Pixar Pint #20: Incredibles 2

The most anticipated movie Pixar has ever released. Did it live up to the hype?

Welcome back to Pixar Pints, our two-summer-long journey through all 26 Pixar films in release order.

Between The Incredibles’ release in 2004 and this movie’s eventual confirmation in 2014, the announcement of just about every new Pixar film made some people upset that it wasn’t Incredibles 2. Up? Who cares, give us an Incredibles sequel. Cars 2? Really? They gave Cars a sequel before The Incredibles? And it’s awful! Who wanted this?¹ I don’t need to see Mike and Sulley’s college days; just give us more Incredibles, dammit!

Bob Iger announced the movie at a Disney shareholders meeting in 2014 and the mob finally lowered their pitchforks. Unfortunately, we’d have to wait through four more years—and five more Pixar films—before it actually released, and it didn’t help that most of those five interim films weren’t very good.²

Enough beating around the bush, though; Pixar already did that for us. The movie printed money. It was always going to. Was the product we got any good?

Let’s get into it.

Incredibles 2 quick facts

Release date: June 15, 2018 | Director: Brad Bird | Music: Michael Giacchino

Starring: Craig T. Nelson (Bob/Mr. Incredible), Holly Hunter (Helen/Elastigirl), Sarah Vowell (Violet), Huck Milner (Dash), Samuel L. Jackson (Frozone), Bob Odenkirk (Winston), Catherine Keener (Evelyn)

John Ratzenberger as: The Underminer

Budget: $200 million | Box office: $1.243 billion

Academy Awards: Nominated for Best Animated Feature but lost to Sony Pictures Animation’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Eli

Aesthetic: 4/10 | This aesthetic feels weirdly unfaithful to the first film's despite being set immediately after that film ends. Some of that is good—The Incredibles is from 2004 and it definitely shows—but some of it just seems like they forgot how they built their own world. The first film heavily featured sci-fi technology and visuals, which made it seem futuristic despite being set in 1962. Aside from hi-tech elements immediately connected to the protagonists, this movie feels a lot more like the real ‘60s, but the characters still act like they’re living in a futurized version; for example, the Screenslaver’s primary concern in the first half of the movie is that people are spending too much time watching screens, but the moral panic over screen time really wasn’t a thing that far back in history. It’s like they couldn't decide what era they wanted to use.

Animation: 10/10 | Looks just as bombastic as the first film and, in many ways, better by default due to the advance in animation technology.

Story: 3/10 | I just can’t get over how nonsensical Evelyn’s actions are throughout the movie. If you want supers to stay illegal, why do you go so far out of your way to help your brother make them legal...just to try to make them illegal again? Are you just bored with life or something? The B-plot is just cliché “men can't parent” shlock and the resolutions feel cheap and unearned. And the pacing of both these storylines is just awful. Everything drags on way too long. The movie clocks in just under two hours but it feels longer. The action scenes are fun to watch and the film generally has a good sense of humor, so it's definitely not all bad, but it doesn't come close to touching the original.

Characters: 5/10 | Helen is still a great character and so is Violet, mostly, but the family dynamic seems so much different because of how the men are written. Bob is an asshole in an uncharacteristically foolish way: why does he seem to be rooting for Helen to fail despite needing her to succeed for his crimefighting career to continue? Dash is also more of a bully here than in the original. Winston is pretty fun to watch despite being one-note, but Evelyn’s entire character is baffling in ways I’ve already ranted about and which feel at odds with her social prowess and technical genius. Frozone is cool as always. So is Edna but they definitely only brought her back for nostalgia because her scene is very out of place. The other superheroes…exist.

Acting: 8/10 | Everyone’s good-to-great but a few characters sound like they’ve aged, understandable but at odds with the movie being set immediately after the first one. Craig T. Nelson makes Bob sound like a geezer. Catherine Keener’s Evelyn sounds a lot like Rashida Jones.

Music: 7/10 | I can’t remember much of anything from this score that wasn’t copy/pasted from the first film, but it still does its job.

Final score: 6/10 | I have generally positive feelings toward this movie, but I think most of them are because I loved the first movie so much. On its own, Incredibles 2 is kind of a mess. But it’s a mess in the fun, junk food kinda way and not the brutal, The Good Dinosaur kinda way, so it’s definitely rewatchable. Like Finding Dory, I’m mostly disappointed that this is the direction they chose to go with a sequel. It feels like we got The Incredibles: Part 2 more than a true Incredibles 2. Brad Bird admitted he didn’t age the characters because he didn’t want to have to write a new family dynamic, but the writing here botched the first film’s dynamic so much that that decision just seems lazy. Bird also said he was “not interested in a college aged Jack Jack”, but what the hell is the point of his character if we never get to see what he becomes?

