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Letterboxd top four
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Compare? Contrast? Do I have bad taste?
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this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2026
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Here's a list of tons of leftist movies.
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Kill Bill and Charlie’s Angels are both fun, girl power romps, no complaints there.
Hereditary, never seen have no thoughts.
The Incredibles, though, that’s more problematic. The family togetherness and not letting people hold you back from your potential, those are good messages. However, explicitly presenting being a Super as something you’re either born with or your not, and no amount of effort by the untermensches can get them to Super level, that’s a bit fash. Especially combined with the message that collateral damage by Supers to society is always forgivable because they’re chasing Villains.
Brad Bird is an unironic Ayn Rand Objectivist, which is why his movies have this odd conflicting tone to them, despite him being a good director.
Which is odd, as in a Randian mode you’d expect a character like Syndrome to be lauded. He uses his intellect and drive to create technological marvels, doesn’t let society’s constraints on the proper way to test and develop them get in his way. He should be a Galt in that mindset, but instead we get a genetic determination that he must falter.
From my understanding of Objectivism, there are some special people who are inherently better than everyone else and people who weren't born that way can never achieve the same heights and will only ruin things. It often gets mixed up with bog standard Libertarian stuff, but it basically proposes a caste system for society. Granted I'm not an expert and I check pretty quick whenever I try to learn about that rot.
Yeah, but in Rand’s presentation those sort of lessers are depicted as droll, bureaucratic, married to standards and routine. So someone like Mr. Incredible’s boss at the start of the film. But Syndrome doesn’t fit that archetype, he’s clearly a technological savant looking to upend social norms.
Yeah, I feel like Bird is someone who was struggling with the limits of his own very narrow ideology a lot and was more into it as a sort of "anti-status quo-ism" rather than being the most hardcore Objectivist around. I don't really know though, and I'm psychoanalysing a guy I don't really know way too much.
It could be an examination of a sort of "you either have it or you don't" sort of thing, where Syndrome has skills and talents but isn't "super" and therefore should "stay in his lane" and not try to take over their role. But again, I'm really not sure. It does clearly treat this guy with super-human levels of engineering skills as not having a "super" power and therefore it is "wrong" for him to try and be a superhero.