My Favorite Films: The Incredibles (2004) (Saturday Evening Cartoons)

     The Incredibles may be the most perfect superhero movie ever made. Not the most influential, though it is influential and I wish it was more so, not the most ambitious, though it is quite ambitious, but the one with the tightest screenplay. As much as I love films like Superman, Spider-Man 2 and The Dark Knight, all three of these movies have moments of weak writing but not The Incredibles.

     The world of The Incredibles is somewhat inspired by Alan Moore's Watchmen albeit far more optimistic and upbeat. Once inhabited by powerful superheroes, increasing public scrutiny of their actions has caused the government to initiate a relocation program, causing them to adhere to their secret identities. It opens with a brilliant flashback sequence, told in the style of old "On the March" newsreels, showing various superheroes being interviewed. In a moment that will later seem ironic, showing the unpredictability of life, Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) states his desire to settle down and raise a family, while Elastigirl (Holly Hunter) shrugs off a similar suggestion, "Leave the saving of the world to the men? I don't think so." Soon after, we see her and Mr. Incredible exchanging vows.

     The film then cuts to many years later. Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl (now known exclusively as Bob and Helen Parr) have since had three children, Violet (Sarah Vowell), Dash (Spencer Fox) and Jack-Jack (Eli Fucile and Maeve Andrews), and are living a peaceful domestic life in the Metroville. But all is not well. The family is constrained by the societal intolerance of superpowers, unable to use them in public. Bob, in particular, is deeply frustrated by this and he goes through something of a midlife crisis over the course of the film. He longs to "play superhero" again, to relive his exciting, glorious past. Partly this comes from an innate desire to help people. He is constantly getting in trouble at Insuricare, the insurance agency he works for, because he can't help but give needy clients a hand in navigating their insurance, much to the consternation of his overbearing, demeaning boss Gilbert Huph (played by Wallace Shawn).

     But he also simply enjoys the rush, the thrill of taking down bad guys and saving people from danger. He is often heedless of the consequences, or collateral damage this might cause. This is of course what lead to the circumstances he and the other supers find themselves in in the first place. At the beginning of the story we see that he is moonlighting as a vigilante along with his old friend Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson) and hiding this from his wife. In general, Bob is somewhat neglectful of his family. In an early scene where the family is having dinner he is preoccupied, not listening as his wife tells him that their son Dash (Spencer Fox) has gotten in trouble in school. Then he gets fired from his job after loosing his temper with Mr. Huph.

     This puts him in a really difficult position. How will he be able to support his family now? With all of this stress and frustration, Bob jumps at the chance to bring back the good old days when he receives a call from a mysterious woman named Mirage (Elizabeth Pena), offering him a large sum of money if he will resume his role as Mr. Incredible and destroy a rogue robot called the Omnidroid on the remote island of Nomanisan. Once again he hides all of this from Helen, pretending instead that he is going on a business trip for Insuricare.

     After defeating the robot, Bob's life gets better for a time. With the money he earned he buys a new car and is able to spend more time with his family. He also starts working out again, having gotten out of shape in his years as an insurance agent. But it all inevitably falls apart. Helen notices that Bob's old super suit has been ripped and patched up, and she goes to costume designer Edna Mode (voiced by Brad Bird himself) for answers. Edna, who did the patch job for Bob and has also designed brand new super suits for him and his family reveals this to Helen, and gives her a tracker which she placed on Bob's suit. Meanwhile Bob has returned to Nomanisan for another job but he is unexpectedly attacked by a new and improved Omnidroid and it is revealed that his employer is Buddy Pine, a former fan who Mr. Incredible angered by refusing to let him be his sidekick.

     Buddy is a somewhat atypical villain. A sort of Tim Drake gone wrong, his adulation of Mr. Incredible turns into disdain for the entire superhero community after being rejected by him. His plan is to kill all of the former superheroes by offering them the same deal he gave Bob, only to have them destroyed by the Omnidroid. With this accomplished he plans to send the robot to attack Metroville and then use his tech to defeat it, becoming the world's one and only superhero: Syndrome. He's also a representation of Bob's central character flaw, namely his lack of emotional openness. By treating Buddy in a terse, cold manner, he inadvertently created Syndrome.

