After five massively successful films, John Lasseter thought it was about time to try something different. First, for once Pixar would create a film that would focus on humans instead of toys, bugs, monsters or fish. Superpowered humans, to keep things interesting. And second, instead of hiring a director from within Pixar’s ranks, he would hire an outsider, one of his former classmates, Brad Bird.
By 2000, director Brad Bird could have served as the poster child for broken dreams in Hollywood. Again and again he had seen projects approved by Hollywood executives, only to have those approvals rescinded by Hollywood executives—often the exact same Hollywood executives. In 1995 he thought he finally had his break, when Warner Bros hired him to direct the animated feature The Iron Giant. The film, released in 1999, received nearly universal critical praise, but bombed at the box office, earning only $31.3 million against a reported $80 million budget (less than the rival Disney, Pixar and upcoming Dreamworks pictures produced at the same time). Bird figured his career was over.
Until he reconnected with John Lasseter.
Bird wanted a movie that would, at its heart, reflect his current status as a middle-aged Hollywood screenwriter who had reached the point of doubting all of his life choices so far. Pixar wanted a movie that would, on its surface, make people laugh—and sell tickets. It all came together in The Incredibles.
The Incredibles tells the story of what happens after the happily-ever-after. Spoiler: Reality ensues. After saving people (and a cat) one last time, Bob Parr, aka superhero Mr. Incredible, marries the love of his life, Helen, aka Elastigal. Awww. Except for the part where they start arguing right during the wedding ceremony, since saving people one last time almost made Bob late to his own wedding. They also almost immediately get sued by various people upset about all the damage incidentally caused by superheroes. Public reaction—shown in some beautifully animated moments designed to look like old newsreels—reaches the point where all superheroes, including newlyweds Mr. and Mrs. Incredible, need to be forcibly retired and hidden in witness protection programs for their own safety, not to mention government finances.
Fast forward a few years, to Bob Parr now working an insurance job. He’s miserable. Partly because he’s stuck at a boring desk job which has nothing to do with his skills and talents. (I feel much of the adult audience can relate.) Partly because he can’t help trying to help people—not an advantage when working for a company eager to NOT pay out premiums. Not surprisingly, he spends his free time looking at treasured objects—including his supersuit—from his past, and going “bowling” once a week with an old superhero friend. By “bowling” what I really mean is “risk his life again to try to stop crime to give some meaning back in his life.” This infuriates his wife, who wants him to focus on his family. Largely because his family is also having more than a few issues: two of the kids have superpowers, and although Violet just wants to be normal, Dash has been known to use his powers to torment teachers, and resents that he can’t join any sports teams because that might give away his superpowers.
Naturally, when a message arrives that will self-destruct (and does) right after he hears it play, Bob is eager to come on board, no matter what the warning signs—or the potential impact on his marriage and kids.
Bird claimed that he had no particular superheroes in mind when he created his early sketches for The Incredibles, but none of them sport particularly unique superpowers. Mr. Incredible’s superstrength and near invulnerability are classic traits of the various superhero team Strong Guys. A point I bring up since he slightly reminds me of Marvel’s Strong Guy, although the characters have very different personalities. Elastigirl’s stretching abilities are remarkably similar to those of Plastic Man and the Fantastic Four’s Mister Fantastic. Their daughter Violet’s ability to turn invisible and create force fields are even more remarkably similar to the abilities of the Fantastic Four’s Sue Storm, while son Dash has the superspeed of various Flashes and Quicksilver. Frozone makes ice slides that look suspiciously like the ones created by Iceman in various comics and cartoons, and another character looks even more suspiciously like a very dead Cyclops. Fortunately, the Incredibles have five family members, not four, or I’d be even more suspicious. The creators of the 2005 Fantastic Four film were suspicious enough—or alarmed enough—to make a few changes to their film to ensure that they wouldn’t be accused of copying in the other direction.
Standard superpowers aside, this is as much of a James Bond spy film as it is a superhero film. To match its 1960s look and feel, The Incredibles provides a near perfect Bond villain, complete with plans to Take Over the World, an Over the Top Lair, and even a Sexy Bond Girl. (It helps that Michael Giacchino’s score often sounds quite a bit like a James Bond score.) Sexy Bond Girl’s name is Mirage, and she adds another tinge to a surprising subplot of The Incredibles—Helen’s fear that Bob is having an affair. After all, quite a few of the signs are there: Bob’s various lies, his sudden improvement in his mood, his decision to start working out more… It doesn’t help when Helen finds Bob and Mirage sharing a platonic hug. It does help when—spoiler—Bob’s reaction to all of this is to give Helen a major kiss. The kiss is mostly borne of relief, but still, Bob’s entire body language could not be clearer: he’s interested in Helen, not the bombshell who has just released him from his chains.
Which makes this also a film about marriage and trust and middle-age and fulfillment, all unusual themes for a children’s film, but all themes that by this time fit the Pixar style, which had previously explored questions of identity, loss, and parenting.
The Incredibles also took the time to explore many of the potential issues with being a superhero in real life, in both small things (if you have superstrength, you’re just a little more likely to break a plate while trying to cut through meat, and also, you might just be able to dent your cheap car with your fingers, a particular problem when you’re trying to hide your superpowers) and big ones: how to keep your secret identity after you’ve thrown your boss through several walls. The highlight of this is arguably the justly famous “NO CAPES” scene (I can’t help but think that Superman could have survived all of the examples Edna Mode lists, but then again, he’s Superman), but the film is littered with smaller and larger examples, most hilarious.
