For my money the previous holder of the title “best superhero movie ever made” is M Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable, a film that is intimately familiar with the genre’s tropes – the relationships between heroes and villains, between heroes and their teen sidekicks, the balance of power necessary to keep the heroes vulnerable and the way in which heroes must face their responsibilities – but which takes them only as a starting point. With its foundations thus firmly rooted it goes on to transcend the often juvenile nature of the superhero story and create a genuinely adult and suspenseful blue-collar drama.
Despite the explosion of superhero movies since Unbreakable only Spider-Man 2 has really come close to combining spandex-clad thrills with a human story that really matters. Now both have a challenger for the title of best ever superhero movie – a film that understands its roots just as well and which succeeds in applying them to themes of the adult world while preserving the essential shape of the genre.
And if it seems unlikely that the most adult analysis of the “reality” of heroism in a modern world should be found in an animated comedy film aimed at, you know, kids, then the credit belongs to writer/director Brad Bird.
Bird cut his animation teeth with two classic Krusty the Clown episodes of The Simpsons then went on to direct one of the most criminally overlooked movies of all time – The Iron Giant – a loose, but brilliant in its own way, adaptation of the Ted Hughes story.
Snapped up by Pixar, The Incredibles is Bird’s first project since The Iron Giant and had a lot of work to do to meet my expectations. That it not only met them, but flew far beyond them has been one of the genuine delights of the cinematic year.
The Incredibles is perfectly pitched on a whole host of levels. As with The Iron Giant, it works beautifully as a kids movie, full of slapstick, action and obvious suspense. In addition The Incredibles has, thanks to gorgeous design and Pixar’s peerless animation technology, more than enough eye candy to keep even the shortest of attention spans fixed to the screen despite a surprisingly long (two hour) running time.
Unlike the Shrek films, The Incredibles never forgets that children form the core of its audience but, within the framework of a children’s movie, The Incredibles offers far more than just childish entertainment.
At the heart of the film is a precise and hard-edged dissection of the frustrations of suburban living and the soul-crushing banality of corporate working life as Mr Incredible (Nelson) – powerful enough to leap tall buildings in a single bound (and hefty enough to flatten the building if he lands on it) – is forced to try and fit in with the normal world of office cubicles and petty rules made by petty minds.
An animated kids movie might not be the first place one would look for a devastating critique of what modern capitalism does to the aspirations and talents of its people – in its own, gentler, way The Incredibles is far more damning of the American way of life that anything produced by Michael Moore. Mr Incredible is forced to stop saving lives and doing great deeds by the litigation culture of modern America. Ambulance-chasing lawyers have replaced Kryptonite and insurance companies have out-done masked supervillains.
And, under this, is the sense that the overwhelming forces of conformity and mediocrity have conspired to crush meritocracy. “Everyone is special,” Elastigirl (Hunter), Mr Incredible’s wife tells their son Dash. “Which is another way of saying no one is,” grumbles Dash. The most heartfelt line in the movie is surely when, after we’ve watched his children hide their talents to fit in at high school, Mr Incredible sighs: “They keep finding new ways of celebrating mediocrity.”
And Bird achieves all this while creating a film with the best joke about superhero capes ever and introduing E, the superhero seamstress – the insane result of mixing the genes of Anne Widdecombe and Vivienne Westwood.
The Incredibles is a film that works on every level. It is as impressive a piece of storytelling as it is as a technological marvel. The best animated film of the year, probably the best superhero movie ever, another huge success for Pixar and a great piece of entertainment.