     Using Edna's tracking beacon, Helen tracks Bob to the island, and Violet and Dash stow away on her plane. On entering the island's airspace they are shot down by Buddy's minions, and act witnessed by the captured Mr. Incredible. Seeing this nearly breaks Bob. Suddenly his whole world has been taken from him. In his rage he threatens to kill Mirage, but Buddy calls his bluff and Mr. Incredible lets her go. Despite his anger he can't commit murder. This experience helps Bob to realize his own failings, he has now seemingly lost the the thing his life revolves around. Its only at this point that he discovers how much his family means to him. When he discovers that they survived the crash and reunites with Helen, he is overjoyed. His character arc is completed when he admits his failings to his family, "You are my greatest adventure. And I almost missed it." He has realized that it is not just being strong that makes him fulfilled, it's being strong for his family.

     The Incredibles is all about family. Not just the idea of a family (as in the Fast and Furious or Guardians of the Galaxy movies, which explore the idea of a surrogate family as a substitute for the real thing) but the hard work and sacrifice necessary to have one. Bob is the central protagonist and the film is focused on his arc but all of the Parr family grow and change throughout the film.

     Helen wants nothing more then to live a happy domestic life with her family. She is not happy about the government relocation program but is willing to make the best of it. She is deeply frustrated with her husband, who seems stuck in the past. Helen is the ultimate supermom. Raising a family is all the more exasperating when two of your children have superpowers and she has to stretch herself (literally and figuratively) to hold the family together. But she's overextending herself, wearing herself thin. On Syndrome's island she is forced to rely on her kids, to let them use their own powers to help each other survive.

     Dash is a prepubescent superhero who has never really had the chance to explore his powers. This causes him to become extremely frustrated, frustration he takes out on his teacher at school and on his sister Violet. Once he is put in a position where he has to use his powers he is at first overwhelmed and a little scared. But it ends up being an incredibly cathartic experience and Dash learns that he is more powerful then he ever imagined. But he also learns to better control his super speed and to use it in a more responsible manner.

     Violet on the other hand is an incredibly shy and vulnerable teenage girl. She is attracted to a boy at school, Tony, but can't summon up the courage to talk to him. Her powers (invisibility and creating shields) reflect this. She is generally ashamed of her powers and wishes she were "normal". Through her experience on the island she gains a great deal of confidence and self reliance and she learns to appreciate her powers as a gift instead of a curse. By the end of the film she is able to ask Tony out on a date.

     Even Jack-Jack, a relative blank slate throughout most of the movie, goes through a change when his powers manifest for the first time. Defeated and humiliated by the Parrs, Syndrome tries to kidnap their youngest child, but Jack-Jack shape-shifts into a series of different, crazy forms, and Syndrome, taken by surprise, lets him go. Through the events of the film the entire family is brought closer together and becomes stronger as a result.

      The film expertly blends comedy and drama. Brad Bird has said that he wanted to juxtapose the extraordinary with the mundane and this is the film's main source of comic relief. Throughout the film there are many scenes where an extraordinary feat is undercut with a moment of mundanity, of everyday, real world problems, like when Mr. Incredible dislocates his back while fighting the Omnidroid. Rather then deflating the tension or drama these moments serve to ground the film and the characters in reality and actually makes the action feel more dangerous and believable.

     The animation was a huge breakthrough for Pixar at the time. They had given life to inanimate objects like toys and to animals like ants and fish, but they had yet to make a film with really amazing human characters. The Incredibles would be the first. The sense of movement in the animation, of weight and physicality, was unprecedented. The film's technical team really had to struggle to create hair, fabric and muscles that looked convincing and worked in a way that was visually believable and they knocked it out of the park. The characters' facial and physical mannerisms are all really expressive, bringing the characters Bird wrote to life. Little moments like Helen's exasperated sigh while sweeping the floor make the characters feel grounded and human. The sets, many of which recall Ken Adam's work on the early James Bond films, are amazingly detailed and the world of the film always feel organic and alive as a result.

     The executives at Disney were, at first, reluctant to produce this film as its story, according to conventional wisdom, seems better suited to live action. Yet The Incredibles makes great use of the limitless potential of the medium. The characters, as I've already emphasized, feel real yet they don't look realistic. They look like exaggerated cartoon characters, very similar to the art style of Brad Bird's first feature, The Iron Giant. A lot of credit has to go to Bird, not only for keeping the production together while letting the animators, storyboard artists, and the rest of the crew contribute and be creative, but also for adding his own unique voice and sensibilities to the film and staying true to his original vision. He wanted to approach the film in a more cinematic way then is usual for animation, using moody lighting and varying the focal length, whereas most animated films exclusively use deep focus. This helps to give the film a really cinematic quality.

