{"id":5279,"date":"2019-02-10T11:45:00","date_gmt":"2019-02-10T16:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/?p=5279"},"modified":"2022-10-25T17:04:34","modified_gmt":"2022-10-25T21:04:34","slug":"the-incredibles-2-2018-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/the-incredibles-2-2018-movie-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Brad Bird’s The Incredibles 2 traps superheroes in motels and courtrooms"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Brad Bird’s The Incredibles 2<\/em> sure went down easy when I saw it in a theater a few months ago, but it suffers on rewatch on the small screen. And needless to say, it was shortly rendered wholly obsolete by the best animated superhero movie of all time, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the real (and best) story is of course the Parr family’s shifting dynamic and gender roles since the original film in 2004<\/a>, the surface plot doesn’t hold together. For an animated family movie about a superpowered quintet, the stakes are weirdly low, and perhaps a little too abstract for little kids to grasp. The surest giveaway that its target audience skewed slightly older than Disney\/Pixar’s wheelhouse is the subplots granted to the adult parents and teenage daughter, but no material for Dash, whom I would think little kids would most identify.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Brad
Brad Bird as Edna Mode, contemplating upcoming The Incredibles sequels.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Instead, most of the narrative conflict revolves around some vague business about superheroes being outlawed, which seems inconsequential when the Parr family is nevertheless allowed to operate as a black ops team under government supervision. Public sentiment never turns against them, so there’s nobody to convince that superheroes are pretty great, actually. This plot point is likely a kid-friendly response to the story arc of the Marvel<\/a> superhero movies (particularly Captain America: Civil War<\/em>), but how many little kids worried about Violet, Dash, and Jack-Jack’s legal status?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather than draw from contemporary Marvel movies for inspiration, I wish Brad Bird<\/a> had instead cribbed from 1960s Marvel print comics. Forget the government or law, and instead borrow from Spider-Man the idea of a hero working for the common good even when the public distrusts him, or crib from the Fantastic Four a more cosmic setting. An adventure on an alien planet or in another dimension would be more fun than courtrooms and motels, while still allowing for the movie’s real themes: Elastigirl coming into her own, and Mr. Incredible learning to share in the nurturing and caregiving of their kids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But of course, you can always rely on Pixar’s fine craft even when they are not at their best. The visual design and animation is superb, and the voice casting is perfection. Holly Hunter, Craig Nelson, Jonathan Banks, Samuel L. Jackson, and Sarah Vowell all fully own their characters. I just wish all of this had been in the service of a movie that would stand for generations, like the best of Disney and Pixar’s works.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brad Bird’s The Incredibles 2 sure went down easy when I saw it in a theater a few months ago, but it suffers on rewatch on the small screen. And needless to say, it was shortly rendered wholly obsolete by the best animated superhero movie of all time, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. While the real […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5280,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,2],"tags":[1700,32,136,137,1270,138,1871,135,139],"class_list":["post-5279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-3-stars","category-movies","tag-1700","tag-animation","tag-brad-bird","tag-craig-t-nelson","tag-disney","tag-holly-hunter","tag-jonathan-banks","tag-pixar","tag-sarah-vowell"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/incredibles-2.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa9lhB-1n9","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1389,"url":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/incredibles\/","url_meta":{"origin":5279,"position":0},"title":"Brad Bird Steals His Own Movie in Pixar’s The Incredibles","author":"Chad Ossman","date":"January 10, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Like writer\/director Brad Bird's Ratatouille, The Incredibles is a virtually perfect movie. Bird's astonishing one-two punch for Pixar builds on the animation studio's reputation for deep emotional resonance already earned by Andrew Stanton's Finding Nemo and later reconfirmed by Wall-E. But Bird's films add a welcome maturity that proves the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "5 Stars"","block_context":{"text":"5 Stars","link":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/category\/ratings\/5-stars\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"The Incredibles","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/01\/incredibles-feature.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/01\/incredibles-feature.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/01\/incredibles-feature.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/01\/incredibles-feature.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/01\/incredibles-feature.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":574,"url":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/iron-giant\/","url_meta":{"origin":5279,"position":1},"title":"The Iron Giant","author":"Chad Ossman","date":"January 10, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"The Iron Giant is a sorely underrated animated film, remarkable on so many fronts, not the least for being a rarity (among the company of The Incredibles -- not coincidentally also directed by Brad Bird) as a story truly for the ages and for \"all ages.\" Also one of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "4 Stars"","block_context":{"text":"4 Stars","link":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/category\/ratings\/4-stars\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"The Iron Giant","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/01\/iron-giant.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/01\/iron-giant.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/01\/iron-giant.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/01\/iron-giant.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/01\/iron-giant.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":966,"url":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/finding-nemo\/","url_meta":{"origin":5279,"position":2},"title":"Andrew Stanton’s Finding Nemo is childlike but not childish","author":"Chad Ossman","date":"August 24, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Andrew Stanton's Finding Nemo immediately preceded Pixar's slightly more sophisticated collaborations with director Brad Bird, The Incredibles and Ratatouille. But despite being one of Pixar's more overtly kid-oriented films, Andrew Stanton's Finding Nemo is rife with anxiety and death. In the tradition of its spiritual ancestor Bambi, which also famously\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "4 Stars"","block_context":{"text":"4 Stars","link":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/category\/ratings\/4-stars\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Finding Nemo","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/08\/finding-nemo-feature.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/08\/finding-nemo-feature.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/08\/finding-nemo-feature.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/08\/finding-nemo-feature.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/08\/finding-nemo-feature.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":5104,"url":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/mike-white-brads-status\/","url_meta":{"origin":5279,"position":3},"title":"An Excerpt From the Sequel to Mike White’s Brad’s Status","author":"Chad Ossman","date":"August 29, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"An excerpt from the screenplay to Mike White's forthcoming sequel to Brad's Status, under the working title Get the &%#$ Over Yourself, Brad: FADE IN: INT. 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If Joker is a shallow remix of Taxi Driver and King of Comedy, Ad Astra is a bland smoothie of Solaris and Apocalypse Now, with a cavalcade of stars you may remember from Space Cowboys and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "2 Stars"","block_context":{"text":"2 Stars","link":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/category\/ratings\/2-stars\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Brad Pitt in Ad Astra","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/ad-astra.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/ad-astra.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/ad-astra.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/ad-astra.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/ad-astra.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5279"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7534,"href":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5279\/revisions\/7534"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}