A brief interlude
Nov. 6th, 2004 05:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edgThe Incredibles
Starring Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Samuel L. Jackson, Sarah Vowell, Spencer Fox, Jason Lee, and Elizabeth Peña
Written and Directed by Brad Bird
If you are reading this, you have probably already seen this movie. So instead of telling you up front to Go See This Movie, I will instead tell you to Go See This Movie Again.
For those of you who haven't seen the movie, saw the spoiler warning, and are reading this anyway, The Incredibles is, you may have gathered, the story of a family of superheroes returning to superheroing after fifteen years of being normal human beings. The story begins in the late 1950s, with superheroes like Mr. Incredible, Elastigirl, and Frozone - and supervillains like Bomb Voyage - at the height of their power and influence. Then disaster strikes: Mr. Incredible saves someone who didn't want to be saved, the "victim" sues, and this opens the door for thousands of lawsuits against superheroes, who are forced underground in order to avoid being forced out entirely.
Fifteen years later, Mr. Incredible - now in not-an-exile-really as Bob Parr, insurance adjuster; he's married to Elastigirl, now Helen Parr, and they have three children: Dashiell, nicknamed "Dash", who has super-speed; the shy Violet, who - much like Marvel's Sue Storm - can turn invisible and project force fields; and infant Jack Jack, who has not manifested the ability to walk, let alone any super-powers. Bob, Helen, and the family seem outwardly to be the very picture of an early-70s sitcom family - albeit one with superpowers. But when Bob receives an invitation from a secretive superhuman called Mirage - on the same day that he's gotten himself fired by finally getting fed up enough to throw his supervisor through three walls - he decides to put on the tights and return to duty one more time... and when he doesn't come back from his second "company conference", Helen and the kids have to hunt him down and bring him home - and defeat the supervillain Syndrome, a figure from Mr. Incredible's past who plans to install himself as the first of the new generation of superheroes by defeating a robot he built expressly for that purpose.
Hijinks ensue.
The Incredibles is a nearly-perfect fusion of the superhero genre and spy movies; the villain's island lair, Nomanisan, could have been taken straight from a James Bond film, although it's perfectly at home in the world of the movie. Brad Bird, whose previous work includes The Iron Giant, clearly knows what he's doing - as does Michael Giacchino, the composer, whose score is a modern melánge of 1940s Superman serial themes and 1960s spy-film scores, with occasional ventures into big band and modern-classical.
There are a few moments in the animation that are slightly jarring. In particular, the water effects are almost too good - while the water is almost perfectly realistic, the characters are not, which reinforces that we're watching an animated film - and at several points, the characters (especially Mirage) move as though they were taken directly out of Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, which seemed odd to me. However, these aren't errors, per se, and don't really detract from the movie; they're just sort of there, visual artifacts that I probably, in fact, should have expected.
A note to parents: there are some scary scenes in this movie. This is arguably (a case could be made for Finding Nemo having this distinction) the first Pixar movie to show not only death but the effects of death, in particular the skeletonized remains of a murdered superhero. This is the first Pixar movie where characters die on-screen (although they're very careful to shift the "camera" during almost all of these, and there's no gore in the deaths that are shown).
So. In conclusion: Go see this movie again. Pixar deserves all of the money it makes from this film.
Four Right Hands of Doom.
Starring Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Samuel L. Jackson, Sarah Vowell, Spencer Fox, Jason Lee, and Elizabeth Peña
Written and Directed by Brad Bird
If you are reading this, you have probably already seen this movie. So instead of telling you up front to Go See This Movie, I will instead tell you to Go See This Movie Again.
For those of you who haven't seen the movie, saw the spoiler warning, and are reading this anyway, The Incredibles is, you may have gathered, the story of a family of superheroes returning to superheroing after fifteen years of being normal human beings. The story begins in the late 1950s, with superheroes like Mr. Incredible, Elastigirl, and Frozone - and supervillains like Bomb Voyage - at the height of their power and influence. Then disaster strikes: Mr. Incredible saves someone who didn't want to be saved, the "victim" sues, and this opens the door for thousands of lawsuits against superheroes, who are forced underground in order to avoid being forced out entirely.
Fifteen years later, Mr. Incredible - now in not-an-exile-really as Bob Parr, insurance adjuster; he's married to Elastigirl, now Helen Parr, and they have three children: Dashiell, nicknamed "Dash", who has super-speed; the shy Violet, who - much like Marvel's Sue Storm - can turn invisible and project force fields; and infant Jack Jack, who has not manifested the ability to walk, let alone any super-powers. Bob, Helen, and the family seem outwardly to be the very picture of an early-70s sitcom family - albeit one with superpowers. But when Bob receives an invitation from a secretive superhuman called Mirage - on the same day that he's gotten himself fired by finally getting fed up enough to throw his supervisor through three walls - he decides to put on the tights and return to duty one more time... and when he doesn't come back from his second "company conference", Helen and the kids have to hunt him down and bring him home - and defeat the supervillain Syndrome, a figure from Mr. Incredible's past who plans to install himself as the first of the new generation of superheroes by defeating a robot he built expressly for that purpose.
Hijinks ensue.
The Incredibles is a nearly-perfect fusion of the superhero genre and spy movies; the villain's island lair, Nomanisan, could have been taken straight from a James Bond film, although it's perfectly at home in the world of the movie. Brad Bird, whose previous work includes The Iron Giant, clearly knows what he's doing - as does Michael Giacchino, the composer, whose score is a modern melánge of 1940s Superman serial themes and 1960s spy-film scores, with occasional ventures into big band and modern-classical.
There are a few moments in the animation that are slightly jarring. In particular, the water effects are almost too good - while the water is almost perfectly realistic, the characters are not, which reinforces that we're watching an animated film - and at several points, the characters (especially Mirage) move as though they were taken directly out of Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, which seemed odd to me. However, these aren't errors, per se, and don't really detract from the movie; they're just sort of there, visual artifacts that I probably, in fact, should have expected.
A note to parents: there are some scary scenes in this movie. This is arguably (a case could be made for Finding Nemo having this distinction) the first Pixar movie to show not only death but the effects of death, in particular the skeletonized remains of a murdered superhero. This is the first Pixar movie where characters die on-screen (although they're very careful to shift the "camera" during almost all of these, and there's no gore in the deaths that are shown).
So. In conclusion: Go see this movie again. Pixar deserves all of the money it makes from this film.
Four Right Hands of Doom.
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no subject
Date: 2004-11-06 11:07 pm (UTC)And I think this movie nicely proved Chekhov's statement that if you're going to have somebody get sucked into a jet engine in Act 3, you have to put a cape on them in Act 1, and if you put a cape on them in Act 1, you have to have them get sucked into a jet engine in Act 3.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-06 11:13 pm (UTC)"METROVILLE!"
"When will it get there?"
"REAL SOON!"
Hee. :D
And, yes. Although this was technically a four-act show, plus prologue and epilogue. (Prologue: The Glory Days. Act I: Bob At Work (And No Longer At Work). Act II: Bob Gets A New Job. Act III: Helen Rescues Bob. Act IV: Bob And Helen Rescue Metroville. Epilogue: Dash Comes In Second.)
no subject
Date: 2004-11-07 08:27 am (UTC)