I am torn on whether the movie thinks Syndrome is Bob's fault for being too arrogant to properly explain things to him or not, but that's because the movie sure seems unconcerned about addressing it.
Like the guy above said, Syndrome isn't flawed because he is an evil dick, he is an evil dick to justify his flaws. Because if the movie made Syndrome reasonable-but-frustrated and not a psychotic asshole he would not play as the villain. His position is tragic, but not unreasonable. Which is fine, it's a common choice, but it's one made when you don't have the time or disposition to engage with the villain's argument and need to discard it so you can focus on what you really care about (in this case how little, suburban middle class life stiffles the aspirations and creativity of a certain type of person) (that type of person is, I suspect, mostly Brad Bird).
This wasn't a rare narrative at the time. The Incredibles took a bit longer to get there, so it showed up post-9-11, but the late 90s are riddled with it. Fight Club, American Beauty, Office Space... it's practically a subgenre by itself that decade.
Jack Jack is the most powerful character in the movie, and he can be handled by a teenager with a fire extinguisher. Is Kari more special than Syndrome?
"Handled" is a way to put it. The running gag throughout the movie is she gets progressively more overwhelmed in the background while trying to reach out to the parents until they eventually come home to the fallout (and Syndrome finds out why the hard way).
Jack-Jack is the ultimate eff you to Syndrome. He tries to kidnap him and it's made VERY clear to the audience that normie Syndrome can't even stack up to a special people when they're a baby. Jack-Jack rescues himself.
I'd argue that he disproves your whole thing about the kids being special because they learn to listen to their parent because it's extremely obvious that Jack-Jack is strong from birth, not as a result of any lessons or upbringing.
But he's a bit of a punchline, no need to force the entire thing through his lens for it to say what it's saying.
The joke is on Syndrome, though. And it's still about how he can't fake his way to natural talent.
Kari had Jack Jack handled better than Syndrome. Why? Because she's a good babysitter. Babysitting is a more useful skill when looking after a baby than engineering. Syndrome is better at building gadgets, Kari is better at looking after a baby.
It's not an absolute idea of specialness or universal competence. Not the Randian idea of Prime Movers. What we see in this movie is that EVERYONE has useful skills. Even an awkward teenage girl in braces. Syndrome doesn't have the awkward teenage girl's skills, and it gets him killed. Even for all his intellect, money, and power, he doesn't have what she has. Everyone's special.
But... you are not saying everyone is special.
You are saying some people are. Fundamentally.
I mean, not to be too real, but superpowers aren't a thing, they stand in for other stuff in the movie. Talent, ambition, creativity, whatever. If you're going to push me into the dregs of hermeneutics I'd point out that the two "good guy" non-powered characters, Edna and Kari, are both women defined by providing a service to the talented ones. There is a very specific difference between them and the supes.
They may be special, but they're not... "special". And there are definitely people who are fundamentally not "special" who definitely benefit from what the special people do. In the movie, that is.
That is a very specific framing. If it's not Randian Prime Movers it's certainly adjacent to it. It's hard to watch that movie and come out of it not thinking there is a fundamental impetus in Bob and Dash specifically that drives them to doing something specific and great and makes them miserable if suppressed. Either the powers are presented as a metaphor for that or as a manifestation of that.
There's a specific impetus in 99% of little boys that makes them want to run a lot.
Yeah, but people don't make movies about that.
They do, however, sometimes notice that and use it to build an elaborate metaphor about family's place in society and the emasculative nature of suburban middle class life.
That happens to have some objectivist undertones sometimes.
Edna describes her work with supers as "designing for Gods". Again, this feeds into the underlying subtext through the film that some people are innately better than others, and should not be constrained in the same way normal people are.
She then goes on to describe how many of her "gods" were killed by their capes. The same thing that happened to Syndrome.