The Incredibles

[locke]

Our first movie selection is The Incredibles.

A fantastic animated film from Brad Bird and Pixar, The incredibles is the story of a family of superheroes living in obscurity after a lawsuit happy America killed the superheroing industry. But Mr. Incredible is needed once again, and soon he, and his family, are donning their superhero outfits to work together as a team to save the day!

[Oliver Dale]

What's the time frame on this movie?

[locke]

Ideally you'll watch within the week and post here, but discussion and comments will continue in an open ended fashion. More selections will be ongoing however.

[locke]

I watched this on Friday, but visitors from out of town have monopolized my time and I forgot to post until now.

This is a GREAT movie. It's even better than I remembered. I could sit down and watch it again right now. The big set piece on the island is so much fun; there is so much joy in watching Dash and Violet discover their powers. This is by far my favorite pixar movie.

[mr_thebrain]

I liked this movie enough to buy the DVD when it came out. I think it was well voice-acted. The plot and comedy were spectacular. I have to give mad props to Jason Lee portraying the antagonist.

To be honest, the only thing I didn’t like about this was the unoriginality of the super powers. However, I think the idea and execution of super heroes being put out of work by the legal process more than makes up for it. Not to mention most of the super heroes were parodies of existing comic book heroes.

[locke]

You bring up a good question for everyone. Can you invent new powers nowadays or is there nothing new under the sun?

Personally I felt the execution of the powers was so unique and well done that everything about the film felt fresh.

We've never had to see Superman get back in shape by benchpressing freight trains, and on the other hand, Mr Incredible is not incincible, bullets clearly are dangerous to all supers.

I don't think I've ever seen a 'stretch' power that was as innovatively and cleverly used as Elastigirl.

Dash, who could be easily be written off as having an ability of limiting interest comes across beautifully because he's discovering the extent and limitations of his speed. There's no better moment then his chuckle when he realizes he can run on water, except for maybe how he also uses his brain to get out of the 'pickle'

And invisibility is not all that interesting a power but when combined with the forcefields Violet becomes much more dynamic, and the combination of the two is a fabulous complementary match, especially for a personality like Violet's.

And Jack Jack as a ball of baby that morphs into a screeching monster (or whatever) well, that's a pretty funny description of a baby.

Really, only Frozone is an outright copy/parody. Perhaps Gazer Beam as well, not that we ever saw him.

Adam

[eriador]

Even though the powers may have been somewhat stale, I loved how fresh everything else was. The idea of superheroes as normal people with somewhat special ablities, but no different (really) from everybody else was wonderful. The entire plot, acting, visuals, everything was really fresh and entertaining.

4.5 out of 5 stars (because nothing is perfect)

[Craig]

A theme that I really liked was how heroes end up being scapegoats when things go wrong. It's like the people that are in power end up being responsible even when things aren't there fault. As far as I can tell this doesn't seem the case in any other superhero movie. Spiderman and Batman are called vigilantes who take the law into their own hands and they're loved and hated for it. Superman is just loved. So I found that really interesting.

Could a superhero actually be out of shape? Heh, who cares, watching him get back into shape was great. Am I the only one who missed the "better make it a salad" line?

Salaam

[peterlocke123]

A theme that I really liked was how heroes end up being scapegoats when things go wrong. It's like the people that are in power end up being responsible even when things aren't there fault. As far as I can tell this doesn't seem the case in any other superhero movie.

Well, this sort of happens in X-Men, but it's more of a scared of mutants thing, not scapegoat.

[Craig]

Yeah, that is true. Though in X-Men, at least in the movies, the focus seems to be more on discrimination or segregation than anything.

Salaam