And also, a look at the other side: what is it like to live in a world where some people have superpowers, and you don’t? For Bob Parr’s boss, it means spending what looks like several weeks in traction. For a young neighbor kid, it’s the chance to see something awesomely cool. For Bob Parr’s lawyer, it’s a lot of paperwork. And for a young fan, it’s something much more: a desperate desire to be a superhero, to gain that sort of adulation. To be, well, special.
When that fails, the young fan angrily decides to come up with a new plan: to (eventually) release his superpowered gadgets to the world, allowing everyone to become a superhero. Once everyone is special, he claims, no one will be special.
I think, however, the film disagrees with this point. Not just because—SPOILER—this is the sort of film where of course the good guys win, defeating the young fan’s plan, or because the speech is made by one of the bad guys, or even the negative way The Incredibles treats Bob Parr’s job at the insurance company: a place filled with identical cubicles, where no one is encouraged to be special or give clients special treatment. But rather because, in the world of The Incredibles, happiness comes only after people embrace the extraordinary: whether this is Bob returning to superhero work, or Violet embracing her powers, or even Edna Mode delighting in her return to her true love, superhero costume design, The Incredibles is all about finding happiness through embracing what makes you different. Even if you still need to conceal those differences every once in awhile—or agree to come in only second place in track.
But for most viewers, I think, The Incredibles works not because of any of these deep issues, but because it’s just plain fun—particularly the second half, which switches from an introspective yet funny meditation on middle aged life and the need for superheroes to a fast paced action film that uses the characters’ superpowers in often surprisingly entertaining ways—for instance, the way Elastigirl manages to create a speedboat in the open ocean. It’s great.
Also great: the vocal work. For this, Pixar hired the usual mix of well-known if not exactly the first person you’d think of for the part actors—comedian Craig T. Nelson, then and now best known for his non-superhero role on Coach, and Holly Hunter, known primarily for her work in drama and comedy, not action films, along with well-known and definitely someone you’d think of for the part—Samuel L. Jackson, playing, as always, SAMUEL L. JACKSON, and Wallace Shawn, channeling his inner Vizzini as he demands more competence from his employees, which for him means no longer helping customers. Various Pixar employees filled in for various bit parts, with Brad Bird taking on the voice of stylish and commanding Edna Mode, one of the highlights of the film.
The Incredibles also benefited from another major advance in computer animation: subsurface scattering, computer coding that allowed the computerized image to reflect light the way actual human skin does—that is, with some light entering the skin, and some bouncing back, or scattering. Here, as with Finding Nemo, the animators had to take care not to overdo things: computer-created images of people that look nearly human can cause a feeling of revulsion in actual human viewers, one of the major reasons all of the characters in The Incredibles were drawn with exaggerated features. But exaggerated features covered with nearly-human looking skin, another remarkable step forward in computer animation.
On top of that, Bird’s script required multiple special effects shots—particularly in the multiple sequences focusing on volcanoes and fire, but also, several explosions and brief underwater scenes, the latter greatly helped by Pixar’s recent experiences with Finding Nemo. Fortunately, by this point, Pixar had invested in more and faster computer processors. Tricky though all this was, The Incredibles managed to mostly avoid the last minute panic and overtime that had marked most of the previous Pixar films.
The Incredibles did well at the box office, pulling in a more than respectable $633 million—less than the $940.3 eventually brought in by Finding Nemo, and less than the $919.8 million brought in by another animated film released in 2004, Shrek 2, but still well above the box office takes for Disney’s more recent films—something Disney executives noted with alarm. The film also did very well with critics, landing on several top ten lists. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form. Disney released the usual merchandise, careful to use the name “Mrs. Incredible” instead of “Elastigirl,” to avoid confusion with a DC comics character. I refuse to confirm or deny whether or not I have two little Lego figures of The Incredibles characters standing right next to Lego Stitch in my home, but I will confirm that Disney ensured that I could. Disney also licensed a short lived comic book, and a theatrical sequel is currently in production for a 2018 release.
On the surface, everything looked great—so great that Brad Bird was almost immediately hired to direct another Pixar film, this one about a rat. But behind the surface, Pixar executives were considerably less happy. From their viewpoint, Disney was profiting wildly from their films, while providing very little in return—not to mention stretching the original Pixar/Disney deal into more films than Pixar had planned on. It was time, Pixar executive Steve Jobs thought, for a change.
Cars, coming up next.
Mari Ness lives in central Florida.
This is my favorite Pixar movie. It’s smart and funny and moving. For all its humor, there are some strikingly adult moments. The moment when Helen cries “There are children on board!” is stunning and wrenching, raising the stakes in a way few movies about kids having adventures are honest enough to do, and the combination of that and Giacchino’s amazing score helps make the “missile lock” sequence one of the most edge-of-the-seat compelling action scenes in cinema history.
The one major problem I have with the film is that the heroes kill people, fairly casually. To me, that’s missing one of the key elements that makes superheroes stand out from other types of action hero — their commitment to being rescuers rather than warriors, to saving lives whenever possible, even villains’ lives. The characters that the Incredibles most strongly evoke — the Fantastic Four, Superman, the Flash — are all known for their avoidance of lethal force (certain screen adaptations aside). This is one thing about superhero fiction that movies perennially get wrong, because American action movies have long been addicted to the notion that all villains have to die. And it’s particularly disturbing in a sequence like Dash’s escape from the henchmen on the island, where there’s this 10-year-old boy running around having fun while multiple human beings are being violently killed all around him. It’s incongruous that the movie would be so honest about child endangerment in the jet sequence yet so dishonest about the impact of violence and death in that sequence. I know they were going for a spy-movie tone, but the casual killing of the bad guys really soured certain parts of what’s otherwise a magnificent film.
There FTFY.