Leah

Aesthetic: 5/10 | I didn’t like how the aesthetic was updated. The character designs seemed inconsistent; like, the way Winston was rendered seemed different from, say, Helen. I also feel like the older character designs of the first movie held this one back. Bob’s nose just looked so bad. Humans in a CGI movie was still relatively new in 2004, but by 2018 we’d seen it done better than this so many times.

Animation: 10/10 | The complex fight scene choreography is impressive.

Story: 4/10 | The whole B-plot of Bob needing to learn how to take care of his kids was pretty stereotypical. It had some funny moments but it was a pretty boring concept overall. The main story with the Screenslaver didn’t make a ton of sense either. Wouldn’t it have been easier for Evelyn to sabotage the plan earlier instead of after everyone signed the document?

Characters: 4/10 | Bob was an unlikeable jerk in this movie and his jealousy of Helen seemed very odd after the way he was characterized in the first movie. Helen was fine, but not a standout like in the first movie. Seeing characters like Edna and Frozone return was fun. Violet’s arc in the movie was entertaining. The new supers had distinct designs but not the most memorable personalities.

Acting: 9/10 | I enjoyed the performances given here. Holly Hunter did a fantastic job as Helen again.

Music: 7/10 | It was fine. Not very memorable in my opinion.

Final score: 6/10 | I think this movie might have been the reason I didn’t have high expectations going into The Incredibles for this project; the sequel was fresher in my mind. It had a lot of fun moments but a lot of this movie just didn’t work for me. The characters were worse, the story had too many plot holes to ignore, and the art style didn’t work as well in 2018.

Maddy

Aesthetic: 7/10 | Animation: 9/10 | Story: 6/10 | Characters: 7/10 | Acting: 9/10 | Music: 9/10

Sequels are hard. You go in already having to fight the expectations set by the first film, but also trying to tell a new story so audiences don’t think you’re retreading the same shtick. When you’re trying to follow up one of the most well respected and loved films in your studio’s history? Well, good luck.

Incredibles 2 is nothing more than a good-not-great film, fitting right into Pixar’s “eh-to-great” track record of the 2010s. It still features strong lead characters, amazing action sequences, and some of the strong writing of the first film, but it loses a lot of steam with its story.

On its own, it’s fine, but you’re comparing this to the original. Given the 14-year wait the world had to endure between films, it’s hard not to feel disappointed in Incredibles 2. It’s the nature of the sequel beast.

I enjoyed my time with Incredibles 2 overall, but I don’t think this is high on my rewatch list after completing this project. Just like everyone else has seemingly forgotten about this movie’s existence.

Final score: 47/60 or 7/10

David

Aesthetic: Asynchronous to the era—which isn’t entirely awful, but man. Once again, it just feels like they didn’t really think about what they were actually making a sequel to.

Animation: Very good. Technology was kind here.

Story: Nothing good to say here. It doesn’t make sense, it goes on far too long, and in a lot of ways to me, it feels as though some of the resolutions of the first film are undone by the second.

Characters: I don’t like this characterization. It feels like a miss basically all the way through.

Acting: It’s solid but undistinguished.

Music: It’s fine. A film like this should have something remarkable in its score, and once again, it just feels like this sequel is missing something the original had.

Final score: 2/10 | Thoughtless and overall a poor effort, especially for a sequel to what is definitively one of Pixar’s more beloved films. Feels really lazy and like there was no actual thought applied to what was done here. At best, this is a 2. At best.

Final notes

Well, we didn’t like this movie.

It’s worth noting that Brad Bird originally said he didn’t want to make a sequel to The Incredibles unless it could be better than the original. Whether he actually believes this movie is better than the original or Pixar just saw dollar signs and forced his hand is up for debate.

Despite this movie not really coming close to living up to the original, I’m at least glad it exists, if only as a testament to the first film’s legacy. Besides, if it didn’t, people would still be screaming for it. And that era was just obnoxious.

Numbers next to each film are each reviewer’s overall rating out of 10.

Next up: Toy Story 4

1. John Lasseter wanted this.

2. Inside Out came first to widespread acclaim, but following it were The Good Dinosaur, Finding Dory, and Cars 3. I (Eli) like Cars 3 a lot, but a lot of people consider it one of Pixar’s worst films. Coco, of course, rounds this list out to almost universal acclaim.