[w1nt3rmu4e]

Action?

All I remember is the father -- a superhero -- unable to perform basic child rearing tasks and I tuned out. I don't know what Bird's intention was, but I felt it played into current gender politics rather than addressing them. The first movie was a critique of culture, this was -- an attempt to please?

I don't get worked up about 'dumb men' stereotypes since I'm not dumb and take an active role in raising my children but I felt the second needlessly betrayed the first film. Elastigirl was a superhero. She and her husband may have had somewhat gender-appropriate powers (brawn vs flexibility?) but she was his equal in fighting bad guys. Her becoming a housewife was the satirical part of the film.

So in the second we have a woman who never lived in her husband's shadow -- beyond their assumed identities -- but now the thrust of the story is her outshining her husband?

You can argue that his was satire -- since in the story her taking center stage was a plan driven by PR people and expected ratings -- but I really don't think it hit the mark. Instead of backing it up with something appropriate, Bird just gave us, see, isn't being a housewife hard! Again, Mr Incredible is a superhero, I'm sure he can manage.

My wife felt the same way. Loved the first one, was disappointed by the gender politics of the second.

[jl6]

Bear in mind both films are set in 1962...

I’m a father who shares duties equally with my wife. Between us, we cope. When one of us is away, all hell is prone to break loose. That’s what’s I interpreted Mr Incredible’s struggles as - not incompetence, but being overwhelmed by being the sole parent.

[a_e_k]

That is absolutely my experience as a parent as well. Usually when there's just one of us like that its because of an abnormal situation which adds stress as well. Just keeping the household running becomes a feat of endurance.

And remember, Mr. Incredible is not just acting as the sole parent. He's acting as the sole parent of a baby exhibiting random super powers. If my youngest could phase through walls at will... holly hell! I'm not sure that any solo parent could keep up with that; I don't even think two would be enough.

[mschaef]

> When one of us is away, all hell is prone to break loose.

Of course.... with half the capacity to manage the household, it's only natural that things would get, well, a bit more chaotic.

[mixmastamyk]

Indeed, being a single parent is difficult for many reasons but the non obvious one is sleep deprivation, or lack of rest.

[rbanffy]

If it were not for the sleep deprivation and the subsequent memory loss, we'd probably all stop at one kid and go extinct.

[whywhywhywhy]

This is why every kid I know has only one Pixar film they rave about and that's Cars, objectively one of their worst films. Pixar films used to appeal to everyone now they just seem to try to appeal to people who grew up with Pixar and are now adults.

I'm not talking about the gender politics angle, I'm more just talking about they have moved from telling stories about a simple whimsical idea that captures all imaginations which follows through to emotion to maybe trying to be too clever and maybe poignant with their ideas, it's almost like they're writing to the target of an adult Pixar fan that needs validation for their interests rather than everyone.

Just feel like they've lost the joy along the way, putting a Pixar film feels like I'm going to be in for a emotional slog now rather than something enjoyable, can't imagine any child getting excited about watching Inside Out or Up (I understand this is a fan favorite for good reason, but is it any child's favorite?)

[twtw]

> objectively one of their worst films

I'm very intrigued by this - what kind of metrics does one use to objectively rank Pixar films?

[jerf]

Well, it reviews worse than a lot of Pixar movies. Although the idea that all Pixar movies review well is a bit of a selective memory thing too. I observe there's basically two tiers of Pixar movies, the ones that get 9+ out of 10, and the ones that come in at 7 or below. There's not a lot of "OK" Pixar movies, though Incredibles 2 happens to be one of them.

Also, somewhat ironically, I disagree that Cars (Metacritic: 73) is one of Pixar's worst, on the grounds that there are quite a few worse movies from Pixar, not least of which are the two sequels Cars 2 (Metacritic: 57) and Cars 3 (Metacritic: 59) and the spinoff Planes (Metacritic: 39 (!)). Cars is slow, and dripping with nostalgia callouts for people who are now in their 70s or 80s (I asked my father, currently mid-60s, and he said it was even older than anything he was nostalgic for), but it's at least watchable once.

[mttjj]

Worth pointing out that Planes is NOT a Pixar film so you can't count that in your metrics.

[jerf]

I did not know that. My apologies to Pixar.

[twtw]

Averaging subjective metrics doesn't turn them into an objective metric.

[jerf]

But it will be highly, highly correlated to any reasonable objective metric agreed to by the general public, so it's close enough for government work. I wouldn't use Metacritic to declare an 81 is better than an 80, but a 85 being better than a 44 is pretty solid.

