The Incredibles

I don't usually do movie reviews here – mostly because I haven't actually been to a movie since I started blogging. But with some unexpected time off this afternoon, I decided to treat myself to a screening of the most recent offering from Disney/Pixar. Here are my thoughts; I'll try to keep them as spoiler-free as possible.

Let me start by saying that I loved The Incredibles. I thought it was at least as good as Monsters Inc., my personal favorite among computer-animated movies. I thought it was better than Finding Nemo. I thought it was much better than either Shrek or Ice Age. It was as good as any animated movie I can remember.

The animation was excellent, of course. The folks at Pixar are magicians, and the folks at Disney are morons for letting them go.

The movie was better than just the animation, though. As a long-time fan of superheroes, I have to say that the folks behind The Incredibles nailed it. All the classic bits are here: the hero with the boy-scout sense of justice, the more sensible but no less heroic heroine, the annoying sidekick, the struggles of keeping a secret identity, the mad scientist turned would-be world conqueror, the villainous grudge that goes back for years, the bad guy's high-tech weapons and disposable henchmen, and, of course, the innocents that get caught in the middle – DNPCs, in Champions terms.

Better yet were some of the details. The writers had to have read a lot of back issues of The Flash and The Fantastic Four for some of the tricks they pulled out for the two super-kids (and Mom too, for that matter). And with a brick (a super-strong character) around, anything can become a weapon in the fight against evil: trees, cars, boulders, anything that's handy. The villain, as tradition demands, goes off on an arrogant, self-indulgent monologue when he thinks he has the hero beaten (and in this case, catches himself doing it, which is kind of a treat). The heroes find that their greatest asset in the fight against evil is not their superpowers, but their brains and their trust in each other. In a bit of genre-bending, one of the chase scenes involving the super-speed kid looks like an extended homage to the speeder bike scenes from Return of the Jedi. Then, to wrap it up, the end credits have the look and feel of a Bond movie.

But all of this is gravy, in a sense. What I really liked about the movie was the way it looked at the characters. What drives someone to become a supervillain? How would having superpowers as a teenager or preteen make you different from everyone else? How do you move from knowing what you have the potential to do into actually doing it? What would a hero who had to retire before his time feel living a mundane life? What would it be like to raise a family with a perilous secret? To what lengths would you go to save your family if they were in danger? These are the kind of questions that drew me into the superhero genre years ago and kept me reading. There are real-life analogues for all of them.

I give this movie a solid A. I can't wait to see it again.

There were a couple of unexpected treats before the movie, too. There was a trailer for Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. Anakin looks scary in the robes of the Sith, and Padmé looks as ridiculous with the cinnamon-bun hairdo as Leia did. There was also a trailer for the next Pixar movie, Cars. Imagine the Chevron cars looking not quite so cute and racing for a living. I look forward to it.

All in all, it was a great afternoon. I should do this more often.