Thiel-a-Vision Review: The Incredibles

The truly wonderful things about Pixar's animated features aren't the quality of their graphics or their sense of humor. Look at the Shrek films from competing studio Dreamworks. They're perfectly serviceable entertainments, colorful, funny...and lazy. Take a by-the-numbers plot, stick in a bunch of Hollywood in-jokes and top the airy confection with a cover of a pop standard, and you've got Shrek. What sets Pixar's output apart isn't the visual whizbangery, but rather the attention to character and story.

Most of the stories told by Pixar aren't just about what they appear to be at first glance. Toy Story could have been successful merely by putting its living playthings through their paces, but the filmmakers went deeper than that: what would toys think about, worry about, when the kids aren't around? In fact, they spend their free time fretting over the possibility of replacement by newer, flashier models. Toy Story 2 ups the stakes, and speculates whether it's better to live forever as an untouched museum item or face abandonment by the children who've grown too old for them. Finding Nemo isn't so much a story about the search for a child as it is about a parent learning to let go.

And so, we come at last to The Incredibles, a tale of forcibly-retired superheroes attempting to fit into a suburban environment. In some ways, this setting isn't as fresh as those of other Pixar entries; there have been a number of post-modern takes on comic-book crusaders. While it offers clever variations on themes of mid-life crisis and marital infidelity, it poses an even more intriguing philosophical question: if everyone is made to feel "special," where does that leave the truly gifted? The Incredibles face a world which expects them to work below their potential in order to make everyone else feel good about themselves.

The central antagonist, Syndrome, is surprisingly nuanced for such a silly-looking villain. While not born with physical superpowers, he possesses great scientific skill which he initially intends to use in order to help his hero, Mr. Incredible. Rejected, he plots a long, dark revenge which goes well beyond the traditional personal vendetta. His goal is not just to kill the Incredibles and become a respected "hero" in their absence, but rather to ultimately make his scientific gizmos so commonplace that everyone will be super...meaning that no one will be. That's quite a motivation for what could have been a one-dimensional mustache-twirler.

One of the pleasures of The Incredibles is that it doesn't pull its punches. As Elastigirl tells her kids, it isn't a Saturday-morning cartoon in which no one will be hurt. Dozens of heroes die (off-screen) as part of Syndrome's scheme, minions are blown to pieces, and there's an intense, harrowing attack on the jet ferrying Mr. Incredible's family. The danger is real, and there are consequences to one's actions.

For my part, the unsung star of the film is Elastigirl, and that's not just because I've always found Holly Hunter's voice sexy. Her character is ultimately the most capable and cool-headed of the supers. The scene in which various parts of her body are stuck in a series of electronic doors isn't just funny, it demonstrates her effectiveness at battling evil. It's disappointing--though not entirely unexpected--that so much of the merchandising surrounding the project is centered around the male characters.

The other hidden hero is music composer Michael Giacchino, who conducts a wonderful, jazzy, John Barry-inspired, '60s action film score, which befits the mood of a film that's often more James Bond than it is Batman.

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