Miles of Movies

                                                                                                       Incredibles 2 is the long-awaited sequel to what                                                                                                is, in my opinion, the best animated film ever made -                                                                                             2004’s The Incredibles.

                                                                                                       This time around, Winston Deavor, a marketing                                                                                                executive, wants to make a campaign for                                                                                                                    superheroes to become legal again. He hires                                                                                                            Elastigirl as his first demonstration of this marketing                                                                                                ploy, leaving Mr. Incredible at home to take care of                                                                                                  his son, daughter, and infant son with a grab bag of                                                                                                superheroes. Just as Elastigirl is trying to improve                                                                                                    the public image of superheroes, a new villain is in town, trying to ruin superheroes for good.

         As I said, I love The Incredibles. The film is a work of genius that goes to some dark places that almost no other animated film has gone since. Director Brad Bird stated that he waited all this time to make the sequel because he was waiting for the right story. My biggest fear here was that this movie would be just a generic sequel featuring the same characters and some familiar plotlines but nothing else. Pixar hasn’t had the best track record with sequels to its original films, so I was very worried for this movie. Unfortunately, my fears were realized. As much as Incredibles 2 is an entertaining, briskly-paced movie with great action, it is also lazy, unoriginal, generic, and riskless.

         First - what I liked about the movie. The animation is fantastic, especially when you compare it to the first film; you can really see how far the animation has come in some of the same sets used in the first film. The action scenes are pretty great and there’s a lot of action in Elastigirl’s storyline. Mr. Incredible’s story about taking care of the kids was really enjoyable as he is really out of his element and Jack Jack, his infant son, is a lot to handle. Specifically there is a scene involving Jack Jack and a raccoon that was absolutely hilarious. This entire storyline is played almost entirely for laughs and was certainly successful in that regard.

        Unfortunately, that’s all this movie is - entertainment. Jokes, action, and more jokes. The story is lazily written, unoriginal, and predictable at every point. Some of the scenes that were supposed to be serious were comically awful. The villain was one of the worst in animation history with a weak motivation that doesn’t even make sense when you stop to think about it. To make matters worse, you get the feeling that this movie isn’t really about anything. There aren’t really any themes going on here. The first movie was packed with themes - themes that affected all the characters and caused them to grow as the story progressed. Almost none of the characters grow in this film. Some of them don’t even feel like characters. Dash, the son, has absolutely nothing to do in this movie. And Violet, the daughter, has a surface-level subplot that doesn’t go anywhere. You get the sense that the story to this movie doesn’t really affect the characters at all - it’s just plot. In the first film every single scene was packed with emotion and tension between the characters who all get stories of their own within the grander story being told. Without this tension, the plot details lose their meaning and the movie becomes forgettable.

         Most people will enjoy this movie. I enjoyed watching it. But as a follow-up film, it falls short on almost every level. This movie was guaranteed to make money, so why did it have to be so safe and bland? So much could’ve been done with this property. The only thing I’m going to remember about it was how incredibly disappointed I was when it was all over.