Was anyone else skeptical of computer-generated movies when they first started coming out? When I read about "Toy Story," I was more than skeptical. The name was dumb. The company that made it, Pixar, was created by Steve Jobs, the too-clever-by-half co-founder of Apple. How could they cut humans out of the creative process? And so on.
Somehow, my lovely girlfriend (now wife) convinced me to see "Toy Story" on videotape, and to my shock, I completely loved it. Before we started having kids, I saw it three times, and I've seen it twice with them.
There hasn't been a Pixar movie I disliked, yet every time a new one comes out, I still go through the same cycle: hearing about it and thinking it will be lame, reluctantly seeing it because of good reviews, and then thinking it's the most innovative and compelling film I've seen in a long time. Maybe I have difficulty believing that they can equal or top their previous works.
True to the pattern, when "The Incredibles" opened, I was unenthusiastic. Nothing about the plot sounded compelling — family of superheroes doing super stuff, yawn — and I never saw it in the theater.
Which is something I now regret. Paige bought the DVD the weekend it came out, and not only did I find it completely mesmerizing, by the time it was halfway over I thought, "When can I see this again?"
Like J.S. Bach, Pixar is content to work within existing genres. Dramatically speaking, "The Incredibles" breaks no new ground. Not only is the plot conventional, you've seen most of the visual tropes in at least a dozen other action-adventure movies, like the hero chained up after being caught by the bad guy, or the superhero protagonists striking a pose right before they fight their enemies. The score contains overt references to the early James Bond movies.
But like Bach, so much inventive genius is poured into this film that it seems completely new. At Pixar's birth, people assumed that if it was successful, it would be because it harnessed the nascent power of computer graphics. In reality, they are the most successful studio in Hollywood because they grasped something very old: that plot, character, theme, and spectacle (in that order) are the keys to making good drama, just like Aristotle taught twenty-four centuries ago.
Also, the studio makes family-oriented entertainment without descending into blandness or cloying preachiness. The original beginning of "The Incredibles," shown in rough form on the bonus DVD, showed Elastigirl as a new mother, getting insulted by a career woman who thought being a full-time mom was a dumb choice. Incensed, Elastigirl gives a speech about there would be much less evil in the world if more parents spent time raising their own kids, et cetera. Though I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment, the revised beginning is far better — the pro-motherhood message is subtly woven through the movie, which makes it more effective, not less. And besides, even without delivering any lectures, Elastigirl is self-evidently a total badass.
Celebrating human excellence, and how insane it is to pretend that some people's special gifts aren't really special, is the other important thematic thread. "The Incredibles" could be seen as a satire in the same vein as "Harrison Bergeron," the only thing Kurt Vonnegut wrote that's worth reading twice. Not allowing the gifted to excel doesn't hurt the gifted folks, the movie says, as much as society in general. One might think of the way people insist that Jesus, Mary, and the saints were "just like us," which is true if you mean they shared our human nature. But they were better than us, qualitatively better, and if we want to be better ourselves, we should try to emulate them, not pull their memories down to our level to please our complacent, lazy souls.
I could go on, but I won't, because lots of you have already seen "The Incredibles." If you haven't, and the philosophical aspects don't entice you, rent it for the sheer joy. You will care more about those cartoon movie people than most live-action movie people. (There's an essay waiting to be written about how animated characters are looking more and more realistic, and "real" actors look less and less.)
In the "making of" documentary, Brad Bird, the director and writer, says that the movie's goal was to fuse "the mundane and the fantastic." Kind of like the immanent and the transcendant. Sounds like a formula for lasting success.
must be summer if there are no comments on this...
Eric as usual, well said. I love you maing.
The Incredibles is, beyond a doubt, the best movie I've seen recently, and the one I've enjoyed the most. There isn't a single boring moment in it, nor something I could really criticize. Pure family entertainments that adults can also enjoy (as opposed to Winnie the Pooh movies, where anybody older than 3 would DIE of boredom.) Very refreshing.
I loved the Incredibles as well! Can't wait to get the DVD. I've seen the story line linked to the philosophy of Ayn Rand... heard the same thing said about the Aviator.... but there are subtle differences.
Like you, I don't think "The Incredibles" is selling individualism. The supers' unspoken credo was putting their talents at the service of society, not to solely pursue their own private good.
One of my favorite scenes directly contradicts the Randian interpretation: Frozone is frantically looking for his supersuit, insisting that he needs it "for the greater good," and his wife doesn't want him to go because it will ruin their dinner plans. Meanwhile, outside the window you see the giant robot smashing and destroying the city.
Like you, I've thoroughly enjoyed Pixar's great stuff, and your likening of it to JS Bach's output is apt. But, unlike you, I have always admired Steve Jobs. I was a Mac user for 10 years before reluctantly taking up PCs, and I still think the Mac is an engineering masterpiece.
Steve Jobs has promoted some good ideas, but he is also dishonest (he stole $200 from Steve Wozniak on the first computer they ever sold). He managed to sell his unprofitable company, NeXT, for millions of dollars to Apple, and then immediately maneuvered his way into heading the company again.
I've never particularly warmed to any of Apple's computers -- I've always been a PC man myself -- but to each his own, glassy!