(The Incredibles) Ultimate Pixar Tribute- Movie #6: The Incredibles

by Nick DeVito

Plot: In an alternate reality where super-heroes coexist with humans like regular celebrities, we meet Mr. Incredible (played by Craig T. Nelson). Blessed with super-strength, Mr. Incredible is getting married to Elastigirl (played by Holly Hunter), who can stretch to any shape or size. But while the future looks bright, we learn that super-heroes have now been condemned to hide their powers and act like normal people.

Fifteen years later, Mr. Incredible now has a miserable job as a suburban insurance agent, while having three kids: Violet (who can turn herself invisible and can create force-fields), Dash (who can run incredibly fast), and Jack-Jack (who doesn’t have any powers for the moment).

When Mr. Incredible is fired after an “accident” with his unforgiving boss, he finds a message from a mysterious woman telling him that he will be paid to work undercover as a super-hero again. He lies to his wife by telling her that he’s going to a meeting (she doesn’t know he’s fired), and goes to a far-off tropical island. There he fights against a gigantic robot.

As Mr. Incredible continues to work undercover, his wife gets suspicious and goes to see Edna Mode (who made all of the super-hero’s costumes). Mr. Incredible meets Syndrome (played by Jason Lee) who used to be his #1 fan, and is now trying to kill him. Mr. Incredible manages to fake his own death in order to sneak into his base. There he learns that Syndrome is planning to kill all of the remaining super-heroes in order to make himself look like one and therefore earn fame and money from selling his power-creating inventions.

However, Mr. Incredible is caught when his wife tries to contact him. Meanwhile, Elastigirl takes a jet to the island (along with Violet and Dash as stowaways) in order to find her husband. When they are shot down, it becomes a chase as Elastigirl escapes with Mr. Incredible, and the kids run away from Syndrome’s minions.

When they leave the island to get to the city Syndrome is planning to confront, Syndrome’s plan fails and the Incredibles must fight the newly improved robot before it destroys the city. When they succeed, Syndrome tries to steal Jack-Jack, but as Jack-Jack is revealed to have powers (unbeknownst to the parents), Syndrome is caught in a plane engine where he is killed, and the Incredibles are safe to come out of retirement and fight crime once again.

Well: Talk about an entertaining movie. It might not be the best, but The Incredibles is definitely Pixar’s most fun movie to date. I consider this to be the last Pixar movie I saw when I was still a kid, so I enjoyed it the most.

Of all things, I saw this with all of my friends opening day for my birthday party. The hype for me was incredible, because, in addition to the trailer being good and all of the advertisements driving me like crazy, it was rated PG.

When I was a kid this was huge, because kids usually want all of their friends to know that they have seen a movie more “mature” than anyone else has. Anyway, The Incredibles was the last movie I saw as a true kid, and it left an impression on me for the rest of my life.

But it’s still great to watch today! When I was a kid I paid more attention to the cool action scenes and funny jokes, while as a teenager I paid more attention to the smart writing and nods to other famous comic books (mostly Watchmen and The Fantastic Four). For this reason The Incredibles is a movie everyone can enjoy, no matter what their age is.

The best line is Syndrome saying: “You sly dog! You got me monologueing!” This line ranked #15 in Premiere’s Top 100 Greatest Movie Lines. Although I am tempted to say that Syndrome is the best character, or Samuel L. Jackson as the super-cool Frozone, I soon realized that Edna Mode blows away both of these two characters.

Easter-Eggs:
• John Ratzenberger: Brad Bird almost left out poor John for this first movie of which he directed under Pixar’s name, but he managed to squeeze him in at the last second as the voice of The Underminer in the last scene of the film.
• Pizza Planet truck: Once again, Brad Bird was extremely reluctant to feature any of Pixar’s traditional Easter-Eggs for The Incredibles. In short this is the only Pixar film that doesn’t include the truck. However, some fans still believe it is in here, but hasn’t been discovered yet. Although, in an interview Lee Unkrich stated that the Pizza Planet truck is not in the movie, while addressing what was originally conceived to be it (when the Parrs are speeding down the highway on route to Syndrome) as just a similar looking yellow car. However it has been hinted at that Brad Bird intends to import it into the movie when The Incredibles is released on Blu-ray.
• A113: Brad did, however, love the A113 Easter-Egg (enough to put it in twice)! First is when Mr. Incredible first checks in to the island hotel, Mirage mentions to meet Syndrome in room A113. The second one is trickier. When Elastigirl is sneaking around the base looking for Bob, she goes into the control room. It says that Mr. Incredible is in Level A1, Holding Cell 13.
• Edna Mode is voiced by director Brad Bird.
• When Elastigirl zooms onto her present location with Edna’s “GPS”, it shows a map of where Pixar Studios is located.
• When Mr. Incredible is about to throw the robot’s claw through its power unit (during the last battle), he goes by a blue Hudson car. This is Doc the Hudson Hornet from Pixar’s upcoming “Cars”.
• The two old men making the “old school” jokes are Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston. They are two of the original Disney artists from when Walt Disney himself was still in charge of the company.
• Syndrome’s face is modeled after director Brad Bird.

Final Thoughts: Pixar once again won the Oscar for Best Animated Picture, beating the now legendary Shrek 2 (which became the highest grossing animated movie of all time for 6 years). Pixar once again proved that they could get someone brand new to direct a feature, and make a movie just as successful and enormous as their previous ones.

It also is the only Pixar movie to be focused entirely with humans (although you could argue with Up); this lead to very complex, yet very impressive animation techniques: humans interacting with water, hair physics, fabric physics, and not to mention projectiles. The Incredibles truly is, well, incredible. I give it four capes out of four. ****