The Incredibles

Dir: Brad Bird

2004

****

By 2004 Pixar Animation Studios was a successful company and a household name. Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Monsters, Inc. and Finding Nemo had taken the animation world by storm and Toy Story had already spawned a sequel more successful than the first – something unheard of before for an animated film. The films shared references, characters from other films would cameo, the great John Ratzenberger would voice a character in every film and A113 (pronounced A1-13), the classroom number used by character animation students at the California Institute of the Arts who went on to work for Pixar, have used the number in their work and the number appears in some way, shape, or form in every single Pixar film. The Pixar brand established itself very early on and it is one of the reasons for the studios success. So it was a risk then in 2004 that they decided to get someone in from outside the company. Brad Bird was Pixar's first outside director. He pitched the film to Pixar after the box office disappointment of his first feature, The Iron Giant. There was no good reason why The Iron Giant failed at the box office and it has since become something of a classic. Pixar clearly saw the greatness (and injustice) behind Bird’s debut and gave him a shot. An easy play really considering how original and brilliant his script was, although Bird was old friends with John Lasseter – which undoubtedly helped. Bird was allowed to bring in most of the staff he work with on Iron Giant and, at odds with Pixar films at that point, the animation team was tasked with animating an all-human cast which required creating new technology to animate detailed human anatomy, clothing and realistic skin and hair. I think it is fair to say Pixar reached a turning point with The Incredibles and it remains their most unique film in many respects. It’s a fairly grown up idea and I wonder whether Bird ever secretly wanted to make a live-action film before he settled on an animation. Set in Surburban America in the mid-1960s, public opinion has turned against superheroes due to the collateral damage caused by their crime-fighting. After several lawsuits, the government silently initiates the Superhero Relocation Program, which forces supers to permanently adhere to their secret identities. Fifteen years later, Bob and Helen Parr (Voiced by Craig T. Nelson and Holly Hunter) - formerly known as Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl, and their children Violet, Dash and baby Jack-Jack are a suburban upper-middle class family living around the San Francisco Bay Area in the fictional city of Metroville. Bob dislikes the mundanity of suburban life and his white-collar job selling insurance. Together with his friend Lucius Best, formerly known as Frozone (voiced by Samuel L. Jackson), Bob occasionally relives "the glory days" by moonlighting as a vigilante. After his supervisor prevents him from stopping a mugging, Bob loses his temper and violently injures him, resulting in his dismissal. Returning home, Bob finds a message from a mysterious woman named Mirage (Elizabeth Peña) who convinces him to become Mr. Incredible again, and gives him a mission to destroy a savage tripod-like robot called the Omnidroid on the remote island of Nomanisan. Bob finds the Omnidroid and destroys it by tricking it into ripping out its own power source. Bob finds the action and higher pay rejuvenating; he improves his relationship with his family and begins rigorous training while awaiting more work from Mirage for the next two months. Discovering a tear in his suit, he visits superhero costume designer Edna Mode (voiced by Brad Bird – Bird had approached Lily Tomlin to voice Edna but after demonstrating how he wanted her to sound, Tomlin remarked that he was perfect and that he didn’t need her at all). Assuming that Helen knows what Bob is doing, Mode also makes new suits for the other family members. Leaving for Nomanisan once again, Bob discovers Mirage is working for Buddy Pine (Jason Lee), a disaffected former fan whom Mr. Incredible had rejected as his sidekick years ago. Having adopted the name Syndrome, he has been perfecting the Omnidroid by hiring different superheroes to fight it, adding new features on the occasion that a super wins. Syndrome intends to send the latest version of his machine to Metroville. There, he will secretly manipulate its controls to defeat it in public, becoming a hero himself. Later, he will sell his inventions so that everyone will become equally "super", making the term meaningless and effectively creating a society where everyone possesses equal physical power. Meanwhile, Helen visits Edna and learns