My God, but if I could go back in time to accomplish one thing it would be to strip that joke from this movie. So many damn obnoxious fans inserting that joke into every bloody conversation about superheroes.
Of course this entire movie has been ruined by some of its fans, especially those assholes on the altright who use this (and the original Ghostbusters) as their most perfect examples of the virtues of Randianism and Radical Libertarianism. Of course that misses the message of the movies entirely, but those assholes never give up on it anyway.
It is sad and bad when some good properties get ruined by obnoxious fans, but it happens. That no capes joke though…ugh. Even the first time seeing it, ugh.
If I am informed correctly, the capes (as well as the underwear on the outside look) comes from circus performers who inspired the look of the first comic book heroes. Other than Batman, whose cape is highly functional in some incarnations, what do superheroes need capes for except to look like circus performers.
I haven’t thought too much about the villain deaths, but I think it could be argued that it is a reasonable response to the fact that the villains are actively trying to kill children. In the prologue, Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl do use non-lethal means to subdue their enemies, but I think that goes out the window when the bad guys start shooting automatic weapons at your kids.
I’m pretty sure that the henchmen who die during the jungle chase aren’t killed directly by the kids. A couple of saucers bounce off Violet’s forcefield and crash into trees but that wouldn’t have happened if they weren’t trying to kill children with machine guns. Dash distracts a pilot who flies into a cliff, but only after the pilot punched a 10 year old (and knocked him out of the ship to fall to his death if not for a lucky vine), and Dash only ended up in the saucer in the first place because other bad guys were chasing and shooting him. And when the henchman tracks down Violet underwater with the dirt trick and looks down the barrel of his machine gun and says “there you are”–that’s a little dark, no? Machine gunning a 12 year old? Might justify a proportional response from mom and dad?
My favorite moment has always been when Violet throws herself between her little brother and a machine gun. It’s the first time her force field powers actually work and she DOESN’T know that’s going to happen. It was a purely instinctive protective action that for all she knew could have killed her. And the hamster-ball run that follows is pure hilarity.
@3: the Bad Guys are BAD but Violet and Dash aren’t ‘children’ to them, they’re ‘supers’ and so targets. One can follow the reasoning without agreeing with it for one minute.
@3 — The movie even goes out of its way to highlight that with Elastigirl’s speech to her children on the island: “Remember the bad guys on the shows you used to watch on Saturday mornings? Well, these guys aren’t like those guys. They won’t exercise restraint because you are children. They will kill you if they get the chance. Do not give them that chance.”
She wasn’t wrong.
The only reason this isn’t my favorite Pixar movie is because Ratatouille edges it out by a tiny bit.
It especially resonated for me because Violet and Dash reminded me very much of my friends’ children, a brother & sister who had a very similar dynamic at the time.
@6: That scene, and the subsequent conversation between Helen and Violet outside the cave, is perhaps my favorite in any Pixar movie. Reduces me to tears every single time.
This is not just one of my favorite Pixar movies, but one of my favorite movies period. Just a couple things I wanted to mention that I feel the article missed…
When talking about the cast, I thought Jason Lee voicing Syndrome was inspired, because you think of him as such a comics geek if you’ve ever seen Mallrats, and the fact that they called back to that film by having Mr. Incredible mistakenly call him “Brody” instead of “Buddy” for a second, which I popped big for.
And while it wasn’t in the theatrical release, so I don’t know if it would be appropriate for this article, but the “Jack-Jack Attack” special feature on the DVD is amazing. The main thing I’m looking forward to in a sequel is a grown Jack-Jack based on that short alone.
@3/StrongDreams: “Other than Batman, whose cape is highly functional in some incarnations, what do superheroes need capes for except to look like circus performers.”
One episode of the ’40s Superman radio series suggested that he bundled his Clark Kent clothes on his back and the cape hid the bulge. The Supergirl TV pilot claimed that it helps with the aerodynamics of flight, like the tail of a kite, though that seems unlikely and we’ve seen Kara and others flying just fine without capes.
And sometimes it just looks cool. I think the cape on Melissa Benoist’s Supergirl costume makes her look classy and elegant. Lynda Carter’s Wonder Woman rocked the hell out of a cape from time to time as well. There was a time when capes were fashionable formal wear, something that I think lasted longer for women than for men, and I think you could look at some of the more elegant superhero (or supervillain) capes as a throwback to that era.
Of course, in the comics, the reason Superman had a cape wasn’t just about emulating circus strongmen — it was useful to illustrate that he was soaring through the air rather than hovering in place or falling, and to show which direction he was moving in.
And even if you can argue that the henchmen’s deaths are “justified,” they shouldn’t be treated as casual. I think a 10-year-old boy witnessing people dying around him for the first time in his life would be pretty traumatized by it. It should at least have been acknowledged as something that mattered. In general, I think death in fiction should have an impact. I think it’s dishonest to treat anyone’s death as trivial and insignificant, or to pretend that people witnessing or causing someone’s death for the first time can just shrug it off and be completely unaffected by it. Death should be a big deal. If someone’s death isn’t going to matter emotionally or dramatically, then it’s gratuitous to have it happen at all. So I hate the casual killing of henchmen or bystanders in any story, not just this one. It’s one of my most despised movie tropes.
Besides, it makes no sense to defend what happened in a story by citing the way the situation was set up (like “They were trying to kill kids so it was justified”), because the situation is only set up that way because the filmmakers chose to set it up that way, and the filmmakers’ choices are what I disagree with. There were many ways they could’ve written the sequence differently. Have the henchmen eject at the last second rather than getting blown up. Have their vehicles be well enough built that they don’t blow up on impact but just crash survivably. Have the pursuers be robots (which would make sense in the story context). Thousands and thousands of kids’ TV episodes and movies have handled action scenes in ways that didn’t require killing the bad guys. It’s not like it would’ve been hard for this movie to do the same. No, the filmmakers chose to have the action sequence be lethal when it didn’t need to be, and they made that choice for no reason, because it had no impact on the story.
