The villain saying "I want to make everyone Super, so that it's not just natural Supers that get to have powers" is absolutely an objectivist-adjacent plot. The fact that Syndrome also wants to murder (genocide?) Supers with his droids and "spend his life getting all his kicks from being the only (artificial) Super until he gets bored and then shares the tech with the public" is a classic example of attaching blatant evil to the ideology you want to villainize.

It's not the movie saying "if everyone's super, no one is", it's the movie saying "the dude who wants everyone to be super instead of only the genetic lottery winners is evil bad murder villain, look, we wrote him doing so much evil bad murder!"

Like, let's say you want to have themes of anti-environmentalism in your movie. What's your villain? Eco-terrorist that bombs coal power plants to stop them from polluting the earth. It's the oldest framing technique in the book, especially for all-ages media: just have the character that expresses the ideology you want to defeat also be a mean bad murder villain. Bonus points if you can somehow make the murder bad villain evil plan relate to the ideology in some superficial way.

Right, but the argument isn't that the characters are objectivist, it's that the movie is.

The thing with Syndrome is that the movie doesn't make him wanting to be a superhero a problem because he's bad at it or doing it for the wrong reasons, they do it because he's not superpowered. He seems genuinely keen on helping when he first shows up, in fact. He is just bad at it because his artifical replacements aren't as good at getting it done as natural ability.

Had the movie shown him to have superpowers then the read wouldn't hold, because it'd be his incompetence or his desire for fame and glory that makes him unsuitable, not his inherent characteristics.

But that's not the case. The family's kids are shown as being perfectly fine getting into superheroics. Unlike Syndrome, despite having no gear and never having practiced it much they are naturally talented at it. They're good at it and it's good for them. It helps them feel accomplished and get over their plain-normie anxieties because it's what they're meant to do.

You CAN make a non-objectivist take on The Incredibles and that's called The Fantastic Four. It's the version where the powers are the result of an accident, not a birthright, the non-powered bad guy is a monarch, who HAS a birthright but also a dictatorial position. Where the powers aren't always a self-realizing blessing and can be a curse and the leader can feel guilty for having forced them onto his family instead and vow to work to make them optional. And where the people with powers may be infatuated with each other, but also sometimes with a disabled artist because it's not about the powers or inherent characteristics.

Obviously Bird doesn't think his objectivism or exceptionalism or whatever you want to call it is an immoral or unethical stance. Obviously he thinks the full expression of your talent and the fame and fortune that should come with it are a result of you using your natural talent to help others and lift society up, normies included. Doesn't mean it's not saying what it's saying, though.

Oh, now you're stretching. Bob isn't "plus size" he's meant to look like a bodybuilder who let himself go (and gets back into shape once the societal restraints on his self-actualization are removed). The scenes where his environment is shown to be too small for his stature are a visual representation of "normal" life holding him back from his natural greatness, not a rendition of the struggles of plus sized people.

I mean, Dash and ADHD works better, but it has the same problem as Vi's anxiety in that he gets better by being himself and doing what he was meant to do and "being the best he can be", which is what he complains his mom is not letting him do. If you want to read the kids' powers as mental health issues actualized then I can't be on board with how the denouement's return to a modified normalcy presents their new situation. They didn't work to get adjusted, they didn't need help or therapy or support, just to be set free to self-actualize.

I don't think that's the idea, beyond the superficial (the kids' mental health is played as growing pains or inherent characteristics of childhood, if anything), but if it was it'd be more problematic than the alternative.

I also take issue with the idea that white suburban middle class is "a cultural image we're familiar with" and so suitable to serve as a projection of a minority allegory. I mean, no, white suburban middle class isn't default human. If you set out to make an allegory about middle class you don't come at it from that premise, that'd be... bad. Again, I think the objectivist read is actually less problematic there.

On that it again helps to look at similar media that DOES use superpowers as a minority allegory. Yeah, the X-Men work as a metaphor for that, and you do see it transposed to white middle class. X2's "Have you tried NOT being a mutant" scene comes to mind. But they are also presented on the run from authorities, living in the sewers, looking visibly different to non-mutants and being shunned on sight and in all sorts of other situations analogous to real world discrimination. The Incredibles does very much not. Suburban middle class life is stiffling in that very 90s way where it's fine but it's not the self-realization that special people like the Parrs were meant for, so it makes the men in particular feel restless and frustrated.

The Incredibles is a bit of an anti-Fight Club, now that I think of it. Which is weird to think about, but it fits. Both get interpreted backwards often, too.