Talking About Stuff, with Mike and Christiana

Presentation

All right then, first of all let me state that The Incredibles is probably the best looking DVD I own. The transfer is absolutely incredible. (Note: I refuse to be intimidated into avoiding the proper word, simply because it's in the title. So there. Nyah.) The colors are vibrant, the picture sharp. On DVD, the look of the film is simply breathtaking. Likewise, the sound is awesome. I can easily see this DVD becoming a good demo film for home theaters in Circuit City and the like.

The film itself? Even better than I remembered it.

I saw it twice in the theater, and as I popped in the DVD it felt like it had been much more than the 4 months or so since I'd last seen it, it felt like an old friend, and it captivated me yet again.

Every character feels genuine and interesting. Each is given their own unique arc, and yet they all mesh, just like their respective superpowers combine to form a brilliant super-family. The message is comprehensible, but still deep and far more sophisticated than you might expect from a so-called "children's movie". It's funny. It's tense. It's exhilarating. It's... Well, I could go on and on that way.

There are so many great character moments in this movie. Bob getting chewed out by his petty, greedy boss. Edna's pep-talk to Helen. Violet discovering that her super-suit turns invisible. Dash running all out for the first time. Violet using her force field to save Dash from the guard. Helen getting caught in not one, but two different doors. Bob unable to hurt Mirage, even when he thinks he has nothing to lose. Syndrome holding Jack-Jack hostage... I could go on and on that way too.

Theme

(Note: Those of you who don't like to "overthink" movies have permission to start skimming now.)

The movie's message really resonated with me, at the same time as it made me think. There are layers to it that may not be immediately apparent. Of course, there is the base level of talented people having to pretend they are "normal" in order to "fit in." Nothing wrong with that at all. A lot of children's entertainment features the "Just Be Yourself" type message. But the Incredibles, in addition to communicating that message with an uncommon poignancy, also takes it a few steps further.

The 'self-esteem' movement tends to take that "Just Be Yourself" message and carry it to the "Everyone is special," place. But as Dash points out: "That's just another way of saying no one is."

So what do we make of that? Simple logic reveals the truth of it, but what is the application? A superficial examination might conclude that some people are simply "better." Fine enough for those who are, but what about everyone else? Thus the complaint of poor Buddy Pine. "You always say to be true to yourself," he protests, "but you never say what part of yourself to be true to!"

Because he has no powers, Mr. Incredible refuses to take him seriously, dismisses him quite rudely in fact, with disastrous results. Buddy feels betrayed and disrespected, and so he turns his genius to evil instead of good. (Note: this also sets up one of the secondary themes, namely that treating people poorly, even when it seems a small thing, can have much larger consequences.)

Buddy's downfall is in falling victim to an insidious trend where people try to make "Everyone is special / equal" mean "Everyone is the same." I'm reminded of "A Wrinkle in Time" where the main character, Meg, observes: "Equal and alike are not the same thing at all."

Buddy idolized Mr. Incredible, and wanted nothing more than to be as super as him. To help people the way Mr. Incredible did. Therefore, he reasoned, he had to become just like Mr. Incredible. Only trouble? He wasn't just like Mr. Incredible. He had no powers. What he did have was an incredible aptitude for inventing things, like his rocket boots. But rather than using his inventions to help people, he tried to use them to impress Mr. Incredible, so that Mr. Incredible would welcome him into the Superhero club. He thought that the only way to help people was to do it just like Mr. Incredible did.

Amadeus, another fantastic movie, features a similar theme. Salieri wanted nothing more than to make beautiful music, but while he was able to write music that was 'pretty good', he knew that it wasn't great. Then Mozart comes along, and his music is great, and it seems to come so easily to him. Salieri is bitter and he seethes with envy.

How many of us have felt that kind of envy? Whatever it is that we really want to do, we can always see someone who is better at it than we are. Whether it's writing, or sports, or salesmanship, there is always someone who is better, and the truth is that, no matter how much we work at it, no matter how good we get, there will still be someone better.

