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bops-fandom-wowie · 16 days ago

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My Gamma Jack essay/character analysis/debunking/whatever the fuck because I kept seeing people either demonizing him or woobifying him or kind of just missing the point in my opinion? and it was kind of bugging me

I'll just be going over the NSA tapes, stuff in the Incredibles 1 in general, and that one deleted scene from the second movie, as well as some points people have brought up in relation to him

I'll just be presenting my case here on whats canon, some interpretations that can be gleamed from the material and my opinion (though hopefully I'll make it clear which is which) - because theres not a lot to go off of for him or the other supers, I think there's some different interpretations that can be had. Obv Feel free to disagree with me or tell me if I got something wrong !!

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So we have the tape here so you know I'm not making shit up - first lets go over his powers.

So a radiation power is scary enough right, but a high intensity burst of a HUNDRED meters (328 feet) is absolutely terrifying, as you can see by his stats. If giving people cancer wasnt enough, this man can drop a fucking nuke the size of some city blocks if he wants to and with I think a high probability of "collateral damage", but we'll get to that later.

An important thing to note here is that the creators of the Incredibles gave most of their superheroes powers that matched their personalities (Violet is shy, Dash is a high energy young boy, Jack Jack has endless possibilities as a baby etc) and this extends to most of the background supers as well, I'd say. I think Jack having such a destructive power is already supposed to give you some insight on the type of person he is.

Next the actual tape-

Okay so first off, I think most people can agree that starting off talking about your superhero work by saying "there's always going to be a lot of collateral damage" is a bad enough sign right off the bat. If you want to give him some leeway, he might be talking about what the villains are doing or the fights in general, but I'd say its fair to interpret that as him saying that He's the one who causes the collateral damage, whether thats actual property damage, or (as I've seen some people interpret) peoples lives. The man's a walking nuke, I think it'd be pretty hard NOT to cause collateral damage.

Next he talks about how he prioritizes saving people he finds attractive over who's in danger, which I think we can all agree is really shitty, not very heroic. But at least he's saving people, I guess?

And the rest of the tape is him just talking about how hard he finds it to kill female villains he finds attractive, not because he doesn't want to kill them, but because they're women he finds attractive...which...you know, kinda fucked up. I'll get into this later, but the Incredibles world superheroes largely don't seem to have strict no-killing rules, however he's the only superhero in these tapes to even mention killing villains, let alone so non-chalantly. And I think we can all agree that speaking so calmly about killing people is worrying to say the least.

All of this isn't even mentioning his super-supremacy views or megalomaniacal impulses, which combined with all of this makes the NSA so worried that they keep him under close monitoring, either because they're afraid of him becoming a villain, or just because of how destructive he can be in general. As seen in the movie, the public was fed up with superheroes at some point, and the large amount of "collateral damage" was probably a major factor.

Now that the basic stuffs out the way, onto discussing stuff I've heard said about him

Jack is a rapist

NO HE IS NOT. I could honestly just stop there but I'll say I dont know why people feel the need to make characters that are already bad enough worse? Is he a womanizer? Yeah. Is he sexist? Yeah, probably. Is there anything in here that suggests he sexually assaults people? Absolutely not. The only person in the Incredibles 1 that is implied to have forced themselves on anyone is Psycwave.

Jack is the secret villain of the Incredibles

While the tape is disturbing, no, he's really not. He isn't even the only questionable superhero in these tapes. Psycwave literally talks about mind-controlling and assaulting men she knew in high school, and another is a drunk with anger issues and with terrifying powers as well. I believe these superheroes were made to make the world more realistic, and make viewers understand the nuance of why superheroes were outlawed in the first place. If every superhero in this universe was a purehearted, altruistic person, supers would have never been forced into hiding. People forget that Mr. Incredible saving that man from suicide and injuring the passengers by stopping that train wasn't the only reason supers were banned, it was the last straw for a public that was already fed up with them.

All superheroes in the Incredibles universe kill their villains, Jack is normal

While there isn't a no-killing rule that most people have come to expect from superheroes in I1, I dont think this is really the case? The only villain we see dying in this film is Syndrome, and while the Parrs weren't exactly sad to see him go, it's not like they hurled him at that turbine either.

People also seem to forget Mr. Incredible threatening to kill Mirage, and not being able to do it. And Syndrome justifies not saving Mirage as "I knew he[mr Incredible] wouldn't be able to do it.", implying that Mr. Incredible DOESN'T kill his villains, and keep in mind, this is the woman who was an accomplice in both capturing him, capturing and killing all his superhero friends, and just earlier that day, HIS ENTIRE FAMILY as he knew. And he STILL couldn't bring himself to snap her neck. This makes me believe that killing villains is 100% a case-by-case basis, and not an accepted thing every hero does.

and even if I'm wrong and it WAS just a part of the job description to kill people, you STILL don't hear Any other superhero talk about killing villains in their tapes, let alone as nonchalantly as Jack does. And speaking about killing people that way really isn't a trait I think most people would appreciate a superhero having.

any variation of "So you think he deserved to be killed by Syndrome?"

