RogerBW's Blog

The Incredibles 30 May 2023

2004 animated superheroics, dir. Brad Bird, Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter; IMDb / allmovie. What does a superhero do when superheroes are illegal?

This feels a lot like a midlife crisis film. Sure, Mr Incredible has moved from superhero to lousy office worker because superheroics have been banned rather than because he got old, but an awful lot of the feel of this film is pointing up the boringness of responsible adult life versus the fun of independent youth. (Brad Bird was 36 when he got the idea for the core plot, trying to juggle family with a filmmaking career going through a bit of a slump, and 47 when the film was released.)

Watching now it's important to remember that this was 2004 and every second film wasn't about superheroes; it wasn't quite such a tired and overdone idea as it looks to me from here in 2023. In fact what we get here feels very much like the same sort of delay one often sees with SF moving from book to film: someone falls in love with a particular author or story concept as a teenager, spends the next thirty years working his (almost always his) way up the film production hierarchy until he can finally get some say in what's made, and what he wants made is the thing he remembers from when he was a kid and could still get excited about stuff. What we have here is a Silver Age comics sensibility, in which we can have great big energetic battles and people complain about property damage but nobody gets hurt. (Except bad guys, some of whom very clearly die but nobody cares.)

(From a technical perspective this was a film that pushed the limits of what Pixar could do – that's another thing that's largely lost watching it now, unless you take an interest in the history of computer animation.)

Bird quotes sixties spy-jinks as one of his inspirations, and I confess that I don't see it. Yeah, villain with a secret island lair I guess, but the ethos is much more modern that you'd see in James Bond or The Man From U.N.C.L.E.. Still, John Barry was invited to contribute a score in the classic style… and pointed out that he had actually moved on musically in the last forty years.

It does what it does. It has its moments (along with everyone else I'll praise Edna Mode). I think I expected a bit more from a film that people raved about at the time.

I talk about this film further on Ribbon of Memes.

[Buy this at Amazon] and help support the blog. ["As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases."]

Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.

Search
Archive
Tags 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 3d printing action advent of code aeronautics aikakirja anecdote animation anime army astronomy audio audio tech aviation base commerce battletech beer boardgaming book of the week bookmonth chain of command children chris chronicle church of no redeeming virtues cold war comedy computing contemporary cornish smuggler cosmic encounter coup covid-19 crime cthulhu eternal cycling dead of winter doctor who documentary drama driving drone ecchi economics en garde espionage essen 2015 essen 2016 essen 2017 essen 2018 essen 2019 essen 2022 essen 2023 existential risk falklands war fandom fanfic fantasy feminism film firefly first world war flash point flight simulation food garmin drive gazebo genesys geocaching geodata gin gkp gurps gurps 101 gus harpoon historical history horror hugo 2014 hugo 2015 hugo 2016 hugo 2017 hugo 2018 hugo 2019 hugo 2020 hugo 2022 hugo-nebula reread in brief avoid instrumented life javascript julian simpson julie enfield kickstarter kotlin learn to play leaving earth linux liquor lovecraftiana lua mecha men with beards mpd museum music mystery naval noir non-fiction one for the brow opera parody paul temple perl perl weekly challenge photography podcast politics postscript powers prediction privacy project woolsack pyracantha python quantum rail raku ranting raspberry pi reading reading boardgames social real life restaurant reviews romance rpg a day rpgs ruby rust scala science fiction scythe second world war security shipwreck simutrans smartphone south atlantic war squaddies stationery steampunk stuarts suburbia superheroes suspense television the resistance the weekly challenge thirsty meeples thriller tin soldier torg toys trailers travel type 26 type 31 type 45 vietnam war war wargaming weather wives and sweethearts writing about writing x-wing young adult
Special All book reviews, All film reviews
Produced by aikakirja v0.1