The Incredibles (2004)
Directed by Brad Bird
Bob Parr has given up his superhero days to log in time as an insurance adjuster and raise his three children with his formerly heroic wife in suburbia. But when he receives a mysterious assignment, it's time to get back into costume.
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What critics compared The Incredibles to
There are a few similarities to last summer’s funnier and sweeter “Despicable Me,” and even more ideas teased out of “The Incredibles.”
Toss in a little of "The Incredibles" and you have an OK entertainment that's instantly forgettable.
Unlike Pixar’s vastly superior The Incredibles , which affirmed the heroic archetype even as it cross-examined it, Megamind suggests that sometimes the hero isn’t really a hero at all.
If you crossed The Incredibles with Despicable Me , you'd end up with something a lot like DreamWorks Animation's new 3D toon Megamind .
MEGAMIND wants to be the DreamWorks Animation version of Pixar’s “The Incredibles.”
Had them both in the far-better “The Incredibles.”
Their signature themes of family and their retro 1960s vibe even helped shape the tone of Pixar’s The Incredibles…
…it’s strange how no live-action Fantastic Four filmmaker has figured out a way to use Mr. Fantastic’s stretchy powers half as dazzlingly as Brad Bird’s animated The Incredibles from more than 20 years ago…
The look is reminiscent of Pixar’s “The Incredibles,” and a group of movie geeks could stay up all night debating who influenced who.
Michael Giacchino's breathtaking orchestral score, which occasionally nearly rivals that of The Incredibles…
…his weirdly funny turn, channeling some serious “Incredibles” energy…
If this is all sounding a lot like Pixar’s The Incredibles, take heed, True Believer! That animated hit was heavily influenced by the Fantastic Four comics, and if you loved it, then you will love The Fantastic Four: First Steps, too. They have quite a lot in common from relationships, storyline, and tone.
Meanwhile, there’s some seriously fun action scenes (without some of the darkness and violence of other superhero films) that recall “The Incredibles.”
As far as 'toons go, it's probably most reminiscent of Pixar's "The Incredibles," given that both are stories about superhero teams.
Even if we’re just limiting ourselves to discussing animated superhero features, it wasn’t long ago that Pixar introduced us to The Incredibles -- a film that actually borrowed a good number of plot elements from Alan Moore’s Watchmen , one of the densest comic book stories ever written.
So, too, does the movie create parallels with “The Incredibles,” Pixar’s brilliant yarn about a family of misfit superheroes; when the plot mandates that Hiro and his schoolmates “enhance” themselves for battle against a this new and dangerous villain, they step into the roles of skilled alter-egos using their knowledge of science to fuel the physics of their costumes and super powers.
Big Hero 6 may be a little too glib to reach the heights of The Incredibles or The Iron Giant , but if you can’t have Brad Bird, this is pretty much the next best thing.
Despite its origins, some might view it as similar to "The Incredibles" (especially since both films come from the now merged Pixar-Disney conglomerate).
More annoying, Despicable Me borrows left and right from other, better animated/kids films, lifting ideas from The Grinch, Meet the Robinsons, The Incredibles, A Series of Unfortunate Events and Toy Story (the minions are nothing more than a carbon copy of the alien squeeze toys in that film).
The world of Despicable Me is reminiscent of The Incredibles, where superheroes and supervillains participate in everyday life, raising their kids and keeping up their suburban homes just like ordinary mortals.
Despicable Me is already instantly inviting comparisons with Brad Bird's The Incredibles and has a chance to ingeniously invert loyalties over to the bad guy's point of view and purpose.
The 3D computer animation Despicable Me is comparable to Pixar’s 2004 The Incredibles, which was about superheros living everyday lives.
What with its surface similarities to The Incredibles and Monsters Inc., it’s easy to see the influence that the much-revered masters of the feature-length ‘toon had on this production.
Like “The Incredibles,” “Despicable Me” uses a mock-’60s-cartoon-hero score and saddles its protagonists with super-nuisances — such as a dismissive French mom (Julie Andrews).
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Or, more simply put, when compared with the rich attention to humor, subtext and story featured in Finding Nemo, The Incredibles and Toy Story 3, Brave comes up short.
