Incredibles 2 What Does Your Sign Say

This is based on opinion. Please don't list it on a work's trope example list.

• The opening scene is pretty horrifying. Starting off immediately where the first film left off, we see the Underminer's attack from the perspective of the civilians—specifically Tony. By showing it from the perspective of someone without powers, you feel the same fear that normal humans have in this world towards supers along with the chaos that they and villains cause.
• The Deavor robbery flashback is a combination of this, Tear Jerker, and Adult Fear. While Winston and Evelyn's father is desperately trying to call for help, one of the robbers pulls out a revolver and shoots him. While we don't see his death, what we do see isn't much better. There's a briefly closeup of Mr. Deavor's eyes filled with horror just before the trigger is pulled and the flashback fades out. While Pixar films have always touched on Adult Fear, horror beyond this level is unsettling.
• The film's Big Bad is the Screenslaver, and their shtick is a Mind-Control Conspiracy which includes hijacking airwaves, hypnotizing everybody unlucky enough to have been watching at that moment. They speak in a Voice of the Legion, and they're often accompanied by at least one screen displaying rapidly-flashing hypnotic patterns. It's first demonstrated during the second trailer right after the movie's logo glitches and switches to them.
  • Paranoia Fuel kicks in when you realize no matter what you're doing with a screen, the Screenslaver could cut in at any moment.
  • Their costume is also incredibly creepy. The round glowing eyes and toothlike voice modulator are uncomfortably reminiscent of a skull, moving it firmly into Uncanny Valley territory.
  • Their first act is to hijack a maglev train full of passengers on its maiden trip by hypnotizing its conductor—who can be seen with a lifeless, catatonic look on his face. After Helen saves the train, the Screenslaver introduces themselves to her through a message they leave on the conductor's monitor:

    Welcome back, Elastigirl

    -The Screenslaver

  • Their next move is to strike during a televised interview where Elastigirl is a guest. Through the hypnotized anchorman, the Screenslaver brags about their plan to hijack Ambassador Henrietta Selick's helicopter fleet. She destroys the monitors in Henrietta's helicopter before its pilots can be hypnotized into doing anything else, so the Screenslaver has the other hijacked helicopter ram into their target's several times.
  • Perhaps the most chilling scene of the film comes with the implication that the Screenslaver hypnotized a female child and her parents into attending a rally in support of Elastigirl, with the girl holding a sign that reads "Screenslaver is STILL out there". This deflates Elastigirl's previous victories over the villain and underlines how unsafe people are with the Screenslaver still at large.
  • After Helen manages to draw them out using a broadcast, the Screenslaver delivers a very ominous breaking speech to the public while Helen takes the opportunity to track them to their apartment. During the speech, everything else in the movie goes silent as though they have some level of control over the movie itself.

    "The Screenslaver interrupts this program for an important announcement. Don't bother watching the rest. Elastigirl doesn't save the day. She only postpones her defeat. And while she postpones her defeat, you eat chips and watch her confront problems that you are too lazy to deal with. Superheroes are part of your brainless desire to replace true experience with simulation. You don't talk; you watch talk shows. You don't play games; you watch game shows. Travel, relationships, risk. Every meaningful experience must be packaged and delivered to you to watch at a distance... so that you can remain ever-sheltered, ever-passive, ever-ravenous consumers who can't bring themselves to rise from their couches, break a sweat, and participate in life. You want superheroes to protect you, and make yourselves ever more powerless in the process. Well, you tell yourselves you're being "looked after." That your interests are being served, and your rights are being upheld. So that the system can keep stealing from you, smiling at you all the while. Go ahead—send your supers to stop me. Grab your snacks, watch your screens, and see what happens. You are no longer in control. I am."

