Incredibles 2 (2018) review

In 2004, Pixar released what many consider to be one of their greatest films to date, The Incredibles. The film notably served as the first Pixar film that wasn’t directed by one of the studio’s primary group of filmmakers. However, director Brad Bird isn’t that far off from being a member of Pixar’s core creative team, as he was one of the many iconic animators who attended the California Institute of the Arts in the 1970’s alongside the likes of Pixar mainstays like Pete Docter and Andrew Stanton. With The Incredibles, Bird gave audiences a delightfully entertaining homage to the Silver Age of comics that starred a family of superheroes whose powers were tied directly to classic familial archetypes, like the father who’s expected to be strong for his family or the mother who gets pulled in all directions. Upon its release, the film grossed over $633 million worldwide and won two Oscars for Best Sound Editing and Best Animated Feature. Critics and audiences lauded it for its animation (which was touted as having broken new grounds for creating human characters), thrilling action sequences, and a layered plot that delved into subjects that one wouldn’t normally expect to see in a film geared towards younger audiences (e.g. going through a mid-life crisis, potential inter-martial affairs, etc.). And it ended on a big cliffhanger that effectively made it one of the few Pixar films (arguably the only one, even…) where a sequel was almost universally demanded by fans. Well, it may have taken 14 years, but Brad Bird is back once again with the continuing adventures of everyone’s favorite superhero family in Incredibles 2. And fear not, folks, as that long gap in time between the releases of these two films does not prevent this sequel from being one of the most satisfying follow-ups in recent memory, sure to delight both those who grew up with the original and those who didn’t grow up with it but now get to experience its majesty for the first time.

Incredibles 2 opens right where the first film left off, with retired crime-fighters Bob Parr AKA Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) and his wife Helen AKA Elastigirl (Holly Hunter) having returned to their old lives of being superheroes. Not only that, but they’re now joined by their two oldest kids as well; Violet (Sarah Vowell), who can turn invisible and project force fields, and Dash (Huck Milner, replacing Spencer Fox from the first film), a speedster. However, due to the government laws that had forced Bob, Helen, and their fellow superheroes to go into retirement 15 years ago still being in effect, the family is forced to once again return to their normal lives. To make matters worse, Bob and Helen learn from their government ally Rick Dicker (Jonathan Banks, replacing Bud Luckey from the first film) that the ‘Superhero Relocation Program’ that has been keeping their secret identities secure is set to be discontinued, putting the family’s entire future in jeopardy. That is, until Bob, Helen, and family friend Lucius Best AKA Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson) are approached with an offer by Winston Deavor (Bob Odenkirk), the owner of one of the top telecommunication companies in the world, DEVTECH. Having been a fan of superheroes ever since he was a kid, Winston and his sister Evelyn (Catherine Keener) propose a plan to use their influences in the media to help revitalize the public’s perception of superheroes. The Deavors end up selecting Helen to lead their operation as they consider her to be the ‘least-destructive’ of the three. Despite this, Bob offers to watch the kids so that Helen can do her thing and hopefully allow them all to return to doing what they do best. Thus, Mr. Incredible finds himself facing his most difficult challenge yet… being a stay-at-home dad who must deal with everything from Violet’s dating struggles to figuring out the powers of the family’s infant son, Jack-Jack. Meanwhile, Helen finds herself dealing with a new tech-savvy villain known as the Screenslaver who threatens to undermine the whole operation with his ability to brainwash people using hypnotic imagery.

The superhero genre has obviously evolved quite a bit since the release of the first Incredibles, primarily thanks to the global powerhouse that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Thus, Brad Bird has noted that this was one of the biggest challenges in developing the sequel because he didn’t want to follow a lot of the genre’s common narrative tropes. Thus, he instead focused on the key aspect that made the first film the classic that it is, the family dynamic. Oh sure, like its predecessor, there’s plenty of fun action sequences in this film and it isn’t afraid to explore some of the various facets of its world of superheroes. But at its core, this is still a film about a family who struggles to deal with the consequences of having superpowers in a world that isn’t that accepting of those who have them. Some may argue that the plot is mostly just a role reversal of the first film, this time having Elastigirl being the one who goes out to fight crime instead of Mr. Incredible, but it’s a lot more than that. The first film was about Mr. Incredible overcoming the mid-life crisis that he found himself in as a former superhero who’s forced to go into hiding and become an average citizen in a frustrating dead-end job. As for the sequel, it’s about how Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl are both forced to make sacrifices to ensure their family’s future. Elastigirl’s crime-fighting requires her to leave her family for an extended amount of time while Mr. Incredible is forced to stand back and let his wife go out and revel in all the superhero glory when it’s clear that she’s quite arguably better at it than him. Because of this, the film ends up boasting a strong amount of emotional depth that is on par with what we got out of the original.

