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.
Syndrome doesn’t want to give everyone powers so he can help people. He wants to give everyone powers to spite his enemy and make money. He’s Elon Musk. The idea of helping people is just a marketing line and an ego trip. He’s not actually making anyone’s lives better. He’s doing the opposite; selling advanced weapons to world governments under the table. Arms dealing isn’t equality! You think things will be more equal when rich people can buy flight and super strength? Syndrome does. Because he’s a capitalist villain who doesn’t understand any of the leftist rhetoric he’s co-opting.
You fell for a billionaire’s self-aggrandising lies.
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.
Syndrome doesn’t want to give everyone powers so he can help people. He wants to give everyone powers to spite his enemy and make money. He’s Elon Musk. The idea of helping people is just a marketing line and an ego trip. He’s not actually making anyone’s lives better. He’s doing the opposite; selling advanced weapons to world governments under the table. Arms dealing isn’t equality! You think things will be more equal when rich people can buy flight and super strength? Syndrome does. Because he’s a capitalist villain who doesn’t understand any of the leftist rhetoric he’s co-opting.
You fell for a billionaire’s self-aggrandising lies.