Yet Mozart wasn’t great at everything. His personal life was a shambles, and he was terrible at courtly politics and handling money, skills at which Salieri excelled. Salieri could have taken Mozart under his wing, helped him, taught him. And through his efforts, Mozart could have lived to write much more great music. But that wasn't good enough for Salieri. He wanted to write the great music, and he decided that it wasn't fair that he couldn't. Therefore he began turning his efforts toward destroying Mozart, rather than helping him, just like Buddy and Mr. Incredible.

Mr. Incredible could have stopped it from happening. Unfortunately, he had fallen victim to the same idea. In his mind, Buddy's lack of powers meant that he was useless, and worse than that, he got in the way. Now, it's somewhat understandable, because Buddy was in the way, but Mr. Incredible could have treated him with respect. Acknowledged his desire to help people and encouraged him to find his own way to help, using his own skills and talents. Instead, Mr. Incredible dismissed him like a pesky kid, setting up years of bitterness and ultimately, a super-villain.

Thus, when the film suggests that: "'Everyone is special' is just another way to say that no one is", that is not meant to imply a moral judgment that some people are "special" and others are not, but rather stating that no one should be satisfied by mediocrity.

We should self-reflect and find what it is that we are good at, in what weare special, then strive to excel in that area, rather than setting ourselves up for disappointment by trying to be just like someone else. When we pursue something that we have no talent for, we are dooming ourselves to mediocrity (As I've written about before). At the same time, we should not abandon something that we do have talent and passion for, simply because someone else may be better. It's a balance.

And balance is another one of the movie's central themes. At the beginning, Bob wants to go out and help people. Certainly a noble motive, but he's risking his family in order to do it. It's a complex situation. Then he gets the job from Mirage and he feels "Super" again. He starts working out. He has more money, more energy. He's excited to be living again. But he's lying to his wife and family to do it, risking his life without telling anyone.

At the end of the film, even after their tremendous victory over Syndrome's Omnidroid, they still don't go completely public. They remain in hiding, but with a new sense of balance. They're "normal" most of the time, but they can be super when they need to. Dash is allowed to go out for sports, but is encouraged to "come in second." Is it a perfect situation? Of course not. They will have many frustrations ahead of them. But it's better than it was before, because they are allowed to express both halves of themselves. It's a struggle to keep the balance, but isn't that what life is for all of us?

None of the four members of the Incredible family had the same powers, but they were each able to use their power for the benefit of the whole. Should Dash have felt bad that he wasn't invulnerable like his dad? Should Violet have felt bad that she couldn't stretch like her mom? Of course not. Without Dash's speed and Violet's invisibility and force fields, the family wouldn't have been able to save the day.

Extra Features

Whew! *wipes brow* That was a mouthful. So, moving on, how about those special features?

Probably the most notable of the extras on this 2-Disc set is "Jack-Jack Attack" a short piece that tells the story of what happened to poor Kari the babysitter, left to care for baby Jack-Jack while the rest of the Incredible family was off adventuring.

Visually, it's just as good as the original film, so that's good, but not entirely unexpected. How is it as a short? Well, it's entertaining, but it's mostly just kind of funny for it's own sake without the real resonance that the full film had. Nothing wrong with that, of course. It's definitely worth a watch, but it doesn't necessarily add anything to the experience of the actual film.

One of the more bizarre special features is another short, this time purporting to be a 1960s cartoon based on the 'likenesses' of Mr. Incredible and Frozone. It's surreal, because it's incredibly cheap and cheesy-looking, with limited animation and the mouth movements done by superimposed human mouths. (Remember the cartoon Butch was watching as a kid in Pulp Fiction? It's like that.) The cartoon is a little funny, but mostly weird by itself, yet the real fun comes in watching it with the commentary. The commentary is done by Mr. Incredible and Frozone, in character. Supposedly they agreed way back in the day that their likenesses could be used in a cartoon, but they had to go into hiding before it aired, so they never got to see it. Now they are watching it for the first time and doing a commentary. Frozone's escalating horror at how crappy it looks, ("I look like a white guy! And what the hell's with that rabbit?") paired with Mr. Incredible's stubborn optimism, ("Maybe it gets better.") is pretty damn funny.

