I agree with every word this guy says. Pixar's 2004 "The Incredibles" is indeed a masterpiece, and in the video below, Dan Motta passionately lays out the case for why this movie is so damn good. "The Incredibles" is by far my favorite Pixar film, and Motta argues that it's one of the best superhero films, period. Here, too, I have to agree. Motta touches on an aspect of the film that's very important to me: it's adultness. The best kiddie films are the ones that also resonate with the older folks, and "The Incredibles" deals with all manner of mature issues in adult—often intensely adult—ways. We get torture, attempted suicide, multiple threats of child harm, adolescent horniness, questions of infidelity—and that's all before we tackle the larger themes the movie explores, such as what it means to be exceedingly great while living among ordinary folks. (Bob Parr is, come to think of it, living a paradox: he wants to revel in his superheroic greatness, which sets him so far above the rest of humanity, while also caring for all the humble, ordinary people around him.)
Watch Motta's video and be awed. He makes a strong case.
2 comments:
Yep. Totally agree. My favorite Pixar film as well (although Up does come close), and probably my favorite superhero film, period. I felt exactly the same way watching the plane scene, because I was of course already an adult when The Incredibles came out. Actually, until today, I thought that I was the only person who almost cried during that scene.
(And if you think that scene was dark as it was... it was actually even darker in its original conception. The guy that Elastigirl borrows the plane from was originally piloting the plane and is killed in the explosion. I'm glad they decided to change that, because I think it would have been too much. Not that it would have been too dark, but it would have taken away from what was really going on in the scene.)
I enjoy myself a good Marvel film, as you know, but boy do I wish they would trust us to be OK with our emotions and not need comic relief at every opportunity. The absolutely worst offender in this regard was Thor: Ragnarok (spoiler alert, just in case). In general I really liked this film, but it also gets pretty dark (I mean, it's about Ragnarok). At the very end, right after the surviving Asgardians watch from a spaceship as their homeworld is destroyed, Korg makes a lame joke. I wanted to get up and punch a hole in the screen. It was so infuriating.
For as many problems as I thought Infinity War/Endgame had, at least they didn't feel the need to defuse the emotions with humor.
Yeah, I saw that trivia about the plane crash in the comments section below the video. The commenter went on to say that the quick scene of Elastigirl underwater, turning to watch the plane's wreckage as it sinks, is the only holdover from the original idea: originally, she was watching her friend drown. In the theatrical release, she's now just watching the plane sink.
I reviewed "Thor: Ragnarok" here. Haven't bothered to see "Love and Thunder." I heard it was a piece of shit, with Waititi unable to break away from his compulsive need to turn everything into a joke. Did you see that he publicly ridiculed the CGI of his own film? I watch some SFX channels on YouTube, and I see there's a lot of pushback against Waititi for essentially dissing the SFX community. These are people who work long hours on extremely tight schedules to try to make the magic happen. When the effects misfire, it's often not their fault.
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