Of course, there's a multiplicity of possible objective metrics, but then, that's why I phrased my sentence the way I did. You're free to define your own, but then, nobody else will care, either.

[twtw]

> any reasonable objective metric

Any true objective metric would rank films would likely be uncorrelated with reviews - stuff like frames per second, duration, resolution, etc.

I'm of the opinion that talking about "objective metrics" in a discussion of the quality of films makes zero sense. I don't think there is any meaningful way to say any film is objectively worse than another.

Perhaps it seems I'm being too narrow in my definition of "objective," but i don't think so. I'm using it to mean what the word actually means, instead of using "objectively" to mean "in my opinion, which is better than yours," which is how 'whywhywhywhy used it, as far as I can tel.

[tc7]

Frames per second.

[mschaef]

> All I remember is the father -- a superhero -- unable to perform basic child rearing tasks

You try raising a toddler that can uncontrollably turn into a demon, burst into flame, warp into another dimension, and shoot lasers from its eyes.

I think he did pretty well. (And Violet did too...)

[jerf]

"You try raising a toddler that can uncontrollably turn into a demon, burst into flame, warp into another dimension, and shoot lasers from its eyes."

I was actually somewhat disappointed that the sequel started literally right as the previous one ended. Seeing the parents deal with a non-baby Jack Jack would have been interesting. He's already just barely controllable by some of the world's greatest superheros. It will only get worse when Jack Jack isn't a baby anymore.... given the staggering array of powers Jack Jack is given even in just the original movie, it's not that long before he could straight-up defeat his family members. All the things added in the new movie just make it worse. Keeping one Jack Jack in the house when he wants to play outside in the traffic or whatever is hard; keeping six or eight of them will be impossible. This is for the traffic's protection, not Jack Jack's, because Jack Jack is basically an invincible god on Earth by the end of the second movie. This is going to be a huge parenting problem, because parenting, one way or another, involves a great deal of coercion.

[hnmonkey]

It's been a while since I've seen the original but what threw me for a loop was that at the end of the first movie didn't they basically find out that baby had powers? I thought there was a conversation with the babysitter where she was freaking out and told them that their baby had special needs. Wouldn't you as a parent ask your babysitter at some point in the next few days/weeks/months what she meant about your child given they also saw (maybe not perfectly, but still could see something was up) the villain just had your baby and could've easily escaped with him yet something happened in midair to defeat him? I'm just surprised that they tossed that part of the plot out the window for the 2nd movie. It certainly took me out of the story a bit while I was wondering why they were rehashing that they're all just finding out that the baby has these crazy powers when it seemed likely they would've already known.

[mschaef]

> they basically find out that baby had powers?

The baby demonstrates powers in the first movie when Syndrome tries to abduct him at the very end. But the baby in the air and the rest of the family are on the ground, so maybe they didn't see what was happening? They do see the baby fall, so Mr. Incredible throws up Elastigirl to catch him, who then parachutes the baby down.

> I thought there was a conversation with the babysitter where she was freaking out and told them that their baby had special needs. ... Wouldn't you as a parent ask your babysitter at some point in the next few days/weeks/months

That's in the short 'Jack Jack Attack'. Let me think through this:

* During I1, baby is terrorizing babysitter and destroying house with powers as shown in Jack Jack Attack. JJA explains the baby's newfound powers by saying the babysitter played him classical music. (This aligns with Edna Mode's observation in I2 that the baby responds to music.)

* Syndrome relives the babysitter towards the end of JJA, as he attempts to abduct the baby. (So there's no immediate opportunity to talk to the original babysitter.)

* End of I1, baby escapes from Syndrome using powers that maybe his parents didn't see. Because the crashing plane destroys the house, they can't see the damage his powers did to the house.

So at the end of I1, their house is destroyed, which I think is supposed to explain why they're in a motel at the beginning of I2. But if that's the case, how much time was there between the destruction of the house at the end of I1 and the track meet at the very end of the same movie? (Where Violet gets asked out and the Underminer shows up.)

I think for it to be consistent, you have to believe that there wasn't much time before the track meet in I1, and the parents hadn't talked to the babysitter. Maybe reasonable, given that their house was just destroyed? That said, the family depicted at that track meet didn't look like a family that had just been displaced out of their home because it was destroyed by a plane crash...

[hnmonkey]

Great analysis. Yeah, the family could've easily not seen what happened with Syndrome, though it would be weird if he was flying away with the kiddo and then suddenly the kiddo drops (it's not his MO).