     The film is also perfectly paced, taking the time to set up the characters and their world. It doesn't let the action overwhelm the story, setting aside plenty of time for the dramatic moments. The action scenes are built up to in an organic and natural way and once they start it's well worth the wait. They are all expertly crafted. The great thing about action in animated movies is that has to be completely planned and carefully story-boarded beforehand. This usually results in action scenes where the geography is very clear. We always understand where the characters are in relation to each other and we get a clear picture of what everyone is doing. But more then that, this film does a great job making creative use of each character's unique power set and allowing them to work off each other in an organic, flowing way. It rivals the best action set-pieces in live action superhero films. Finally, these action scenes don't feel obligatory or forced, rather they further the plot and serve to bring our characters together. When Bob and Helen come to the rescue of Dash and Violet on the island, we see the family function as a unit for the first time. And when Dash runs away from Syndrome's hovercraft, he is able to tap into his power like never before.

     Micheal Giachinno's score perfectly captures the film's retro vibe. While jazzy in timbre, the score recalls music from 60s spy and crime thrillers like James Bond, Peter Gunn, and Mission Impossible, the score still retains a strong sense of leitmotif, and is both unique and memorable as a result. It also wonderfully accentuates the drama, tension, action and humor of the film, adding an extra layer of emotional resonance without drawing too much attention to itself. The sound design in general is simply fantastic and the film received a much deserved Oscar nomination for Randy Thom's sound mixing.

     The same can be said of the films voice acting. Craig T. Nelson and Holly Hunter imbue Bob and Helen Parr with a great deal of energy, personality and humanity and the two have great chemistry together. Sarah Powell and Spencer Fox are also great as Violet and Dash. As voiced by Jason Lee, Syndrome (who he voices both as a kid and an adult) is an overgrown, manic geek yet he has this underlying sense of menace and deep seated resentment. Samuel L. Jackson is doing his usual thing as Frozone. He's supremely confident and cool yet also has this explosive temper. Wallace Shawn (The Princess Bride) is perfectly cast as Bob's diminutive boss, Mr. Huph and Elizabeth Pena adds a dash a mystery and also a certain dignity to Mirage. But it's Brad Bird who steals the show as Edna Mode. Equal parts Edith Head and Q from James Bond, Edna's bizarre Japanese/German inflection could only be produced by Bird. She steals every scene she's in and Bird knows to use her just enough, so it never becomes obnoxious or annoying.

     It may surprise some people to find out that I didn't see The Incredibles in theaters, given my predilection both for animation and for movies about superheroes. After all I was the perfect age (11 years old) when it was released. Unfortunately (and my long time readers know this already) Sci-Fi and fantasy, and most modern media in general, was mostly taboo in my house when I was young. However, I'd like to think that if my parents had taken me and my siblings to see this film they might have been pleasantly surprised.

     The Incredibles is one of the few modern blockbusters with a really strong, positive portrayal of the nuclear family. Bob and Helen make mistakes but both try their hardest to care for and protect their children. The world around them makes this difficult. The exceptional is frowned upon and, to paraphrase Mr. Incredible, the mediocre is celebrated. Syndrome is, in a way, the ultimate expression of this sentiment. After removing all the supers and becoming the world's one-and-only hero he plans to sell his inventions to the rest of humanity, so that everyone can be a superhero. "And when everyone's super, no one will be." But the family is ultimately able to triumph despite these difficulties. Beyond this, the film really takes time to show those common, everyday problems families go through. Arguments around the dinner table, parental discord, trying to hold on to a dead-end job to support your family, The Incredibles highlights all of these problems and it is that much more relatable and resonant as a result.

     The Incredibles changed the game for computer animation. Its airtight screenplay is bolstered by creative, energetic direction from Brad Bird, stunning animation from the team at Pixar and a really solid voice cast, and all of this is at the service of a really relatable, human story about maintaining a family in this frenetic day and age. It's not just one of my favorite superhero movies or animated films it's one of my favorite films period.