I think it’s also noteworthy to mention that the Incredibles is a kind of homage and parody of comics like The Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns .They all depict a “golden age” of superheroes that ends when a cynical modern world no longer needs them or wants them.
@10,
“Have the henchmen eject at the last second rather than getting blown up.”
Right. And then you’ll rant about it looking like a G.I. Joe cartoon.
@12/ragnar: Umm, no, because I was never much of a G.I. Joe viewer. And I would never be likely to rant about something that prevents characters from dying unnecessarily. My problem is not with cliche, my problem is with death. Death is a hideous, terrible thing. It should never be treated as something casual and fun. Dash’s escape sequence is played as a bright, fun, uplifting sequence, and for me, having people dying in the middle of it is tonally jarring and undermines what the scene is supposed to be. And there are many ways they could’ve avoided that.
The best Pixar movie, definitely. While the point about death and destruction is well taken, I would think it far, far, far more lame if there was always a last second ejection or some other silly thing. That’s just trying to have your cake and eat it to. Some smart children’s shows have had this, even if they did not emphasize it. From old serials to Jonny Quest to The Incredibles.
Re: capes, in the Post-Crisis continuity at least, Superman’s cape was frequently used as a rescue blanket, being fireproof and (to some extent) bulletproof. It was also designed to detach easily (one issue showed that it was basically just tucked into his collar and held in place by either friction or velcro). Of course, Martian Manhunter’s cape is actually a part of him (and can be retracted at will). A few other prominent DC heroes (the Marvel Family, Power Girl, Red Tornado) have capes that are visibly held in place by a braid or cord (and I assume could be released or shrugged out of with minimal fuss).
(And, point of technicality; Plastic Man doesn’t “stretch” per se: he’s actually a shapeshifter. DC’s stretchy guy is the Enlongated Man, Ralph Dibney).
It was my favorite of the Pixar films…..until Wall-E came about. Brad Bird’s crowning achievement.
I’m surprised the movie is as successful as it was. Whether killing the soldiers was justified or not, I’m surprised the movie got away with scenes of a 10 year old punching grown adults. You’d think that would make the movie a ripe target for protests from parents’ groups.
This was my favorite Pixar film …. until Inside Out. Now which of the two is my favorite depends on the mood I’m in. :)
Never a favorite, partly because movies all about humans (even superpowered ones) tend to bore me. :-p But Edna is awesomesauce and I want to be like her. I don’t care one way or the other about her opinion of capes, only the ferocity with which she expressed it.
I love this movie. It is still my favorite Pixar movie. Although there are gaps (Wall-E, Up) that I have no excuse for missing.
16. Eduardo Jencarelli, even as this movie was not released that long ago, it was a time when people were less wont to protest every stupid thing under the sun. ;)
I’d like to preface my comments with the note that this movie is my favorite of the 21st century. This comment is about what I see as the inspirations for this movie I love.
@@@@@Mari Ness “Fortunately, the Incredibles have five family members, not four, or I’d be even more suspicious.”
The classic Fantastic Four has a kid who doesn’t usually go on adventures too. And given that three of the four Incredibles have powers which map exactly to FF powers, it’s nuts to believe there wasn’t a lot of inspiration there, no matter what they say to keep the lawyers happy.
@@@@@cosmotiger “I think it’s also noteworthy to mention that the Incredibles is a kind of homage and parody of comics like The Watchmen”
The Incredibles basically *is* “What if the Fantastic Four were the main characters of The Watchmen?” There’s the Golden Age, the heroes living in hiding, the mystery of dead heroes, the non-super-powered hero who has turned villain, the major attack on a major city that is just the villain trying to manipulate the general public. The main difference is the heroes get to be heroes rather than Alan Moore characters.
@14/gadget: I would argue that the conceit of vehicles that blow up the moment they crash into something is itself quite lame. It’s become a ubiquitous and unquestioned trope in movies, but it makes no sense. Not every crash automatically results in an explosion. That’s something most vehicle designers would go to considerable lengths to prevent from happening if at all possible. So you don’t need ejections, you just need more realistic crashes that aren’t instantly, inevitably fatal.
Heck, if the goal was to capture the feel of ’60s Bond movies, then there should’ve been fewer explosions. Look at the car chase in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. A number of cars crash there, but they don’t blow up. They just stop moving and sit there. That’s a lot more realistic than what we were seeing routinely in movies by the ’80s or ’90s. I forget what Bond movie it was, but I remember a snowmobile chase where the things blew up just from driving into a bush, which was insanely stupid.
And as I said, they could also have had Dash pursued by robot sentries. Since Syndrome’s whole plot involved siccing killer robots on superheroes, it would’ve been perfectly consistent and in character for him to use robot guards too.
@21/Christopher: I believe the snowmobile incident happened in Pierce Brosnan’s The World is not Enough (1999). These goofs always remind me of the recurring Hans Moleman car crashing joke used on The Simpsons.
The Incredibles is the Citizen Kane of superhero movies. While I completely agree with this review, I almost feel like “it’s just fun” really doesn’t go far enough. Watch those action scenes carefully—the bad guys are constantly dispatched in ways that are clever, exciting, and tirelessly inventive, not just punching and kicking via top-notch fight coordination.
