4

The Incredibles 2 Dances Around Its Villain Being Completely Right

The Incredibles 2 built on the original classic's tale of a family of superheroes going on awesome adventures to stop a supervillain who would actually have a pretty good point if they'd stop being a violent jerk about it. This time around, our villain is Evelyn Deavor (get it?!), who wants to sabotage recent efforts to rehabilitate the public image of superheroes because she thinks society shouldn't rely on them. She's motivated by the loss of her father, who was murdered by burglars after he reached out to unavailable superheroes for help instead of retreating to his safe room.

Evelyn's methods involve mind control and trying to crash a cruise ship full of representatives from various nations, but if her approach had been to write a series of stern op-eds, we wouldn't have an action movie, just a montage of people saying "This" while retweeting her. Instead she has to be stopped, because murdering a baker's dozen of diplomats is bad, and so all of the interesting dilemmas get thrown out the window.

Where is the line between reverence and reliance? Why is our society so in love with the idea of superior superheroes who can always bail us out? Why do we like flashy but fallible solutions to our problems so much more than reliable but mundane ones? We never find out, because the crazy woman using brainwashed slaves to try to blow up a commuter train is obviously on the wrong side of the argument. As with Thanos, the obvious problem is with the method, not the cause.

That's weird, because Evelyn is right in pointing out that her father would have been fine had he not been so enamored with superheroes. But then the movie ends with the message of "No, superheroes are awesome! Let's watch them go stop some crime for us!"

3

The Mission: Impossible World Is Exactly As Ugly As Its Villains Claim

The Mission: Impossible movies are mostly excuses for Tom Cruise to sprint through exotic locations and cling to the exteriors of aircraft, but they've also been telling increasingly elaborate stories. The latest, Fallout, is about a group called the Apostles, who want to detonate two nuclear weapons to contaminate a water supply that a third of the world relies on. They believe that the current world order is a hopelessly broken quagmire of constant conflict, and that if they burn the whole system to the ground, a more stable society will emerge from the ashes.

Or, in their words you'll hear about 50 times during the movie, "the greater the suffering, the greater the peace." With that kind of on-the-nose dialogue, you'd swear that Christopher Nolan had co-writing credit.

2

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom Immediately Abandons The Question Of Why We Keep Making Dinosaurs

While most of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom inexplicably takes place in a big mansion, the movie billed itself as revolving around efforts to rescue dinosaurs from Isla Nublar, home to both the titular abandoned theme park and a volcano that's about to wipe them all out. It's never explained why they bothered opening Jurassic World on an island that was known to have an active, all-consuming volcano, but in the one scene Jeff Goldblum sleepwalks through in exchange for a giant bag of money, he advocates letting the dinosaurs die, warning that humanity's position on the planet could be threatened if they're allowed to survive.

So what are the consequences of man playing God? How much responsibility should we hold for our own misguided creations? How culpable are our heroes in the disastrous end to the park in the previous movie? We never find out or even keep asking, because while the government is willing to let the dinosaurs go re-extinct, Team Good Guy wants to rescue them. Meanwhile, Team Bad Guy ... also wants to rescue them, but then auction some off and weaponize the others, presumably because drone warfare hasn't been invented yet in the Jurassic World universe.

So Fallen Kingdom is two hours of Chris Pratt running around screaming "Me and my best friend, a genetically engineered raptor I raised from birth to obey my every command, think we shouldn't tamper with Mother Nature!" The only thing that separates the heroes and villains is that one side wants to put the dinosaurs in a sanctuary and the other side wants to guard warehouses full of iPads with prehistoric killing machines. People are eaten either way, so the moral ends up being "Spitting in the face of God and evolution is fine as long as you're not monetizing it."

1

Deadpool 2 Desperately Wants You To Care About One Bad Guy Being Reformed ... While Murdering The Rest

Deadpool 2 tries to build on the first Deadpool by offering a more serious story in between all the explosions and beheadings. The premise is that a guy named Cable travels back from the future to kill a kid named Russell before he murders his abusive orphanage headmaster, gets a taste for crime, and grows up to be the supervillain who kills Cable's family. Deadpool gets involved and agrees that Russell needs to be stopped, but he wants to save Russell's life and convince him to follow a different path. A million criminals get killed in the process. You may recognize that as the exact plot of Looper.

But while Deadpool succeeds in his mission, a side character then immediately kills the headmaster in a wacky gag at the end. There's a push and pull between "Caring about other people -- even the bad ones -- is important because caring is what keeps us from abusing our powers and causing suffering" and "Haha, caring about stuff is dumb and if you care, then you're dumb. Chimichangas and nut shots, LOL!"

So Cable and Deadpool slaughter dozens of random bad guys while debating Deadpool's argument that anyone can be redeemed. So why couldn't the lives of any of those people whom Cable and Deadpool eviscerated been turned around? Why couldn't the abusive orphanage staff they're mowing down be made to see the error of their ways? Why does Russell get a second chance, but the evil headmaster doesn't? Both are guilty of the same crime, i.e. harming kids.

"Because Russell was a child who can still turn his life around!" you protest. Well, can't they use time travel to figure out what trauma caused the headmaster to turn out that way? "They were limited in how much time traveling they could do!" OK, but Cable is an adult who was all set to blow a child's head off, and didn't care how much collateral damage he caused until he was convinced to change his ways. He didn't need time travel to learn his lesson. Why does he get redemption while everyone else gets shot in the face?

They're paying lip service to a clear moral lesson, but movie tickets are sold to people who want to see bad guys get what's coming to them. And while there's nothing inherently wrong with that, Deadpool's approach is like John Wick targeting his next headshot rampage at people who oppose gun control. "We have to get these damn things off the streets!" BAM!

Mark is on Twitter and wrote a book.

Write a good villain and then tell us why he's awful with a beginner's guide to Celtx.

Support your favorite Cracked writers with a visit to our Contribution Page. Please and thank you.

For more, check out 9 Famous Movie Villains Who Were Right All Along and 5 Movie Villains Who Were Completely Right The Whole Time.

Also, we'd love to know more about you and your interesting lives, dear readers. If you spend your days doing cool stuff, drop us a line at iDoCoolStuff at Cracked dot com, and maybe we can share your story with the entire internet.

Follow us on Facebook. Because you deserve the very best.