  • When Elastigirl locates their apartment and uses her power to reach under the door in order to unlock it, pay close attention to the left of the screen; the Screenslaver is standing RIGHT THERE, hidden in the shadows, watching her unlock it.
  • The apartment itself is a musty room full of hypnosis paraphernalia—including diagrams of eyes and the brain alongside lenses and glass eyeballs. Helen also finds evidence of their planned attacks such as a photo of Ambassador Selick. One antique hypnosis device activates and makes a loud clock noise, but while it doesn't do anything to hypnotize Helen, it's still very creepy. When Helen finally reaches the end of the apartment, she enters a chain box with their desk inside. She uncovers a mannequin head wearing a pair of goggles when...
  • Immediately following the above moment, the Screenslaver ambushes her by activating their signature hypno-screens across the entire chain box room. Helen only avoids being hypnotized by keeping her eyes shut, forcing her to fight blind. They attack Elastigirl with a taser weapon that is visibly excruciating to her, leaving every part of her body they tase momentarily limp and still elongated. They also have at her with an axe. Once they flee, Elastigirl is limping as she tries to pursue. Their fight really saw her get beat up rather brutally, and it's something that may not have been expected in a Disney CGI animated film.
  • The hypnotic patterns' strobe effect is quite unnerving. It actually caused several viewers of the film to suffer epileptic seizures for a few days before word got out and theaters started putting up warning signs about it. Even if you don't have epilepsy, it's very disorienting and can cause mild headaches.
• The Screenslaver's true identity is Evelyn Deavor, who hates superheroes and has been plotting against them ever since her father was gunned down during a robbery. She blames supers because he tried to call his super friends instead of going to his house's safe room, unaware they had to go underground because of the Super Relocation Act. Seeing as how The Power of Hate has fueled many other villains before her, it's pretty hard not to at least give her some sympathy points.
  • As for the decoy Screenslaver, he's a pizza guy who was hypnotized into being The Scapegoat by a pair of goggles Helen finds inside the Screenslaver's mask. Evelyn shoves those goggles onto Helen's face right as she realizes the truth. Even if you saw The Reveal a mile away, the Wham Shot, the sharp high note, and the distantly cold glare she gives Helen will catch you off guard.
  • When Helen comes to, she finds herself strapped to a chair inside a cold server room. Watching her from behind a glass wall, Evelyn reveals her true colors—talking casually while slowly descending into outright rage and explaining her desire to illegalize supers permanently. Helen's also still wearing the goggles, which Evelyn can activate and deactivate at will.

    Evelyn: I would resist the temptation to stretch. The temperature around you is well below freezing. Try to stretch, and... you'll break.
    Elastigirl: So you're the Screenslaver.
    Evelyn: Yes... and no. Let's say I created the character and... prerecorded the messages.
    Elastigirl: Does Winston know?
    Evelyn: (scoffs) That I'm the Screenslaver? Of course not! Can you imagine what Mr. Free Enterprise would do with my hypnosis technology?
    Elastigirl: Worse than what you're doing?
    Evelyn: Hey, I'm using the technology to destroy people's trust in it... like I'm using superheroes!
    Elastigirl: Who did I put in jail?
    Evelyn: Pizza delivery guy. Seemed the right height and build. He gave you a pretty good fight! I should say, I gave you a good fight through him!
    Elastigirl: But it doesn't bother you that an innocent man is in jail?
    Evelyn: Eh, he was surly... and the pizza was cold.
    Elastigirl: I counted on you!
    Evelyn: That's why you failed.
    Elastigirl: What?
    Evelyn: Why would you count on me? Because I built you a bike? Because my brother knows the words to your theme song? We don't know each other!
    Elastigirl: But you can count on me anyway!
    Evelyn: I'm supposed to, aren't I? Because you have some strange abilities and a shiny costume, the rest of us are supposed to put our lives into your gloved hands. That's what my father believed! When our home was broken into, my mother wanted to hide. Begged my father to use the safe room, but Father insisted they call his "superhero friends." He died—pointlessly, stupidly—waiting for heroes to save the day.
    Elastigirl: But why would... your brother—
    Evelyn: IS A CHILD! He remembers the time when we had parents and superheroes! So, like a child, Winston conflates the two. Mommy and Daddy went away because supers went away! Our sweet parents were fools to put their lives in anybody else's hands! SUPERHEROES KEEP US WEAK!
    Elastigirl: Are you gonna kill me?
    Evelyn: Nah. (sits cross-legged on the floor) Using you is better. You're gonna help me make supers illegal... forever.
    (Evelyn presses a button on her remote, activating the goggles around Elastigirl's eyes and putting her under a blank hypnotic trance.)