The pacing of each sequence is precise and methodical, with a stirring build-up that always pays off beautifully. Witness the scene where Elastigirl gets caught in mid-stretch between various doors, and how it all unravels with the sharp timing and elegance of a Buster Keaton classic. In lesser hands, this would be a throwaway sequence that pays off with generic fight moves; here, it’s a master class in escalating complications.
I know it sounds like I’m describing “Filmmaking 101,” but this level of excellence has become a lost art in the CGI era, especially when compared to our live-action superhero movies. Every aspect of The Incredibles is so smart, so rewarding, and so definitive, it easily ranks with the all-time towering entertainments like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars, and Ghostbusters.
With one exception (Kick-Ass) this is the only superhero movie I have ever really liked. But I have to agree with Chris that the lethal violence could have been better left out. IIRC, the childrens fight scene is quite a fun coming-into-their-powers family-working-together scene. Which is fine – except that if you want to justify your heroes killing people, there really should be a credible threat of the villains killing people if they don’t. And that would detract from the fun, happy tone of that scene.
So instead of justifying the heroes killing Syndromes henchmen, the film just ignores that those henchmen are human beings. But if you are going to do that, why not just give him robot henchmen, that could be destroyed without any moral qualms at all?
@@@@@ 10 Christopher: Maybe the cape was useful, like training wheels, when Supergirl was still getting the hang of flying, and she continued to wear it even after she didn’t really need it anymore because it looks classy and elegant.
The deaths of the henchmen are stormtrooper deaths–no blood and guts and they all look the same; I think their voices are the same too, aren’t they? It’s nothing we haven’t seen before. And despite the eternal worry of Helen Lovejoy, kids can handle it. I hope the sequel is as edgy as the original.
@25/Matthew: Good explanation.
@26/Spike: “It’s nothing we haven’t seen before.”
That’s exactly my problem. We see it all the time, and I got sick of it sometime in the late 1980s. I remember how worried people were back then about how violence in entertainment might desensitize children to it. As a teen and young adult, though, I got hypersensitized to it. The more casual killing I saw in movies and TV, the more it repelled me.
And yes, kids in the audience can handle fictional deaths, but that’s not even remotely the point. The point is that, for Dash, those deaths aren’t fictional. Real people are dying around him, in part because of his actions, and that’s something he’s never faced before. It’s just not believable that someone could go through that and not be affected by it at all. It’s not about what the audience can handle, it’s about whether the characters are being written in a believable way. The tendency of movies and TV to treat human death as an inconsequential thing that the characters have no reaction to is not at all believable, not consistent with the way real, non-psychopathic people react to real death.
I loved this movie so much. There is so much social commentary that is right on point, and dealing with pain, loss and emotion, but that never bogs things down and makes them ponderous. Through it all, there is a sense of fun and exuberance. They took all the stuff I loved from comic books and spy movies, turned it on its head to show that some of the tropes wouldn’t work well in the real world, and in the end just had a whole bunch of fun with it!
I am with AeronaGreenjoy @18 on the awesomeness of Edna. Edna rules. Edna is the only thing I remember clearly about this movie, having only seen it twice, once in the theatre and once on DVD.
I also agree strongly with CLB on the gratuitous deaths of human beings and the unrealistic way the kids are unaffected by those deaths. Yes, they should have been henchbots.
I remember being mildly annoyed by the gendered nature of some of the characters’ superpowers…but this goes back to my awareness as a teenager c. 1970 that the females in the Legion of Super-Heroes all seemed to have powers that were either mental or what I might call “negatively physical”: shrinking, invisibility, removing light. Nothing flashy or overtly strong. Nothing that would win a competition. The guys were Strongest or Fastest or Smartest. “The Incredibles” didn’t play with the gender tropes in any interesting way, to my mind. And the focal/POV characters are the male ones. Though Edna rules.
@29/Saavik: As I recall, Bird’s intent was to use the powers as symbols for the characters’ personalities and attitudes. Bob’s strength represents his role as the anchor of the family, Helen’s stretching represents her need to extend herself as far as she can to fulfill her responsibilities and adapt to conflicting demands, Violet’s invisibility represents her shyness, and Dash’s speed represents his youthful energy and hyperactivity, while Jack-Jack’s… everything… I guess is representative of the undefined potential of a newborn. So if their powers are gendered, I suppose it’s because their roles and personas are influenced by the gender assumptions of the ’60s-ish society they inhabit.
Then again, Helen has a power that’s usually possessed by men in the comics — Reed Richards (the ultimate ’50s dad), Plastic Man, Elongated Man. She’s also very clearly the smartest and toughest member of the family and in no way passive or helpless. And I think the film’s focus is as much on Helen and Violet as it is on Bob and Dash, or nearly so.
Anyway, I’ve always wondered why they stuck with calling Helen Elastigirl when their legal people must’ve told them there was already a DC Doom Patrol member by that name. There must’ve been something different they could call her, besides “Mrs. Incredible.” Elastic Lass, maybe? Elastic Lady? Stretchy Le Femm
@1 Totally agreed about the missile sequence. Two things: #1 I adored the dialogue showing off what a legit pro pilot Mrs. I is, which contrasts fantastically against the “mom” the audience has seen and immediately establishes that she is a badass before she even uses her powers in the mission. #2 Hunter delivers the line “There are children on board!” so damn WELL it brings me to tears every time, and I don’t even have kids.
This is also my favorite Pixar movie, and one of my favorite movies in general. As is the Iron Giant. When I was a snarky teen, I didn’t think I could ‘allow’ animated films to grace my top films lists, but the older I’ve gotten and rewatched these movies, the more I’ve come to love these two.