Very interesting... the version of the movie I saw has a scene where the family is in a car and the mom is talking to the babysitter and she's leaving freakier and freakier voicemail messages about JJ. Eventually she says something like 'your baby has special needs.' It wasn't super long and didn't show anything from the babysitter's perspective I don't think. Maybe it was cut out of some other versions.

You're right that they don't seem like a family displaced at the track meet. Everything seemed to be back to normal. Given all the chaos it's possible they never talked to the babysitter but if I were in those shoes I would certainly have found out why she freaked out at least at some point after the end of I1.

Good analysis though. Appreciate you digging in on that.

[exodust]

Good points, I agree with all that. Political correctness and the efforts to flip stereotypes, were overcooked. It's a shame that stories are managed now instead of written.

The whole "screen slave" thing was also a bit too close to current media attention around the topic of screen-time. Too obvious and blunt. Not a lot of imagination in that concept, only a reflection of recently canvased popular topics, like kids being addicted to screens. Viewers want to escape from reality, not be reminded of recent articles about screens, or gender stereotypes.

[jerf]

"like kids being addicted to screens."

I really felt this conflicted horribly with the setting, too. I'll accept for movie purposes the nifty modern computer screens that Syndrome uses or is on the Elastibike, but this is the 50s or very early 60s. Yeah, people were fulminating against TV screens then, but not to an extent I'd make a huge movie about it. It's a modern issue in a 1950s world, making even less sense than some of the strained political commentary sometimes set back in time.

[WorldMaker]

I think that's one of the problems with Incredibles setting that 2 only makes worse: the films don't seem to be set in the 50s/60s, they seem to be set in a world that never grew out of the 50s/60s. There is too much anachronism for it to be the 50s/60s. It's maybe the case that Incredibles 1 started in the equivalent of our 50s or 60s, but the time jump of "no supers" and the births and ages of the kids would indicate that most of the Incredibles happened maybe in the 80s/90s.

The timeline is probably a mess, but the clear point is that it can't be set in the 50s/60s so much as a world trapped in the 50s/60s idea of a future. It's retrofuturist nostalgia, at best. (Which between Incredibles 2 and Tomorrowland is perhaps where poor Brad Bird is trapped mentally and needs help escaping?)

[ceejayoz]

> Again, Mr Incredible is a superhero, I'm sure he can manage.

Being physically strong enough to lift a car doesn't really help that much in the parenting front.

As a parent, seeing him struggle with stuff like Common Core math was extremely relatable, and that's what Pixar excels at - fantastical stories about things real people are going through. Up dealt with loss and infertility. Toy Story dealt with growing up. Incredibles deals with trust and family.

[pcunite]

I've not seen Incredibles 2 yet, but I have told my kids that they are to "turn off" any show that makes me, their loving dad, out to be some kind of an idiot. I am not a TV dad, we are not a TV family, this is real life, and I love and care for you. And just because we don't drop $10k on yearly Disney vacations doesn't mean we don't have a good life.

[EpicBlackCrayon]

I don't necessarily care about the gender politics angle, I think it's just the tale of Bob learning to be a single parent. My problem is with the basics, the basic plot wasn't very well though out. I think Bird really shot himself in the foot by deliberately avoiding a time skip.

Then at the end of the movie supers are legal again thanks to one judge's ruling even though we've been told in previous movies that this is a government ban. There were so many little details that just wrapped themselves up nicely with no thought.

[toyg]

A judge overturning laws and other government decrees can happen in any country with a decent separation of powers, and particularly in the US. I agree that it was a bit rushed in the movie, but the concept is not that unlikely in theory.

[dmitriid]

It's not just gender politics. Incredibles 2 wasn't an animated film. It was a regular film with bland, unoriginal and in your face critique of modern world. For some reason it was animated.

For example, I can't imagine kids sitting through Screenslaver's monologue on society's vices when I as an adult was immediately bored out of my mind. Or, for god's sake, a meeting of world leaders to sign documents.

The whole movie was one inconsequential set piece after another with exactly one of them being funny and interesting: Edna.

Edit: can anyone explain to me why Frozone is a) so useless and b) given so much screentime?

[mschaef]

> I can't imagine kids sitting through Screenslaver's monologue

Do you have kids?

I have a six year old that's watched the movie, monologue and all, more times than I can count.

[miluge]

Put a kid in front of Frozen and watch their reaction and you will get your answer.

[DiabloD3]

They really need to just let it go.