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The Incredibles (Brad Bird, 2004)
15 Jeremy Heilman |
Pixar, the golden boy animators of the
moment, return this season with The
Incredibles, another entry in
their series of dubious crowd-pleasers. It follows the tired formula as their
past films. To follow up their tales of domesticated fish, domesticated
monsters, domesticated insects, and domesticated toys, they now present
domesticated superheroes. The plot this time out is as conventional as in any of
the past Pixar films, borrowing liberally from the Spy
Kids franchise, Alan Moore’s “Watchmen” comics, and James Cameron’s
far superior True Lies. The imagery,
usually the highlight of these things, calls to mind this year’s wondrous Sky
Captain and the World of Tomorrow, but minus a soul. Sky
Captain featured retro styling, much like The
Incredibles, but in that film, the revelation that the supervillain behind
the plot was already deceased made its datedness a downright poignant reminder
of a lost era. Here, the clean, retro-futurist look mostly calls to mind the
latest technological doodads from Apple Computer, and as a result, the visuals
always seem to be selling to us. It has to be said that CGI spectacle is less
the order of the day here than it has been in past Pixar films (Thankfully.
After a while comes the realization that real water is more impressive to watch
than any that is fabricated.). Additionally, the voice acting is more restrained
than the non-stop yelling that has marred several of the studio’s past
efforts, but something’s still rotten here, rendering The
Incredibles as the least of the animation house’s efforts, by far.
At first, while watching The
Incredibles, I was frustrated by its seemingly shortsighted lack of
superheroes outside of its American borders. Only as the film developed, did the
omission reveal itself as an intentional one. Director Brad Bird, whose Cold
War-era Iron Giant was carried a very
political message of anti-violence is clearly aiming this film at an
Americentric, post-9/11 world. Strong, irresponsible imagery evokes the horrors
of those attacks repeatedly. There are sequences showing a mother shielding her
children from pillars of fire from above and exploding plane debris. There’s
an extended shot of a plane flying into the southern tip of Manhattan island.
There’s the constant reminder that the events in the film are about to end
fifteen years of peace. That sort of association is dangerous when mishandled,
and The Incredibles makes huge
miscalculations in showing how these events affect its central characters.
The super-powered Parr family responds
to threats on its family unit with bloodthirsty, vigilante retaliation. A
supposedly exhilarating scene features a young boy and girl harnessing their
superpowers to kill humans (not robots, as is the norm in the genre) in a series
of Bruckheimereque explosions. No film, live action or animated, that I can
recall, features children murdering so cavalierly. This sequence culminates in a
team kill from Mom and Dad, followed by a mutual declaration of love. The effect
is appalling, and the message is made clear: the family that slays together
stays together. There are no scenes in which characters learn to use their
powers responsibly (except for those that extol conformity), and no moments in
which loss of life is felt. This summer’s Spider-Man
2 may have been preachy, but at least it had a conscience! If Bird’s
intent is to demonstrate the sanctity of the family unit in a world filled with
danger, by empowering his characters in this way, he’s corrupting the very
values that the family unit stands for. If this is the modern family’s
fantasy, then there’s something very wrong with the modern family. At first
glance, you might wonder why The
Incredibles was an animated film at all, but that’s probably because its
carnage and insane politics wouldn’t be comic in live action. How the actions
of the Parr family are supposed to translate into commentary on the post-9/11
world that The Incredibles invokes is
beyond me. Surely Bird, who preached pacifism in his last film, can’t be
advocating such outright violence and vengeance (especially when a Bush-like bad
guy is looked at critically for trying to spin a city’s tragedy into personal
gain). Its attempts to be politically relevant are hopelessly muddled at best
and offensive at worst.
It’s rather deplorable to think that
audiences are bringing their children en masse to absorb these skewed messages,
but just because it’s inappropriate for kids I wouldn’t call The
Incredibles a particularly mature animated film. The sketchy character arcs
are duds (Mr. Incredible’s one scene of attempted pathos is the lamest
non-starter of all). The endless sequences showing infiltration into the
supervillain’s island base are flat, with no compelling mystery waiting to be
solved. Clearly the explosive action is the attraction here. The thematic
material is so undeveloped that it becomes conflicted and incoherent. Bird’s
sloppy obliviousness to the imagery that he employs is worse than outright
propaganda, because it has no purpose other than to exploit real life tragedy to
sell inane fantasy to us. Watching this confused film in an audience filled with people
who were clearly relishing every terror the film threw at them, I started to be
filled with self-doubt, but each further explosion only further cemented my
impression that the film was playing with a fire that soon flared out of
control. Its scenes of HMO headaches and unchecked litigation clearly relate it
to the real world. Since there’s not much indication that the slightly fascist
family is being satirized, and since it’s too much a crowd-pleaser to be
critical of the violent payoff that it delivers, it’s tough not to take its
apparent message seriously.