A quick comment on depiction of death: Definitely agree. Legend of Korra’s season 1 finale had quick and casual ejecting pilots from planes that didn’t interrupt dramatic or comedic scenes, for a demographic that I’d argue isn’t tooo far off (narratively-driven animated YA/teen-and-up SF). Per @29 above, henchbots would have been a great idea! Further characterization of syndrome, collect data on supers, and go the Samurai Jack route of henchslaying!
@30 CLB– yes, the characters’ super-powers are meant to reflect their personalities, which does indeed just move my uneasiness one step deeper. I remember hearing Bird say that Violet’s invisibility refers to teenage girls’ frequent wish to be invisible…well, yes, that’s the problem, isn’t it. A problem for which actually achieving invisibility is not the solution. (I know, she has forcefields, too, which does help some.) And while I agree that Helen and Violet are more than sidekicks, it still seemed to me that Bob, not Helen, was the POV character in the first part of the movie, and that boys were more likely to want to be like Dash than girls were to want to be like Violet.
@32–the word “henchbots” is mine, but the idea was CLB’s, @10 & 21. He’s right, it would have fit well with Syndrome’s overall scheme.
@33/Saavik: But Violet’s arc in the movie was to overcome her shyness and desire to be invisible, to learn to be confident and assertive. At the end of the movie, she was much more outgoing and sure of herself, no longer hiding behind her hair. So it wasn’t presenting her shyness and passivity as a desirable thing, but as a problem she learned to overcome by gaining more confidence in her abilities.
As much as there are things that I love about this movie (the amazing score, Bob’s beeeeautiful car) I left the theatre disappointed.
FIrst was the power set felt far too close to the Fantastic Four’s:
Bob – strong and tough like Ben Grimm
Helen – stretchy like Reed Richards
Violet – Invisibility and force fields like Sue Storm (this is particularly damning in my eyes; why pair these two exact powers?)
Jack Jack – flame on! like Johnny Storm
But even worse is I left feeling like one message of the movie was that you can only be born great, and not achieve it through hard work. And that bothered me far more.
@34 CLB–All true. Note that I said @29 that I was mildly annoyed (not hugely offended) by the gendered feel of the superpowers, and that had a lot to do with earlier memories of the Legion members (Shrinking Violet, Phantom Girl). Still, while she does learn to assert herself and use her powers, I wished those didn’t include the power of invisibility.
Also, to make myself clear, I have zero objection to movies where the male characters are the focal/POV characters. Such movies (and literature) can be deeply feminist-friendly. I found “The Incredibles” fun, but a bit stale gender-wise. That’s true of lots of other great stuff from the last twenty years that has much else to recommend it, though: Harry Potter, the Simpsons, etc.
@23 I agree strongly about the strong pacing of the film’s sequences. My particular favorite is the sequence where Dash is being chased by the henchguys. It’s a great piece of character development, of “showing, not telling,” as Dash figures out how to use his powers in all sorts of different situations and in different ways. The high point comes in that moment where he suddenly realizes he’s going so fast he’s running on the surface of the water, and, despite the immediate danger from his pursuers, he bursts into delighted, triumphant laughter–it’s so consistent with Dash’s personality; it’s exactly how a kid like that would react.
@35/vinsentient: “Violet – Invisibility and force fields like Sue Storm (this is particularly damning in my eyes; why pair these two exact powers?)”
Well, it does have a basis in the character thing again, the powers as analogies for her shyness — invisibility lets her hide, force fields let her keep other people away. Which actually makes a bit more sense than Sue Storm-Richards’s case, because Lee & Kirby originally made her just invisible and then retroactively added a force-field power to make her more useful in action, with the only connective logic being that the force fields were themselves invisible.
“But even worse is I left feeling like one message of the movie was that you can only be born great, and not achieve it through hard work. And that bothered me far more.”
I don’t think that’s the message at all. I think the message is that you achieve greatness by embracing what makes you unique rather than trying to conform. The authorities, who outlawed superpowers, and Syndrome, who wanted to give everyone equal powers, were both making the same mistake — trying to eliminate diversity and impose uniformity rather than letting people express and embrace what made them different.
And it certainly did take hard work, both physically and emotionally, for Bob and his family to develop their powers and their teamwork to the fullest. It didn’t come instantly. The powers they were born with were just their potential. It was how they chose to use that potential that let them achieve greatness.
And that’s why the last few minutes of the movie strike such a sour note for me. Here’s Dash, who’s so fast that even a camera trap can’t catch him, play-acting in a race in which everybody else is actually competing and taking a ribbon that somebody else might have been overjoyed to actually earn. Why wasn’t he in something that might actually have challenged him, like golf or archery? It was too much “Ha ha, lookit awesome me, foolin’ the mundanes” for me.
@40 It may not be the intended message of the film that ” that you can only be born great”, but that would seem to be a logical implication of any superhero film in which the protagonists are gifted with their superpowers by no act of their own.
But I don’t see how it is more of an issue with The Incredibles than with the latest Spiderman reboot, or X-men or Avengers or Fantastic Four or Superman film. It is simply a natural consequence of its genre.
@40/ad: “It may not be the intended message of the film that ” that you can only be born great”, but that would seem to be a logical implication of any superhero film in which the protagonists are gifted with their superpowers by no act of their own.”
Not at all — for the simple reason that not every character who gets superpowers becomes a hero. Think about it: every superpowered hero has dozens, even hundreds of superpowered enemies to fight. So, statistically speaking, it’s rare for someone with superpowers to choose to use them in a positive way for the good of others. Most people who get superpowers will use them for evil, or for petty personal gain. What makes the few heroic superhumans great isn’t the fact that they have powers, but the fact that they choose to use them to help others instead of themselves. So it is, absolutely, the result of the protagonists’ actions and choices rather than the circumstances of their birth or some other accident.