All of this is paired nicely with the film’s excellent animation, which truly does showcase how far computer animation has evolved since 2004. Like the first film, the animation in this film does an excellent job in capturing that vibrant comic-book style, with some scenes even managing to give off a nice 2-D vibe. As for the characters, the majority of the first film’s cast return to reprise their roles in this film, save for Jonathan Banks taking over for the late Bud Luckey as Rick Dicker and Huck Milner taking over for Spencer Fox in the role of Dash a la Hayden Rolence taking over for Alexander Gould as Nemo in Finding Dory. These two do a nice job in taking over their respective roles and all the returning players slip back into their parts with ease. As noted earlier, the film does a fantastic job of balancing out Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl’s roles in the story while still making the latter the central character this time around, something that Holly Hunter very much revels in. But Craig T. Nelson also gets a lot of great material to work with as well, with Mr. Incredible getting a lot of the film’s best humorous moments due to his increasing exasperation over all the crazy shenanigans that he gets into while trying to take care of the family, like struggling to understand the new ways to learn math. And of course, there are all the memorable supporting roles, from the always-reliable Samuel L. Jackson as the suave Frozone to director Brad Bird himself as the Parrs’ legendary costume designer Edna Mode to newcomers like Bob Odenkirk and Catherine Keener as the Deavors. 

The concept of Pixar doing sequels to their various animated classics has been a heavily contentious topic amongst the studio’s fanbase. While sequels in general always tend to get a bad reputation from many film buffs, it seems as if Pixar’s sequels face even more scrutiny from those who feel that the studio is ‘above all that’. Sure, the Toy Story sequels managed to be just as critically-acclaimed as the original 1995 film that started it all for the company, but the same can’t exactly be said for follow-ups to films like Cars and Monsters Inc. Heck, even the upcoming Toy Story 4 has been attracting tons of skepticism from those who felt that the series had reached its proper conclusion with 2010’s Toy Story 3. In short, as I said before, The Incredibles seemed to be the only Pixar film that most fans genuinely wanted a sequel to given how it ended on a major cliffhanger (a cliffhanger that, rest assured, does get a satisfying conclusion in this new film). Thankfully, Incredibles 2 does manage to live up to all the hype surrounding it by being yet another fun animated superhero adventure that never loses sight of the strong family dynamic that defined its predecessor. This, in turn, allows the film to stand out amongst all the superhero films that have come out since the original Incredibles in 2004. It’s clear that Brad Bird took his time to ensure that the sequel would be up to par with its predecessor, and he more than delivers in that regard. I won’t go as far as to compare these two films just yet seeing how I’ve only seen the sequel once compared to the countless times I’ve seen the first film, but I’d say that they’re evenly matched. Either way, for fans of the original film, you’ll be more than satisfied with this long-awaited follow-up while younger audiences get to experience everything that made the first Incredibles a modern masterpiece.

Rating: 5/5!

Tomorrowland (2015) review

If I were to list my Top 10 favorite directors currently working today, Brad Bird would definitely be at the top of the list. While this former animator’s directorial filmography is rather short with only four films to his name before this year, he’s like Christopher Nolan or post-‘Alien 3’ David Fincher in that he’s yet to make a bad film. And quite frankly, all of his films are pretty much masterpieces. His directorial debut, ‘The Iron Giant’, unfortunately was a flop at the box-office when it was first released in 1999 but thankfully has gotten the attention it deserved in recent years. Thankfully his next two films were much bigger hits as he cranked out two of Pixar’s best films to date, 2004’s ‘The Incredibles’ and 2007’s ‘Ratatouille’. And in 2011, Bird made the bold leap from animation to live-action, immediately striking gold with his live-action debut, ‘Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol’. Now he’s back with Disney and teaming up with ‘Lost’ creator Damon Lindelof for ‘Tomorrowland’. No, it’s not a film that’s based off of the themed land found in most Disney parks. It’s instead a tale of optimism inspired by Walt Disney’s vision of the future, resulting in a truly original film… that at the moment is getting generally trashed by critics. This film currently has just a 49% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Well believe me when I say that this is not a ‘49% on RT’ film… far from it. It’s a bold, ambitious and, most of all, truly captivating sci-fi film that provides us something that we’ve sort of lost in recent years… hope.

During the 1964 New York World’s Fair, aspiring kid inventor Frank Walker (Thomas Robinson) tries to show off his newest invention, a jetpack, to the heads of the fair. While his creation is generally ignored, he attracts the attention of a young girl named Athena (Raffey Cassidy), who leads him to a futuristic utopia known as ‘Tomorrowland’. In the present day, optimistic teen Casey Newton (Britt Robertson), the daughter of one of NASA’s engineers (Tim McGraw), gets into trouble with the law when she attempts to prevent NASA from taking down the Cape Canaveral launch site. When she gets out on bail, she finds a mysterious pin among her things which, unbeknownst to her, was ‘given’ to her by Athena. When she touches it, she finds herself ‘transported’ to the same fantastical world of ‘Tomorrowland’. But after the pin ‘runs out of power’, she tries to find a way to ‘get back’. Her quest ends up leading her to the grown-up Frank (George Clooney), who’s become fairly pessimistic and disenchanted with the place as it is revealed that he got ‘kicked out’ some time ago. When the two of them suddenly find themselves being hunted by robotic ‘police’, Casey and Frank, along with Athena, begin searching for a way to return to Tomorrowland. Along the way, Casey soon learns that she could be ‘the one’ who is capable of fixing the future of Earth as we know it before time runs out.

