Fourteen years is a mighty long time. It’s especially a long wait between one movie and its follow-up. Imagine my delight, as
I settled in to watch Incredibles 2,
to see a short video prepared by the movie’s main cast, both apologizing for
the heavy delay and thanking the fans for their continued interest in the year
2018. I wouldn’t have thought to do it, but it makes perfect sense. People don’t
go to the cinemas like they used to, and that goes extra for sequels. It’s a
lot to live up to, even for a studio as legendary as Pixar Animation. With
expectations so high, it only makes sense to do one thing – continue the Story.
The Story as we left it saw the defeat of supervillain and
would-be sidekick Syndrome. Incredibles 2
picks up seconds after the previous film’s ending, as the Parr Family engages
in battle with the Underminer. No spoilers here, as it happens in the first ten
minutes, but if your initial impression of this bad guy was of him being a
sight gag or punchline, surprise! It turns out the Underminer is extremely
capable. Even though The Incredibles - with help from Frozone (Samuel L.
Jackson) - manage to disable his massive drill with no casualties, they are
still detained immediately after the fight because…oh, yeah.
There’s been no time skip in the Incredibles Universe and
vigilante superheroes are still very
illegal. This on top of the damage to the town leads Elastigirl (Holly Hunter)
and Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) to once again take up their civilian
identities as Helen and Bob, along with their children: Violet (Sarah Vowell),
Dash (Huck Milner) and Jack-Jack (Eli Fucile).
Incredibles was a movie extremely deft at depicting our
average everyday problems in an entertaining way. Bob was out of a job, but
secretly supported his family by getting back into shape and going on covert
black ops superhero missions. The secret is out now, and the Parrs are again
unemployed. Supers need to eat, too, so both parents mull the option of finding
a day job. That is, before they are approached by a fast-talking CEO named Winston
(Bob Odenkirk) along with his business partner and sister, Evelyn (Catherine
Keener).
These are two new, interesting characters with a crazy idea:
Make America Super Again. No, not like that.
They want to change the laws against Supers by changing public perception, and
they want to do that with the best hero of them all! Elastigirl.
Here is where the Story really starts. The movie hits you
first with the obvious Mr. Mom tropes that come with the former breadwinner
being sidelined, but this is a Brad Bird feature and there are levels. On Bob’s
end: how does he juggle the needs of his three young kids, while supporting his
wife and dealing with his latent insecurities after failing early on? On Helen’s
end: how does she rectify engaging in very public illegal activity for the
benefit of her family after telling them repeatedly that the Age of Supers was
done?
That family dynamic is part of why the first installment of
this series is so beloved. It was warm and tense and tender and volatile but,
above all, it was real. As realistic a family unit as we’d seen in any feature,
animated or not. Violet is entering adolescence, with all the pitfalls that
brings. Dash is advancing into a higher grade and more difficult course work,
struggling to keep pace (lol).
Jack-Jack gets his own paragraph; not just because he’s that
good in the movie. Despite being a baby with no actual words spoken, he is a
very dynamic character. His powers manifest in very odd ways. If he isn’t
phasing through walls, he’s lighting himself on fire; if he isn’t using the
Shadow Clone Jutsu, he’s teleporting; if he isn’t walking through another
dimension, he’s transforming into a monster. There is plenty of subtext throughout
this movie. A lot of it, Brad Bird couldn’t get too far into because The Mouse
was watching, but as someone on the Spectrum, I do appreciate the development
of Jack-Jack in this movie.
Jack-Jack was developed much better than his two older
siblings. It might have been by design, or maybe they ran out of real estate in
what is a pretty quick movie. Either way, it limited Dash and Violet – two characters
that featured heavily in The Incredibles
– to reacting to the plot as opposed to moving it along. They just didn’t have
anything to do until the Final Act of the movie, when they help resolve the
conflict.
Another critique on that note: the antagonist didn’t exactly
pull their weight. Screenslaver wasn’t as lame as Evil Vision from Solo. Mark up for that, I guess. But yet
again, we see my pet peeve of villains in film who just…do shit. I understand
that in the realm of fiction, and even outside it, people react to things in extreme ways, which leads them to hurt the group of people that most reminds
them of their pain. A good villain can do this, but they still need proper
motive. Screenslaver’s motive threatens to fall apart if you think about it too
long. And the big reveal of who is really behind the evil scheme? The only way
you miss it is if you go to the bathroom for…I don’t know, thirty minutes?
This didn’t ruin the movie, of course. This is a film made
with children in mind. Which, to be fair, made Helen and Evelyn’s two abrupt
libertarian debates even more jarring than they would be in a more mature
feature. In a movie that is otherwise perfectly paced, we literally stop cold
for these conversations. I am, of course, a fan of constructive interaction
between female characters on screen (there are several examples here) but Brad
Bird, please. These kids don’t know about the free market or gig economy, and they don’t
care. Tell the story.
Because when he does tell the Story, it’s excellent. Brad
Bird is an amazing action director. Every sequence with Elastigirl is incredibly
creative in both the use of her pliable abilities and the environments
around her. She looks like a big deal, as do the other heroes, returning and
new.
Part of why I love animation lies in the fact that Incredibles 2 even exists. For most
other movies, a lay-off of fourteen years would be enough to scrap any plans of a sequel. People get older,
people move on, schedules get full. It’s almost not worth the effort. In the
world of animation, there is no such problem. If you can coordinate everyone’s
Rolodex, you can pick up, quite literally, where you left off, no matter if it’s
four months or fourteen years between productions. It’s not quite better than The Incredibles. With over a decade to
wait though, this is an achievement and may well be remembered as a classic.
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