If you look at the great superhero origin stories, they’re not just about the powers, they’re about the choices. Superman’s origin isn’t just about being born to a highly evolved race and empowered by Earth’s yellow Sun, it’s about being raised by a kindly, loving family and following his father’s advice that he needed to use his powers for good. Spider-Man’s origin isn’t just about being bitten by a spider, it’s about him losing Uncle Ben because he failed to realize the great responsibility that came with his great power. Batman’s origin isn’t just about being a really smart rich kid, it’s about experiencing a tragic loss at the hands of Crime and resolving to use his gifts to prevent others from having to suffer the same loss. The choice is the important part.
@1 Interesting point about the portrayal of death in film. I agree that death is treated very casually in most movies. In fact, I think superheroes and actions movies make the same mistake, it’s OK to kill someone and, even more, is a way to ascert your humanity.
There was a io9 article that can explains better than me. Here is the link. http://io9.gizmodo.com/5416376/reclaiming-your-humanity-means-killing-a-whole-lot-of-people
In the case of children’s death, I think the most common solution to show that the villain was definitely defeated is to show that it was captured, goes to prison or died by their own mistake (Syndrome’s fate in The Incredibles). The latter one is a “Disney death” i.e. the villain dies but it isn’t the hero/ine’s fault and it’s offscreen or isn’t depicted directly (think of every Disney film, specially Scar and Gaston’s deaths).
One think I remember noticing in Up is that it was a Disney’s death, I think it was the first in a Pixar film, if my memory doesn’t betray me. Also, I think that it was a flaw in that film, a wasted opportunity to not explore when your idol becomes your enemy.
Killer scene was Elastigal checking out the reflection of her butt in the shiny metal walls of the evil guy’s lair.
Not sure why Bird is referred to “middle-aged Hollywood screenwriter;” while he certainly writes for movies, he was educated as an animator, that’s how he started in Hollywood and when he wasn’t able to get a job in animation, he was not going around writing non-animation scripts, on spec or otherwise.
Bob Parr’s attorney is far better and more accurately described as his government handler.
Otherwise, this is reasonably well-researched for these sets of Pixar re-watches.
@42 So a handful of people who are given superpowers decide to be good, most people who are given superpowers are evil, and the people who aren’t given superpowers are all helpless victims? How inspiring. I’ve always slightly disliked the fact the superhero stories give all the agency to the people with superhuman powers.
(Conversely, I always had a certain admiration for the way Tolkien made his heroes – hobbits – weaker than the average person. He gave his heroes subhuman powers, before sending them of to fight a minor god. That is impressive.)
@45/ad: “and the people who aren’t given superpowers are all helpless victims?”
Huh? Plenty of comic-book heroes don’t have superpowers — Batman, Green Arrow, Black Widow, Hawkeye, and many more. And aside from the heroes, there are plenty of non-powered supporting characters who are anything but helpless victims — Commissioner Gordon, Alfred, Lois Lane, Mary Jane Watson, Foggy Nelson, etc.
You’re still preoccupied with the powers and thereby missing the point, which is that it’s not about the powers, it’s about the personal choices. With or without powers, heroes are people who choose to give their all to help others instead of themselves.
This is one of my favorite Pixar films. I didn’t find the henchmen’s deaths gratuitous just cartoon. NO one ever dies in cartoons. Robots would have worked too and been fine. I am really looking forward to the sequel next year.
@42 What you refer to as the “Disney death,” when the villains fall victim to their own evil schemes, goes back a long way further than Disney. It is a trope that pulp fiction stole from older sources, a way of giving the audience the vengeance they want to see while leaving the hero with clean hands.
Trunks and belt over tights and leotard was from circus strongmen (and before that, fitness wear, making Lycra the modern equivalent), but I thought capes were from when they were still just about plausible street wear, in which you could creep about at night stalking criminals, while hiding your identity underneath. Then creep away unnoted by the police. The modern equivalent would be the duster.
Capes were dissed in Watchmen before the Incredibles.
The article mentions the score as helping to give the film its 60s Bond movie vibe, but credit must also go to the Mid-century modern look of the architecture and furniture everywhere.
@42: “One think I remember noticing in Up is that it was a Disney’s death, I think it was the first in a Pixar film, if my memory doesn’t betray me.”
Didn’t you just describe Syndrome’s death as a Disney death? How can Up be the first if The Incredibles did it first?
@46/CLB but in the Incredibles, I don’t think we are talking about heroes versus villains. If I remember the movie right, it was about *supers* specifically. So in-universe, are any of the heroes just “ordinary” (for Batman/Green Arrow versions of ordinary) people? Or are they all powered?
@52/vinsentient: Even if that’s so, that doesn’t mean the movie is saying people are born great. Like I said, the point of the story is that it’s about what you do with it — in this case, not about heroing vs. villaining, but about whether you hide away your uniqueness and try to conform to society’s standards of what’s “normal” or embrace your individuality and make it a positive even when society tells you it’s wrong. The movie is absolutely not about elitism — it’s about resisting oppressive conformity. Yes, an overly literal reading can give the impression that it’s about the power to dominate others, but the superpowers are just an allegory for the greater personal power we have when we embrace who we are rather than repressing it.
@51 Yes, you’re right, it was a lapsus. I meant that the death in Up was the first time I thought about the “Disney death”, that didn’t happened when I saw The Incredibles.
“If everyone’s super, then no one will be.”
I loved the Incredibles and consider it a nearly perfect family film, except for this theme, epitomized by Syndrome, the villain. I took it as pure Randian propaganda, and the whole thing gave me a queasy, uncomfortable feeling, especially since it was encased in such a wonderfully entertaining and creative package.