what Bob has been up to. Helen activates a beacon Edna built into the suits to find Bob, inadvertently causing him to be discovered and captured. Helen borrows a private plane to head for Nomanisan, but Violet and Dash have stowed away wearing their own suits, leaving Jack-Jack with a babysitter. Helen's radio transmissions are picked up on Nomanisan's airwaves; Syndrome sends several missiles to shoot down the plane; the plane is destroyed but Helen and the kids survive and use their powers to travel to the island. Helen infiltrates the base, discovering Syndrome's intentions to send the Omnidroid to Metroville in a rocket. Distraught by Syndrome's callousness when her life was threatened, Mirage releases Bob and informs him of his family's survival. At the same time, Helen arrives and races off with Bob to find their children. Dash and Violet are spotted and chased by a number of Syndrome's guards, but fend them off with their powers before reuniting with their parents. However, Syndrome captures them, leaving them imprisoned on Nomanisan while he follows the rocket to Metroville. The Parrs escape and travel to Metroville in a spare rocket. True to its programming, the Omnidroid recognizes Syndrome as an opponent and targets the remote on his wrist, making him incapable of controlling it, while simultaneously knocking him unconscious. The Parrs and Frozone team up to fight the Omnidroid. The battle is indecisive until Bob comes across the remote, allowing him to control one of the robot's claws and use it to destroy its power source. Returning home, the Parrs find Syndrome, who plans to kidnap and raise Jack-Jack as his own sidekick to exact revenge on the family. As Syndrome is traveling upward to reach his jet, Jack-Jack's own superpowers start to manifest and he escapes from Syndrome midair. As Helen catches Jack-Jack, Syndrome manages to board the plane but Bob throws his sports car at Syndrome, causing him to be sucked into the jet's turbine, killing him and causing the aircraft to explode. The Parrs survive with Violet's force field, though the plane destroys their house when the fuselage falls. Three months later, the Parrs witness the arrival of a new super-villain called the Underminer (voiced by John Ratzenberger – just when it was looking like he wouldn’t be featured). They put on their superhero masks, ready to face the new threat together as a family. Bird imagined it as a homage to the 1960s comic books and spy films from his boyhood and he initially tried to develop it as a 2D cel animation. When The Iron Giant became a box office disappointment, he reconnected with old friend John Lasseter at Pixar in March 2000 and pitched his story idea to him. Bird and Lasseter knew each other from their college years at CalArts in the 1970s. Lasseter was sold on the idea and realised how personal it was to Bird. The Incredibles as a concept dates back to 1993 when Bird sketched the family during a period in which he tried to break into film. Personal issues had percolated into the story as they weighed on him in life. During this time, Bird had inked a production deal with Warner Bros. Feature Animation and was in the process of directing The Iron Giant. Approaching middle age and having high aspirations for his filmmaking, Bird pondered whether his career goals were attainable only at the price of his family life. He later said, "Consciously, this was just a funny movie about superheroes. But I think that what was going on in my life definitely filtered into the movie." Indeed, the characters are loosely based on his own family and some of their experiences. During production, Hayao Miyazaki of Studio Ghibli  visited Pixar and saw the film's story reels. When Bird asked if the reels made any sense or if they were just "American nonsense," Miyazaki replied, through an interpreter, "I think it's a very adventurous thing you are trying to do in an American film." He wasn’t wrong. The Incredibles was the first and only Pixar film to be rated PG for parental guidance. The bad guy dies at the end – something unheard of in the world of children’s animation. It’s certainly more adult than you’d expect, with more in common with comics like Powers and Watchmen than anything suitable for kids. I think this is why everyone liked it, it was far more universal and youngsters of 2004 can revisit it years later and not find themselves disappointed. I liked everything about it, although it was clearly just a mix of Fantastic Four and Addams Family Values with a 1960s setting. That said, I have nothing against using other ideas to create something unique and that is what Bird and Pixar have done. It remains one of the animation studio's most ambitious and unique pictures.