The film has a number of deleted scenes, though as an animated film, a scene that gets cut is generally never animated to completion, so the deleted scenes are all in animatic (moving storyboards) form. Some of the scenes are interesting, especially an alternate opening that features Syndrome back when he wasn't going to be the main villain. But even better than the scenes themselves is hearing writer/director Brad Bird and producer John Walker discuss why they were cut.

I found all the parts with Brad Bird, including the documentary about the making of the film, and his audio commentary, especially interesting, because he's very much a writer at heart, and he spends a lot of time talking about various inspirations and the ways the story evolved over time, and why. For example, in the original version, Helen didn't fly the plane. Instead, she had an old friend who was a pilot, and who was supposed to die in the plane crash. This was intended to show the audience that things were serious and that there was a definite risk and cost associated with what they were doing. As such, he was really reluctant to lose the scene even when John Lasseter (director of Toy Story, Toy Story 2, A Bug's Life, and the upcoming Cars) suggested making Helen the pilot. It was only as the story came together and he realized that the tension and the stakes already felt high enough, so that the loss of that scene, no longer outweighed the positives for Helen's character from making her the pilot. As a writer myself who has had to make similar decisions in my own work, it's really fascinating to hear from a writer whom I really admire, discussing the same sort of issues.

There's also a lot here for the people interested in the animation process, and the animators are even given an entire audio commentary to themselves. The extra features really do a wonderful job of demonstrating exactly how much work went into this film. (There's an amusing moment in the director's commentary where he observes: "We're going to have to stop just looking at each scene and talking about how hard it was to do or else that's all we'll talk about.") The special features aren't quite as elaborate, say as "Lord of the Rings", but that would be a lot to ask. The only thing I might have liked to see was a cast commentary, but even still, the extra features on this set are some of the best I've seen, and it's a good thing too, because I've enjoyed learning everything I can about this... Incredible film.

P.S. Be sure to check out the "Top Secret" superhero profiles, including the sound clips. There are some pretty funny Easter Eggs as well. You can see how to find them pretty easy if you do a web search for them, but as a quick hint, on some of the menu screens, if you leave it in one spot for ~20 seconds, something will change. Have fun!

Ewan McGregor plays Rodney Copperbottom, an earnest young inventor robot who has big ideas and wants to change the world, just like his idol, Mr. Bigweld. Now, I love Ewan to pieces, but they didn't really give him a whole lot to work with here. Rodney is a likeable enough fella, but he's not really super-interesting from a dramatic point of view. Mostly he gets to be determined, then surprised, then disappointed, then determined again. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Robin Williams is in the same hit-and-miss form that many of his comedy projects have taken lately. Certainly very funny in some parts, but other lines will have you sighing and waiting for the movie to get funny again.

Plenty of other interesting actors and actresses in other roles, but the only other one I particularly noticed as interesting was Paul Giametti (from Sideways, among others,) as Tim, the puppet-like gate guard. I'll avoid telling you why, but he's funny.

And some parts of the movie are funny. Despite my growing impatience with the sort of thing I mentioned above, the movie did get quite a number of laughs out of me. I don't want to imply otherwise. It's just that the jokes are hit-and-miss. Plenty fall flat, but they come so rapid-fire that you don't have to wait long for another good one.

What's the plot? Well, the broad strokes are your run-of-the-mill evil giant corporation out to screw the little guy, but I have to say that the details of it were actually pretty interesting. Rodney's hero, Mr. Bigweld, always tried to help people. His slogan was: "No matter what you're made of, you can still shine!" Whereas the evil corporate slimeball is trying to force everyone to upgrade. "Why be you, when you can be new?"

It really has kind of a nice take on the materialistic culture and the assumption that something has to be new and fancy in order to have value. Rather than the simplistic "corporations are bad" message, it contains the idea that companies can actually do good things, when led by the right people. So ultimately, it came down to a conflict between two philosophies: Self-improvement, or purchased upgrades?

In the end, the film isn't terribly heavy, and it looks pretty slick. Parts of it are funny, other parts are exciting. It's not something I'd make an effort to see again, and I won't be purchasing it on DVD, but I definitely don't regret seeing it. Time and money well spent, but now having seen it, I consider our business concluded.