@55/Michael: I still think that wasn’t the intended reading, though I can see how the film could give that impression. As I see it, it’s not saying that some people deserve to be better than others, it’s that people deserve to express the things that make them different. People can be “super” in different ways. Some are better at some things, others are better at different things, so there’s no one single hierarchy of “better” and “worse.” Syndrome wasn’t trying to unlock people’s potential — that was how he sold it, but really he just wanted to impose uniformity, to eliminate diversity and uniqueness by making everyone the same. Which made him just as bad as the government that forced superheroes to hide their powers and pretend to be “normal.” There’s a reason this film was set in a world evoking the ’50s and early ’60s — a time when American culture highly prized conformity and was suspicious or hostile toward any divergence from it, and when those who were different had to fight hard for the freedom to express their differences.
Aw, I regret missing the beginning discussion of this one, as this probably still is my favorite Pixar movie. And it’s one of those movies that as an adult with a family, I can even more greatly appreciate the way family, middle age, etc is portrayed.
Regarding the possible Randian/elitist themes, the thing is I think Syndrome COULD have been a super – he could have used his abilities and tech to serve others and in a way that would be his power. But that wasn’t his true goal.
@CLB in a lot of ways I agree with you about the casual use of death (and mass destruction/collateral damage) in action movies. This particular movie doesn’t seem to trigger that for me, although I agree that dramatically, it should at least be acknowledged. I actually am not a fan of the ‘robots’ idea because it seems like movies use that as a way to avoid dealing with the issue entirely and not address the fact that sometimes the stakes are high. But they could have had the situation setup that the kids were able to disarm or otherwise elude their captors without having to kill them.
@57/Lisamarie: Yes, “sometimes the stakes are high,” but the “100 Mile Dash” sequence, as it’s called, is not one of those times. It’s meant to be a joyous, fun scene about Dash discovering his full potential for the first time and reveling in the freedom. That’s not an appropriate place to deal with the complexities of life and death.
Also, as I said, Syndrome’s plans already involved using killer robots, so it would simply have been a natural extension of that, quite logical in story context. It would’ve even created some resonance between father and son, both having heroic sequences where they fought off killer robots. Maybe they could’ve had a bonding moment over it later on, with Bob tearing up with pride that his son had robot-smashing moves rivaling his own.
Of course, nonlethally eluding the captors could work too. As I said, it’s quite a fanciful cliche to have every vehicle explode the instant it crashes; the crashes could’ve been survivable, just bad enough to render the vehicles unflyable and leave the pilots dazed. Indeed, they could’ve given Dash a moment of heroism by having him dart back and save a henchman’s life by pulling him out of the vehicle before it explodes. What’s more heroic and noble than rescuing an enemy? It would’ve helped underline that he was a good kid, that even while rejoicing in his own power, he still cared about not harming anyone with it. That would’ve been a lot less, shall we say, Randian than what we got.
There might be hints of elitist attitudes in The Incredibles, but in Bird’s Tomorrowland, they became overt to the point where they turned the movie into something unpleasant.
@56/ChristopherLBennet Your explanation is similar to how I read the film.
In fact, for those who see elitism, I think it can be argued that the film suggests that individuals embrace their own “eliteness,” regardless of how it manifests. I don’t think it is bad that kids hear the message “some people are smarter/stronger/faster/etc.” It’s a reality; that fact shouldn’t make anyone feel bad, whether they are the “super” or the “normal.” It’s just the way it is, and kids should look for their own strengths, not worry that they don’t live up to a peer.
As a teacher of gifted students, both Violet and Dash mirror some ways that these students learn to adapt in an environment where they aren’t encouraged to extend themselves. Some kids learn to hide their intelligence, so that they aren’t teased or viewed as different. Others act out in class as a way to draw attention away from what they might perceive as a negative difference. (This isn’t to say that these patterns don’t exist in other talent areas…my experience is with intellectually gifted students).
And, in the end, it’s how you use whatever talents you have that matters. An gifted individual who wastes his/her abilities or uses them for malfeasance (Syndrome) has less societal value than one with average skills who uses what they have to do good.
This article sheds more light on the film in regards to its message on education: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/21/weekinreview/when-every-child-is-good-enough.html
@60/CPRoark: Right. As a somewhat gifted child myself, I always found it bewildering that the people around me shamed me for being smart because they pre-emptively assumed I wanted to shame them for being less smart. And it wasn’t just the students — sometimes it was the teachers. Once in high school, a teacher talked contemptuously about Mensa, which I belonged to at the time, assuming it was a place where smart people sat around constantly making fun of everyone else’s stupidity. I protested (though I’m not sure how much of this is what I said at the time and how much I wished afterward that I’d said) that in my experience, it had been just the opposite, that Mensa members talked about every conceivable subject except that. That it wasn’t a place where smart people gathered to attack others, but rather the one safe space where they could get away from being constantly attacked and resented for who they were and feel free to be themselves without judgment. The meetings I went to were just about socializing and playing games and passing the time with friends and people of like interests, just like any other social gathering.
After all, like I said, different people excel at different things, so being better at one specific thing, like intellectual skills, doesn’t make one intrinsically superior to everyone else; it just means one’s skills are in a different direction. And otherwise we’re all just people, as vulnerable and needy and unsure of ourselves as most everyone else. Our skills are part of who we are, but not the entirety of who we are.
I have a question: Was Mirage a super? She never used a power that we are able to see, but her name suggests she does have a power. Syndrome would have loved having a super under his thumb as his employee.
@62 I don’t think so. Nothing that we see on screen, definitely. Also I don’t see syndrome employing a super