The Incredibles 2 is the worst animated movie I’ve seen all year and it’s also the best animated movie I’ve seen all year. If you haven’t figured it out already, this is the only animated movie I’ve seen so far this year. We’ll see how the rest of this year pans out and I might go to see Hotel Transylvania 3 meets Alvin and The Chipmunks 3 or Teen Titans Go: The Movie or the potential Madagascar sequel that is supposed to come out sometime this year. (Does anyone still care about Madagascar movies? I’m genuinely curious.)
So it’s been 14 years since the last Incredibles movie came out and half of the people in my cinema wouldn’t have been alive when the first one came out. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen a new Pixar movie. The last Pixar movie I saw was Finding Dory and that movie sucked! I skipped Cars 3 and next year there is going to be another Toy Story movie just like there is going to be another Frozen movie too. Luckily this new Incredibles movie is pretty incredible. (I couldn’t help myself.) I’m going to discuss this movie pretty much the same way as I did my Deadpool 2 review, except different. (Not really.)
The Good
The Story– The movie has an awesome start! It starts with The Incredibles fighting The Underminer (John Ratzenberger). The only problem with the opening is it doesn’t really click together that well. The Underminer no longer wants to enslave humanity but is now a bank robber. (By the way, the PS2 game is no longer canon.) My other problem is with Jack-Jack which I’ll get to more in a bit. Other than that the opening is amazing.
So the main plot is about making superheroes legal again. Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) takes a backseat in this movie and Elastigirl (Helen Hunter) works for a guy and woman who can help her get back to the glory days of being a superhero while fighting an evil villain motivated by revenge. Pretty similar to the first movie except more light-hearted.
Writing, Animation and Music– Compared to most animated movies nowadays, which all look mostly like the Despicable Me movies, (cheap, colourful, cartoony and ugly to look at) The Incredibles was above its time back in the day and this new movie just improves on the first one. It’s gorgeous to look at and so much detail has been put into this world. Just the extra detail in the clothing and the facial animations is why I love animation so much. Michael Giacchino is back for the music and it’s once again great. The jazzy music really spices up every action scene. Brad Bird has come back also to make this movie and he does a good job once again.
Action Scenes– The action scenes in this movie are amazing. They’re easily the highlight of the movie. We’ve got the one at the beginning and two other cool scenes in the middle and one at the end but my favourite is the chase scene with Elastigirl on her stretchy bike. That bike was so cool I wish I had one if I wasn’t limited by my body restraints.
Characters– This is pretty much the point where I switch into the negative but here is the characters I liked. Mr. Incredible plays Elastigirl’s role from the last movie and it’s pretty entertaining watching a grown man taking care of super kids. The only thing with him is he is now like a big man-child which I felt was like a downgrade from the first movie. Elastigirl takes centre stage in this one even though she never felt like the main character of the movie but is the only main character a part of the main plot.
Frozone (Samuel L Jackson), Rick Dicker (Jonathan Banks) and Edna Mode (Brad Bird) make great supporting characters once again. Lastly Jack-Jack who basically serves to make your child giggle at him causing havoc for every character around him but I found it more fascinating to learn more about his weird powers. What I don’t understand is how come none of the family knew he had powers. I guess you could say no one saw him use his powers at the end of the last movie but the last scene of the movie had him with his mask on and don’t you remember the three-month time-skip? (Explain that)
The Bad
The New Characters– All the new characters are all just really boring and uninteresting. This was the same gripe I had with Solo. The guy in the suit is too childish to take seriously and his sister only has one notable trait. There are some new heroes in this movie but they look too cartoonish for this universe. Then there is the main villain, The Screenslaver, who is so boring that I wished The Underminer was the main villain instead. The identity of The Screenslaver was so predictable that I’m surprised a little kid didn’t just scream it out.
Tone– Comparing it to the first movie, which was a fun family movie while also being a serious self-discovery story, this one is pretty much just a family movie. The story is pretty easy to follow unlike the first movie where you had to be 13+ to understand what was going on. The complexity and realism from the first movie is basically gone besides that superheroes are still illegal. Not that it’s a bad thing it is still a good movie but some of the charm from the first movie is gone instead we have more scenes of Jack-Jack being cute and doing weird stuff instead of a grown man suffering from depression.
Lastly, in the first movie Mr. Incredible reflects on the old newspapers, posters from his glory days and then to his old costume showing us his entire motivation for wanting to go back to fighting crime. Elastigirl in the first movie just wanted to stay home and not blow their cover. In this one Mr. Incredible literally pressures Elastigirl to get back into the game. She really has no reason to do this besides her husband saying she should and it gives her a chance to revive her solo career. Elastigirl was a good anchor for her husband in the first movie but not really a good leading character because Mr. Incredible is a more developed character than she is. That’s why the scenes with him playing the parent is more interesting to watch than Elastigirl kicking butt. But that’s just my two cents.
Final Thoughts: The Incredibles 2 is a lot of fun. As far as the superhero movies I’ve seen this year I would rank it as follows:
- Avengers: Infinity Wars
- Deadpool 2
- The Incredibles 2
- Black Panther
It’s a really good movie definitely worth your time and I would give it an 8/10.
Those are my thoughts on The Incredibles 2 so if you agree or disagree please let me know in the comments. If you can share it with your loved ones that would be great and If you haven’t noticed I’m a huge fan of movies, TV Shows & Video Games and I’m willing to suffer for my audience so let me know what I should review next. (Next week I hope to release a special type of review that I’m excited to make, so stay tuned for that.)
Thanks for reading this review and I’ll see you again in the next review.
