Fourteen years is a lot of time to build expectations. “The Incredibles” was brilliant, and Brad Bird said that the idea for an “Incredibles” sequel would have to be superior to the first film. And so I walked into the theater with excitement ablaze, humming Michael Giacchino’s 2004 soundtrack to myself and all of the unfortunate people around me. I was ready for that superior movie.
Naturally, this was an anticipation doomed to disappointment. It couldn’t be that amazing – after all, a 10/10 sequel would have needed to deliver exhilaration surpassing that which I felt as a kid, seeing Dash run on water for the first time. What could this movie have presented? Good action? Good story? Good charm? “Incredibles 2” hit a lot of your typical “good” boxes, but I still left the theater feeling underwhelmed.
Certainly it was fun; it wasn’t a terrible sequel by any means. I would liken it to “The Force Awakens” in that it was safe and clung too much to the formula of the original movie. It wasn’t bold! dramatic! heroic! What we got was almost a rehash. The villain’s motivations and reveal were similar, except we all saw it coming this time. Many of the situations had also been seen before: stopping vehicles is cool, but can’t they do anything else? They even included the danger of flying into a propeller and a Super ruining a character’s death. If these were all supposed to be callbacks, it was too much.
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!
And then the villain was relatively weak, especially compared to Syndrome. Okay, so your parents died because they didn’t go to the safe room (actually, because they didn’t put the phones in the safe room), and everyone relied too much on Supers in the past, so let’s cause a catastrophe and potentially kill tons of people to try and keep Supers illegal. In my eyes, this is a mediocre backstory. The basis of our empathy for her is a quick flashback of some guy trying to call some Supers and otherwise a lot of talking. Plus, what was up with the plan? What was the point of letting everything happen in the first place? It was she who created an enemy and allowed him to be caught, it was she who helped her brother while he was spearheading all of this. What was going to happen afterward? Did she plan for those conspicuous goggles to stay on forever? Was she going to eliminate the Supers somehow – get them locked away or killed, maybe? Instead of going through all the trouble, couldn’t she have just reigned in Winston from the start? Before the Deavors got involved, it seemed as if the Supers were doing a good job of generating ruinous publicity on their own (i.e. re: the Underminer).
Another problem was that things were way too easy. Elastigirl performed like three heroic acts in the span of a few days (stopped train, saved ambassador, caught “Screenslaver”) and the world leaders were immediately ready to legalize all of the Supers!? If we’re trying to provide a realistic portrayal of politics (what with all the political commentary in the early part of the movie), there’s almost no way things happen that quickly. It’s not a huge deal, but it’s also not entirely satisfying. The first “Incredibles” depicted the Supers’ forced retirement better, suggesting that there were a lot of lawsuits over an extended period of time, with associated court sessions and press and etc.
Of course, my previous complaints are frivolous trifles next to my biggest gripe: that this story did not need to be told. What the heck, Brad Bird? No significant character or plot developments were made. Let’s see, how did the first one end? With the Parrs victorious and Supers all but legalized again. How did this one end? With the Parrs victorious and Supers legalized again (I think). Getting Supers legalized was the driving force of the plot, but at the close of the first movie I had already taken it as a near-promise that the public was going to be okay with Supers once more. And that the Underminer was about to be defeated. See, they actually made backward development! The Underminer escaped! The Screenslaver’s still out there? The Underminer’s still out there! Did the politicians straight-up forget about John Ratzenberger? Bottom line: the ending was pretty much the same as the first, situation-wise. Supers in good public standing, the Parrs ready to fight crime, Violet confident, Dash in control of himself, Mr. Incredible grateful for his family…
The arc of the entire movie mirrored the first’s. This is mainly what I meant by “safe.” All they did was switch the roles of Elastigirl and Mr. Incredible, perhaps making Bob a stay-at-home dad to show support for certain trends in social justice affairs [which, for the record, isn’t a problem unless it makes the plot element(s) in question feel forced – and I’ll leave that up to you to determine]. Unfortunately, this time he (or Dash) didn’t get to do anything exciting (I’m biased; I love watching super speed). The biggest development was Jack-Jack, and that was just his powers – no emotional gravity or anything because he’s a baby. Maybe an unpopular opinion: a little too much baby.
Now, it wasn’t all bad. As far as pure entertainment goes, this movie was superb. The scenes were beautiful (compare to the visuals of fourteen years ago) and the action was executed extremely well (the Elasticycle train chase had me at the edge of my seat). “Incredibles 2” just wasn’t excellent, fresh, an unforgettable knockout like all of Pixar’s work from the glory days. Overall I would consider it decent, yet nowhere near as memorable as “The Incredibles.” On a 10-star scale, I might rate it 2-3 stars lower. I think they played it too cautiously, and the film ended up devolving into a predictable children’s movie with some underutilized social messages. Note that I do want to rewatch it, primarily to gape at the absurd imagery and animation, but it’s not that strong of an urge in any other sense. I guess my expectations were just too high.