    • There's something else rather deranged about Evelyn. For someone who was tragically orphaned as a child, she certainly has no qualms about doing the same thing to Dash, Jack-Jack, and Violet. She tried to set up Bob and Helen to die aboard the Everjust when it crashed into Municiberg. In addition, Lucius is implied to be the kids' godfather. This means she came close to robbing those kids of the three adults who care for them, and that's certainly a scary thought.
• Bob enters a darkened room aboard the Everjust and sees his wife's two glowing blue eyes glaring at him just before she strikes. Hypnotized Elastigirl quickly proves herself to be terrifying. She moves at blinding speed, striking like a cobra from across the room with no chance of escape, scuttling around like a spider, and subduing her prey like a human boa constrictor. Bob was obviously holding back, but the fact that she nearly choked the life out of him is pretty unsettling. Just goes to show how fortunate it is that these powers ended up in the hands of a good and moral woman like Helen.
• The hypnotized supers (pictured above) showing up at the Parr residence, which is sheer Adult Fear since the kids are all alone.
  • Voyd monotoning, "Hello there, little fella," when she shows up. The kids open the door to reveal she and the other heroes Winston rounded up are all wearing the Screenslaver's hypno-goggles. It gives the vibe of a stranger trying to enter an unprotected home.
  • Then there's the hypnotized supers themselves. We have a woman who is a literal Stone Wall whose strength can rival Mr. Incredible, a guy that can manipulate electricity, a man who can crush things with his mind, an elder who can spew lava from his mouth, a mutant owl man, and a girl who can create portals. Put them together, and suddenly, things seem a little one-sided against whoever they're put up against. And they're sent to kidnap three children, one of which can't even speak yet. And all the while, their goggles give them Glowing Eyes of Doom.
  • During the fight, Violet creates a force field to protect her, Dash, and Jack-Jack from He-Lectrix... and then Krushauser starts using his powers, meaning Violet has to choose between getting electrocuted or crushed by her own force field. To top it all off, her scream as the force field continues to shrink is rather bone-chilling.
  • Oh, but don't worry! Frozone arrives to protect them up until he gets a pair of the hypnotic goggles slapped onto him. Seconds later, he roars like an animal, lunges at the kids, and tries to freeze them! Thank the stars they had already boarded the Incredibile.
• Violet, Dash, and Jack-Jack seeing their parents under hypnosis on the Everjust. Imagine you're being chased by a bunch of hypnotized people who are hellbent on kidnapping you, and your parents—the people you depend on for love and protection—have also been hypnotized.
• What does Evelyn do to stop the signing of the International Supers Accord—a document that will legalize supers again? Show the same hypno-screens that she used as the Screenslaver. While it was broadcast live, she had Elastigirl, Mr. Incredible, and Frozone step in front of the room's cameras to deliver a prepared speech on how feeble non-supers are compared to supers.
  • It's made even more creepy when you consider that Evelyn's Evil Plan was to make superheroes illegal for good. After the speech, she had the hypnotized supers hijack the Everjust and veer it to crash into Municiberg. Everyone aboard would die, as would at least hundreds of people in the city. Evelyn intended to orchestrate mass murder just because she hated superheroes that much, and even her love for Winston proved no match to this hatred.
  • She tried to force her brother to escape with her, but when he defied her by jumping back onto the Everjust, she realized his devotion to superheroes was genuine rather than some fanboy obsession. As such, Evelyn doesn't try to rescue him again, and she doesn't show any remorse for that either even though she knows her brother would most certainly die along with everyone else. Talk about The Power of Hate indeed...
• Did the missile scene from the first movie make you afraid of flying? Well, it's taken a step further during the climax as Evelyn pilots an escape jet while Elastigirl tries to reach the cockpit so she can stop her. What does Evelyn do? She violently rolls the plane along with wildly pitching it up and down—all while manually causing gradual decompression. Seeing Elastigirl say stuff like "smidgee-widgee" along with acting increasingly carefree and loopy like she's on drugs will definitely make you want to stay out of the sky for a while. Furthermore, Evelyn's casual reaction to it all truly highlights her Lack of Empathy.

  Evelyn: Ah, hypoxia! When you don't have enough oxygen... (lightly pushes Elastigirl backwards) ...things seem really silly! Things get sillier and sillier, and then you die.
  Elastigirl: Hehehaha; I don't wanna die!
  Evelyn: Ah, nobody does. (kicks Elastigirl backwards) Really. Not such a bad way to go!

  • What's most horrifying of all is how not only is this aspect of hypoxia Truth in Television, but the scene is possibly based off of this video by Smarter Every Day. When Destin is losing oxygen, he's sporting a goofy grin despite the situation, and when he's told that he will die if he doesn't put his oxygen mask back on, he says the exact same thing Helen does.
  • And then Helen grabs a flare gun and blasts Evelyn out the window. We know it was to get control of the plane and that she saves Evelyn in the end, but still, that was a little extreme.
• The deleted scene in which Bob and Helen go to Kari's house to check on her, not knowing that Dicker had already wiped her memories of her babysitting Jack-Jack in the first film. It implies that a memory wipe can leave some adverse side effects, as Kari is left a twitching Stepford Smiler.

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Incredibles 2 What Does Your Sign Say

Source: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Incredibles2

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