The Incredibles 2004

15 years after the glory days of super heroes; Bob Parr (Nelson), a former super hero named Mr. Incredible, loses his job due to a short temper from not being able to save an innocent citizen. When emptying out his desk contents back at his house Mr. Incredible comes across a secret message from a woman named Mirage. Mirage is asking for his help to destroy an evil robot on a remote island. Mr. Incredible goes and does his job, comes home and starts to get back into shape. He gets called onto another mission and ends up getting captured by the inventor of this evil robot. This inventor; known as Syndrome (Lee), had been Mr. Incredible’s biggest fan that turned evil after he lost faith. While Mr. Incredible had been getting into shape he also enlisted the help of notorious fashion designer Edna Mode (Bird) to make him a new suit. She ends up making suits for all five members of the Incredible family since they are all super heroes. Mrs. Incredible (Hunter) discovers that her husband had been to see Edna, and this prompts her to investigate, which leads her to finding out that Mr. Incredible had been captured. Mrs. Incredible leaves to go save her husband and both her older kids, Violet and Dash, stow away on the plane and end up coming with to rescue their Dad. This rescue mission eventually turns into a mission to save the entire Earth from evil invading robots, controlled by Syndrome, and in time brings the super heroes back out of the wood work.

Director Brad Bird seems to have a knack for directing science fiction animated features; his other having been The Iron Giant. Both of these pictures have the old sci-fi film feel to them like the old War of the Worlds or The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Being able to create that illusion is a fantastic feat to accomplish in live-action and is just as incredible in animation. The Incredibles was always the child of Brad Bird, seeing as he had been trying to get it to the silver screen for years before joining the PIXAR force. Bird finally made it happen and not only did it safely land on the silver screen, but it exploded on it with charisma of super heroic proportions. The Incredibles is the absolute best super hero film out there and I feel it will stay that way throughout my entire life. It is not as though the characters were actual known super heroes before the movie; however, they have similar powers to the famous super heroes of comics past and present, and now rival them in popularity.

The characters of the film are definitely what attract you to it because almost anyone can relate to them. The Parrs are a regular nuclear family that most everyone can find common ground with because most people have been members of a family dynamic like that. Even the villain, Syndrome, is easy to relate to since most everyone idolizes someone at sometime, and his part of the story was what happens when that goes awry. Even Frozone, Edna Mode, and Mirage are likable and that is because they and all the others are such logical characters that go with the story. All of the characters fall into place so…incredibly in this film. I think there is no better word to describe The Incredibles, than incredible, or rather there has yet to be a more appropriately titled film than this one.

These characters would be nothing without two things; one being the complementary cast, and the other being the story of the film itself. The cast is full of goodies like Craig T. Nelson who we all know as Coach; being a big masculine man with a softer sort of voice he became perfect to play the super strong yet still sensitive Mr. Incredible. Jason Lee plays Syndrome who is this evil and conniving former super fan gone wrong. The funny part about Lee’s role is that Mr. Incredible calls him Brody real quick and by accident, when in fact it is to pay honor to Kevin Smith’s character of Brody that Lee played. Brody was a comic book collecting geek in one of Smith’s films, thus, an Insider joke. Even the director picks up a role in the film as the accomplished former super hero costume designer Edna Mode. There even was Samuel L. Jackson in the mix and he is always good because he has been in numerous action films and even played the super villain Mr. Glass in Unbreakable. I could be wrong about this but during the scene when Frozone and Mr. Incredible are in the jewelry store it seems as though it is a tribute to the scene when Sam played Zeus in Die-Hard 3 and was in the subway answering the phone.

Anyway these characters would be nothing without the cast and the cast would have nothing to work with without the story. The story of this film has a lot of interesting twists and turns and can go one way at one moment and a completely different one the next. My favorite parts of the story would have to be when the kids start to harness their powers and discover what they are truly capable of doing with them. I also like how much hate Syndrome had that fueled his entire life and I found it interesting and terrifying that he slaughtered so many superheroes to get where he needed to be before his plan was fool proof. The whole thing was like a very elaborate comic book, one that has at least four parts to it, maybe even graphic novel material. This story really grasps the edge of your seat entertainment that an action and super hero flick should. From the moment you lay eyes on the movie you will be hooked to watch to the end because it really is incredible. They even did the usual PIXAR thing and created many programs to assist with the animation like one that created and calculated the physics, one that helped in the illusion of skin, and even a program that created unimportant characters such as henchmen and crowd members. The one thing I never found out about The Incredibles was what “Kronos” meant. As you can tell I absolutely loved this movie and think you will too, so just go and watch it already and have an incredible time viewing this work of art.

Run time: 115 mins.

Directed by: Brad Bird

Written by: Brad Bird

Starring: Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Jason Lee, Samuel L. Jackson