watched last night. doubtless some threshold in animation has been crossed but after the “sin city” backlash i am hesitant to praise technical innovation and cartoony violence (even if it is cool when the dad rams two hover-craft with men in them together, causing them to explode, in front of his adoring kids). the underlying premise seems to be to attack the cult of mediocrity/self-esteem pandemic in the u.s: the superheroes have to pretend not to have powers and not show that they are really special, because now everyone is special (which, one of them grumbles, means “no one is”). the problem with the film is that it hasn’t really thought this through in the social context it is placing its characters in: the everyday. the superheroes have done nothing to earn their powers, which are entirely physical. against these lucky freaks is a young man who is spurned by the naturally powerful and responds by applying his brain and becoming a technological whiz. the jocks vs. the nerd–but it turns out we’re supposed to root for the jocks. perhaps it is my long conditioning as a nerd that makes this a problem for me
Good lord man – have you never read a comic book?!
What you describe is the exact premise for almost all superheros and supervillains. The hero never earns his power. At best he learns that “with great power comes great responsibility.” Yawn.
The villain’s root is always in having been spurned – frequently by the hero himself.
Sure, Batman is just a mortal (he’s the big exception to the man from Krypton / spider-bite / cosmic rays hero) who worked hard to shapren his mind and body – but in the original story, the Joker was a comedian with a wife and child. He needed money and agreed to go in with some real criminals on a caper. He was duped by the criminals, but it was Batman who knocked him into industrial waste and caused the birth of Joker. He always wanted revenge on Batman MORE than money or mischief.
An arrogant Reed Richards caused the creation of Doctor Doom by belittling Doom’s experiments. And so it goes…
I assumed that the crafty Pixar folks were using the very set-up you criticized as part of the gag, but maybe it’s so ingrained into superhero myths, that it just comes out that way no matter what.
It is interesting that the villains do seem to work hard for their powers, and often rely solely on intellect. Take for example the comic in the middle of this page; Lex Luthor pissed off that none of the supervillains ever have any REAL powers: http://www.seanbaby.com/superfriends/brainiac.htm
Whew – OK. Too much wine. The Incredibles was one of the best films of last year.
Yours is a seductive critique. (And there was another astute challenge posed when the film came out, which saw in the film’s anti-“mediocrity” stance a reactionary snipe about trends in education and other areas of culture which “affirm everyone,” seeking to raise all up rather than “recognize real differences” and evaluate them. Or, I think, another person even saw a deep-cover critique of affirmative action.)
All of these challenges make good sense to me. Why, then, do I still like the film? In part, I recognize how useful but also how (relatively) easy it is to reduce a film to a suspect formula. I did it with “disabilities” flicks, and it’s equally tempting to slam the seemingly-retro politics of “The Incredibles.”
But there are a couple of ways the film sets up some more complex character dynamics than those Arnab assaults. For instance, I get stuck on how astutely the film captures the adolescent dream of having some secret identity that others (all those others who terrify you every day) don’t even suspect. Violet is the obvious incarnation, but the villain despite his overweaning ambition seems somewhat generously portrayed as having the same ache. (And I think it’s telling that the voices for these two are Sarah Vowell and Jason Lee, two personalities tied still to a twenty-something contra-mainstream sensibility.)
And I’m calling it “adolescent,” but the same ache to reveal the secret underneath the suit motivates Mr. Incredible and Frozone, bored by domesticity and the demands of daily life. The movie’s probably-generic employment of the adolescent desire to have a Super secret self is tied to the middle-age desire to return to those possibilities of youth, to grapple with how one’s ideas about self are forced to change with family and other obligations.
Maybe. I thought the representations of age and aging were pretty interesting. Of course, about half-way through all that stuff kind of slips backstage as the pyrotechnics take front center. (And, yeah, I enjoyed the hell out of the design of the film.)
I need to think about this film some more, but my instincts are to cheer. This is not your average animated feature. Pixar’s motto should be: “I used to be Disney…but I drifted.” Okay, not by much. But certainly enough to give those of us who love mainstream animated features something to get excited about.
I was impressed by how this film privileges the poorly thought-out, the impulsive, the loopholes out of other people’s rules as well as one’s own.
And: not only does the boy run when he should walk, but (to top it all off) he runs on water. Take that, Jesus!
I’ll put this film in the same category of Iron Giant. Both nudge us into unfamiliar (and, in this case, giggly awkward) zones of the paterfamilias landscape. Zoing!
sorry–i missed this for some reason. you’re right, but my point is that this film thematizes this tension–it is exactly what the film is *about*, as opposed to a genre cliche.
mike, i appreciate your attempt to turn this discussion into “irresponsibility: take 2”.
john, i read your words but i know not what they mean.