Reed Richards has been stretching around the FF for a few hundred issues now, and to the best of my knowledge nobody has ever slammed a door on part of him. Elasti-Girl it happens to the first time we see her "in action". If the writers look at these amazing powers and immediately start thinking of things that can go wrong with them, how can they be expected to create a total package that shows any real reverence for the form?

It's a pretty spurious comparison to make, Jeremy. Barbie is a toy; she doesn't have any body of fiction based on her exploits, unless you want to count the DVDs Mattel keeps pumping out. Nothing in TS2 was "disrespectful" of Barbie in any event. The Darth Vader ripoff villain...? Yeah, maybe, but the character wasn't the basis of that movie; he wasn't even that important.

The Incredibles is a movie ABOUT superheroes that is disrespectful, even mocking, to the genre. With some moviegoers, that's okay. Anyone who claims to love comic books ought to see this movie as somewhat (mildly to very)insulting, because it laughs at things we take seriously. I enjoy humor too, I try not to take myself or my leisure activities too seriously, and I thought there were some good moments in the movie, but I don't rationalize away what The Incredibles says about superhero fiction because of that.

I can't believe you're working this hard to miss the point.

JB wrote: If the writers look at these amazing powers and immediately start thinking of things that can go wrong with them, how can they be expected to create a total package that shows any real reverence for the form?

With all due respect, isn't that the writer's job?  To come up with obstacles for the hero?  The gun jams at a crucial moment... the heroes wind up in a trash compactor... Indiana Jones tosses his whip to someone who betrays him...

The writer is always looking for ways to paint the protagonists into a corner, so I fail to see how this shows disrespect.  The fun is seeing them work around these obstacles.  If they couldn't, then that would be disrespectful.

For that reason I see where you're coming from on the cape thing.  It doesn't bother me, but I can understand why you'd be sensitive to it.

Mind you, as I noted at the time of release, there was little danger this campaign would not do its job. My civilian frieds who saw the movie all went in expecting a "Batman" style comedy, and that's what they saw.

I hated the capes joke. It was stupid and uncalled for. The only ones laughing would be all these guys that hate Superman, imo.

Exactly. Incredibles was the FF done as Batman-style camp. We're still feeling the aftershocks from that adaptation of a comic book...

In the case of super powers, the "writer's job" is to show us the amazing things that can be done with them, not how they can go wrong. Show me Superman doing something with his powers that he's not done before, and I will be impressed. Show me his cape getting caught in an elevator door, and all you are telling me is that you have no respect for the character or, more than likely, the genre. Especially when those things going wrong are played for laughs. Especially when the laughs are at the character's expense.

Andrew Bitner wrote:  We're still feeling the aftershocks from that adaptation of a comic book...

Yes we are.  Many children picked up comic books and developed a life-long love of the character because of that show.