First of all, let me make something clear. Despite being called ‘Tomorrowland’, this film is not about the theme park land that shares its name. In fact, I’m pretty sure that the futuristic utopia in this film is never once actually referred to by name as ‘Tomorrowland’. Not only that, but despite being inspired by Walt Disney’s ideas of the future, Disney himself isn’t brought up once by name either despite what certain advertisements of the film, especially an international trailer that made it seem like the theme park ‘was just a cover for the real thing’, may have claimed. So if you’re thinking that this is just nothing more than a ‘marketing gimmick’ by Disney to promote the company… it isn’t. Instead, ‘Tomorrowland’ is an enthralling sci-fi story based around the ideals of optimism and hope for the future, two things that have definitely been lacking in our current society in recent years.  At the same time, Bird and Lindelof also made sure not to rush into things too quickly when it came to the utopian world that they created. In other words, this film is more about the journey to the location than it actually is about the location itself. As a result, this film was solidly paced and had great build-up. I was completely engaged by it from start to finish.

On that note, let’s talk about the third act of this film, which has basically been the most divisive aspect of the film amongst critics. This seems to be a recurring thing with Damon Lindelof’s work… his endings always piss people off (see ‘Lost’ and ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ for further proof of that). Now while I’ll concur that the final pay-off may not have necessarily been as strong as the filmmakers had hoped, personally I don’t see why this ending is ‘as bad’ as some people have been claiming it is. From what I’ve been reading online, apparently a lot of the backlash towards this ending is due to the reveal of who the main ‘villain’ is. But the thing is… I kind of already knew who it was going to be going in anyway because there were certain articles online that were building the character up as such. Ultimately, the real problem with this reveal is that the character in question only plays a generally minor role in the overall story. This character is seen at the beginning of the film and then is not seen again until the third act. So in short, this film’s villain is fairly underdeveloped. But it’s not like it ruins the movie or anything as everything else in the film more than makes up for it. It’s just like with the Marvel Cinematic Universe films and their villains. The villains of the MCU may not necessarily be the most memorable or well-written villains ever but it’s not like the films are supposed to be all about them. And to me the same rule applies with ‘Tomorrowland’. Everything else in the film is so great that I can forgive the film for not having the ‘best’ of endings.

This film just has so many great talented people working on it, both behind and in front of the camera. The latter of which is especially true when talking about this film’s excellent cast, especially its trio of leads. Of course we all know that George Clooney is going to be good in this film because, well, he’s George Clooney. And he is great in this, as he really gets into the role of the generally pessimistic curmudgeon that is older Frank while still managing to maintain his trademark charm. But it could argued that the biggest standouts of the film are actually his two younger co-stars. Britt Robertson truly shines in the role of Casey, perfectly capturing the character’s unbreakable sense of optimism while also giving her charm and spunk, which leads to some fun back-and-forth banter between her and Clooney. The other major standout is Raffey Cassidy as Athena, a total bad-ass of a character who, according to Cassidy herself in a featurette for the film, is basically ‘like a ninja’. In other words, Athena may just be the best character in the entire film. Hugh Laurie, who plays David Nix, the ‘Governor’ of Tomorrowland, is good as well though he’s not really in the film that much… which may or may not tie back to what I was talking about earlier.

So sure, ‘Tomorrowland’ may not be the absolute best-written sci-fi film ever made. I do understand that a lot of people were frustrated with this film’s third act but me personally, while I do concur that it’s a little under-developed, I don’t think that it ruined the movie at all. Everything else about the film more than made up for it. That includes, among other things, the beautiful cinematography by Claudio Miranda, the excellent score, as expected, from Michael Giacchino, Bird’s, also expected, top-notch direction, and a spot-on cast highlighted by two excellent performances from its young leads, Britt Robertson and Raffey Cassidy. But perhaps the most important aspect of ‘Tomorrowland’ is its great message of hope and optimism for the future. And let me tell you folks, based on what I see here on the internet on a daily basis, that is something that we sorely need right now. So because of this, I highly recommend, hell I implore you to go see this film. I assure you that it is nowhere near as bad as its 49% rating on Rotten Tomatoes suggests. In other words, this is definitely going to end up being one of the most underrated and underappreciated films of the summer. I know I’m going to be in the minority on this but I don’t care. Not only is this one of the best films I’ve seen so far this summer, but this is also one of the best films that I’ve seen so far this year. How appropriate then that it came from one of my favorite directors currently working today; Brad Bird. And if you can, just like his last film ‘Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol’, try to see it in IMAX because this film’s gorgeous visuals are truly a sight to behold on those big IMAX screens.  

Rating: 5/5!