Not really...however I do think its weird how some people will justify the murdering Some people, but not Others. Is killing people okay or is it not? Jack and Syndrome are bad in the exact opposite ways, and they have both killed people. But I'm not going to get into discussion of the why no-killing rules exist or the morality of the death penalty and shit like that in an Incredibles post, so I'll leave my opinion abt that at that.

A point I'd also like to bring up however is that by the point Syndrome starts to pick off superheroes (or at least Jack) its already been a LONG time since superheroes have been banned. 15 years to be exact. And we don't know how the other supers adjusted to it or what they've been doing or what kind of people they are now. People change a lot during that time, who knows? for all we know he could have been fostering puppies and running orphanages during that time (he probably wasnt, but again, the point I'm trying to make is we Dont Know💀). Syndrome wasn't killing these people because they were evil, he was killing them because he had a grudge and a plan to fulfill.

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Gamma Jack was also one of the most recent supers to have been killed. We know this because in the Terminated sequence, he comes up after Gazerbeam. If you remember, Bob sees Gazerbeams missing persons notice in the paper right after the prologue. This means he must have gone missing recently. The montage of Bob's life getting better during his missions takes 2 months. This means that every superhero after Gazerbeam had to have been marked as Terminated in the period of those 2 months, including Jack.

We also don't really hear about or see any other supers other than Lucius and Bob causing problems recently, though granted, that could just be the NSA doing a good job covering their shit up. Again, we don't know how these supers adjusted to the ban. They could have been anywhere from actively depressed and desperate to return to the old days to doing good and simply being nostalgic for missions. We don't know 🤷‍♀️

Why would the other supers hang out with Gamma Jack if he was awful?

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You can see in this deleted scene from the Incredibles 2 that the people that encouraged Gazerbeam to be a superhero are Bob, Lucius, Helen, and interestingly, Jack. They all seemed to hang out with him with no issue.

Now obviously I dont have any deeper insight into the glory days of superheroes or what their relationships were like with each other, so I can only speculate. Personally I agree with this comments approach

(This is from cartoonshis video btw)

Jacks intelligence stat is also listed at extremely high. I think if he wanted to he could have held off in front if the other superheroes. The supers could have also just looked past his flaws, they were also a community, no matter how dysfunctional some of them were, or why they were doing this job, they were still a community regardless. It seems they were also all encouraged by the NSA to get along, because it would damage patriotism otherwise (you can see this in the thrilling threes file).

The other thing I wanted to mention but couldn't fit elsewhere:

I know I'm gonna get hate for this part of the post but I had to say it since no one but the wiki was bringing it up and it made me feel crazy.

Okay, so the Incredibles takes place in the 60s. The glory days are in the 40s. Jack is a white man with blonde hair and blue eyes who believes himself to be a part of "a superior race" and prioritizes saving people that he finds personally attractive. Do you see what I'm getting at here.

Am I saying that Jack is a nazi? No, I'm not, and I dont think they'd put that in a pixar movie. However all these traits are definitely supposed to remind you of it. The Incredibles is a very well thought out movie, the creators know what theyre implying (Helen even threatens to "switch sides" in her tape, which I believe implies the russians. The mr incredible cartoon extra also can be read as anti-russian propaganda with the villain having an accent. The creators took the time period into account)

so yeah. my interpretation to the char is basically: jack is a bad person (no shit) but not completely devoid of humanity like some people say. He probably became a superhero for superficial reasons. Was probably one of the supers that caused the NSA a lot of headaches but the alternative of not being able go keep an eye/leash on him was worse. Some of the other supers were friends with him though. Who knows, maybe Jack-Jack was even named after him (in universe I mean...out of it the reason is obv "jack of all trades"). I honestly dont know how he would have adjusted to civilian life, probably poorly. He was probably taken out bc of his weakness to beautiful women, and Mirage exists (fun fact, you can actually see her in his picture to the right!). Theres a chance he could have survived though as some people have pointed out, Syndrome doesn't really check for the bodies.

Umm I'm sure theres some other shit I wanted to talk abt but forgot I was writing this for like 3 days. Thanks 4 reading again feel free to disagree or tell me if I got something wrong

#amazing essay #gamma jack #the incredibles #tw rape #seriously how do people hear of him being a womanizer and prioritizing hot chicks when doing rescues #and come to the conclusion that he’d be a rapist?#i know we all have this joke about him being ‘pixar homelander’ but that’s ment to be a joke #also he’s a side character in a family movie that doesn’t even show up aside from a brief cameo #i love analyzing things and thinking about stuff deeply but that’s a bit much #this isn’t the boyz

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