Contents
- 1 Intro
- 2 What's the work?
- 3 What makes her magnificent?
- 4 What makes her a Baddie?
- 5 Is she too vile?
- 6 Verdict
Intro[]
Hey there. Now, much like Mewtwo from Pokemon: The First Movie, I was worried she may not count due to trying to commit mass murder and having a petty reason for her villainy. However, after rewatching Sky High recently with three old friends from high school last Friday, I feel she may actually stand a chance (and so will Mewtwo, who I'm proposing soon so stay tuned).
What's the work?[]
Sky High is a 2005 movie produced by Disney and Gunn Films. It's about how teenagers go to school to learn to be superheroes, heroes and sidekicks to clarify, and deal with the social fission between heroes and sidekicks which is disturbingly akin to white-black kid segregation back in the day. This problematic cleave between the two groups created demons on its own, leading to the reign of terror conducted by the "brilliant but misunderstood girl" Sue Tenny, a technopathic criminal mastermind who changed her name to Gwen Grayson and uses the delightfully hammy alias of Royal Pain in her villainous endeavors.
What makes her magnificent?[]
Not only is Gwen Grayson a mistress of trickery and deception, but she is also well-remembered for proving that a nerdy brunette who builds exosuits can steal our hearts, doing it all with ease, flourish, and great fervor. But it's not the only reason the girl is so memorable—she epitomizes charm and is always engaging in her interactions with practically everybody, ultimately winning affection not only from the real audience but pretty much anyone remotely necessary to enable her conquest. This really only doesn't work on Layla, and that's mainly because she rightfully sees her as competition for Will's affections so of course she won't be so chill around her compared to everyone else. Her unbelievable charm really is one of her greatest strengths and it shows in almost every scene she's in.
She has a fantastic "Evil is Cool" vibe, convincing Layla to stay out of her face in a very eloquent and domineering fashion, materializing her suit on with a hidden cape (nanotech potentially?) and fires lightning blasts during her big action scene, her duel with Will. Several YouTubers have acknowledged their spectacular clash as a highlight of the movie. She's no less cool in her "Gwen" persona though, as her lightning can create, not just destroy, and she's able to build a ray gun with a seemingly innate knowledge of how to do so in a matter of moments.
As for thinking on her feet, she asks Will to get her a very, very specific drink he may not even have in his parents' refrigerator at all the moment she sees Layla so she can talk one-on-one and convince her to stay away from Will. Later, she rebounds from Will ripping off her helmet by cleverly pretending to be knocked out, so that way she can make the school fall like she planned. She also sealed off every route in advance which implies she insightfully predicted that Will would come back to stop her (minus the one Magenta crawled into obviously, as a random student getting away from the Pacifier and transfiguring into a guinea pig is something she couldn't have foreseen). Her being a technopath at all really speaks for itself about her ingenuity, especially when Medulla asks her to let students succeed or fail on their own. She even builds a giant robot so Commander will predictably take the eye home as souvenir for his collection, enabling her to spy on him and confirm where her personal weapon is located.
She comes extremely close to accomplishing all of her goals, turning everyone into babies minus the main characters and only failing because Will unexpectedly develops the ability to fly and Magenta is able to chew a wire at the last second. She also laughs confidently when Warren and Layla are about to team up on her as Layla says she'll see if she's right that Will was her enemies' only hope, which technically is completely true since there's no plants nearby for Layla to utilize and there's absolutely no guarantee Warren could have out-dueled her (and as Magenta acknowledges, everyone else is either a sidekick or a baby) going to show how hard she is to defeat.
She patiently grew up a second time for seventeen-ish years all so she could have another attempt at world domination, exhibiting true dedication. She also has zero hang-ups about accepting her low morality and openly proclaiming herself to be a supervillain. The music when she monologues and proceeds to duel with Will is epic and iconic to listen to, with trumpets and a vocalizing chorus amplifying the tension of the scene.
Not only did Mary Elizabeth Winstead gave us a delightfully hammy performance, but she has some hilarious slapstick moments with her sidekick Stitches, lashing out at him whenever he misbehaves or says something stupid. Patrick Warburton really outdid himself in this movie, too.
What makes her a Baddie?[]
She is a card-carrying villain who wants to flatten Sky High and enforce her malignant belief that people should all be villains like her. She tries to flatten Sky High knowing people live under it and not caring. She also gets a 14-year-old boy to be close friends with her so she can retrieve the Pacifier, which rightfully belongs to her, and she lies about wanting to make some romantic memories to justify kissing him in his basem*nt purely as a ruse to reclaim her property from him and his dad, leading to his later quip about "making out with an old lady". As he indeed implies, that is an absolutely uncool thing of her to do, but at least she's biologically seventeen years old (think Steve Trevor from Wonder Woman and Wonder Woman 1984 and Bella Swan from the Twilight franchise), not to mention the two have all of their clothes on and they never have sex or anything, and nothing indicates she was planning to as she just wanted her gun back. Even if she did sleep around, she would still be no more of an ephebophile than Steve a gerontophile, as both ideas are equally absurd. This whole scene is mainly a ruse so Speed can sneak downstairs and take the Pacifier, which ends up happening. Otherwise she has a giant robot mark its territory in the fair city and I think she also tied Commander and Mr. Boy up in a deleted scene and I think that just about covers everything.
Is she too vile?[]
Not really, considering that her plans of operating "Supervillain Academy" are purely theoretical and it's not shown how bad it'll be, so almost making Sky High collapse on a married couple was really her worst sin. And while she's petty, the fact that she was stuck as a sidekick despite being a technopath and one of if not the strongest students at Sky High (not to mention in an era where they used real citizens in Save the Citizen, meaning they were getting paid to commit live murder on campus, not just make the students' lives harder on purpose and label them) makes it beyond understandable why the equivalent of an albino being treated like a black person in the Martin Luther King era would determinedly want to put an end to the obviously oppressive system so much (sidekicks can't even order hero sandwiches for God's sake). And even if she's undoubtedly a Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist, she has a valid reason to be evil even if it's inexcusable and what she's planning is objectively awful. All in all, while she's definitely a little petty, it's to a degree acceptable for a card-carrier in a satirical childrens' movie about over-the-top superhero tropes.
Verdict[]
I feel like she's earned a place on here fair and square but I understand if a minority would disagree. So without further ado, let the voting commence!
