“You Ruined My Death!”
I went and saw The Incredibles today. I’d really been looking forward to it, not in the least because I’m writing a superhero satire myself. Overall, I really enjoyed the movie. There were a few points where I just couldn’t follow the character’s thought process but that might have just been because I was very tired.
This is definitely not a movie for little kids. There were a quite a few at the showing I attended and I’m sure a number of them are still traumatized. There were a couple of points where the darkness surprised even me. Maybe I’m just too used to family movies that show the bad guys parachuting to safety when their vehicles blow up. One of the things I admired about the last movie by director Brad Bird, The Iron Giant, was its unflinching acceptance of the reality of death. Still, there’s something inside of you that just cracks when you see a mother explaining to her kids that the bad guys won’t hold back on account of them: “They WILL kill you.”
I have to say that this movie really showed what it really takes to be a superhero. The secret isn’t the super powers. It’s reaction time and adaptability. The action scenes are amazingly frenetic, to the point where you can still manage to follow along but you can’t understand how the characters, animated or not, are able to take out that many enemies and avoid that many blows in that little time. It’s even more amazing (or incredible) when you consider that most of the scenes involve heroes either brand new to the game or badly out of practice.
Over all, it’s a fun movie that explores the human side of superheroes, a great step forward in computer animation, and a loving satire of comic books from someone who’s clearly a fan. This is the first movie in a long time that I want to go see in the theater again, as well as buy lots of fun merchandise from. God help me.