Occasionally a strong female character shares the spotlight with the leading male -- such as Elastigirl in 2004's "The Incredibles" and EVE in "WALL-E" -- but for the most part Pixar has been a toon town brimming with testosterone.
In the past, Pixar's best female characters (Dory in Finding Nemo, Helen Parr and Edna Mode in The Incredibles) have been triumphs of vocal performance more than writing, and the same holds true here, with Macdonald's beautiful Lowland lilt breathing life into a character who might otherwise have joined a long line of semi-interchangeable Disney princesses.
But for the Pixar Animation crew it’s just another number in their unbelievable string of hits: “Toy Story” (1995), “A Bug’s Life” (1998), “Toy Story 2” (1999), “Monsters, Inc.” (2001), “Finding Nemo” (2003), “The Incredibles” (2004), “Cars” (2006), “Ratatouille” (2007), “WALL-E” (2008), “Up” (2009), “Toy Story 3” (2010), “Cars 2” (2011) . . .
The " Toy Story " films essentially put computer animated family features on the map while " Toy Story 3 " went on to gross over $1 billion, " Finding Nemo " is getting a 3D re-release September 14, people are still clamoring for a sequel to " The Incredibles ," and " WALL-E " and " Up " featured some of the most effective animation that shot straight for your emotions with little to no dialogue.
He did the soundtracks for The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and the new Star Trek, all of which combine a gift for pastiche with an unironic emotional directness.
While they’re great at the more touching moments, and also at scenes of awestruck wonder — like when Carl’s flying house touches down on that mountain plateau towering above the clouds — Docter and Petersen’s sense of humor can seem a bit too hokey much of the time, lacking the more inspired zaniness of, say, “The Incredibles”.
Brad Bird is the notable exception: I see his 2004 “The Incredibles” and the 2007 “Rataouille” as the real jewels in the Pixar crown.
As a feat of the imagination, it is on a par with the studio’s finest – among them, Toy Story 2 , The Incredibles and my personal favorite, WALL*E – but Up occasionally loses focus, moving in too many directions at once to concentrate on Carl and Russell’s burgeoning friendship.
And Michael Giacchino, the virtuosic composer for Pixar’s The Incredibles andand J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek and “Lost,” excels with one of his richest and most buoyant scores.Cast aside any doubts that audiences will embrace an animated feature with a septuagenarian lead.
Visually, the first act of the film, with its square trees to match its square houses, reminded me of the suburban rigidity of the first act of Brad Bird ’s “ The Incredibles ,” while visions of the world of the title character reminded me of LAIKA gems like “ Coraline ” and “Paranorman.”
In the real world, it is most readily evocative of a European-tinted The Incredibles, with characters with bubble eyes and proportionate bodies, but also a firmly realistic understanding of the world.
Although it does not join the likes of “The Incredibles” and “WALL-E” in the pantheon of company masterworks, “Onward” is a touching, lovingly crafted oddity — a movie that acknowledges its borrowed elements at the outset and then proceeds to reinvigorate them with tried-and-true Pixar virtues: sly wit, dazzling invention and a delicacy of feeling that approaches the sublime.
Speaking of Pixar hallmarks, the world-building in Onward is absolutely spectacular and unquestionably rivals the lavish underwater world of Finding Nemo and the innovative styling of The Incredibles.
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Taking its name and inspiration from the futuristic themed area at Disneyland , Brad Bird's latest blockbuster mines similar territory to his earlier films The Iron Giant and The Incredibles , a pair of dazzling animations that expertly blended heart, spectacle and nostalgia.
In his own slangy, rugged-individualist way, Bird matches Miyazaki repeatedly for imagination and virtuosity in animated films like The Iron Giant (99), The Incredibles (04) and Ratatouille (07), and in his live-action Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol (11), which lightly mocks the central concepts of Mission: Impossible movies (hairbreadth escapes, unlikely disguises) while also spectacularly fulfilling them.
Whoa! What has happened to Brad Bird, the genius director whose refreshingly inspired "The Incredibles" gave us an on-target snapshot of an American family coping with superhero issues steeped in Soaring Sixties sensibilities?
Tomorrowland, which is directed by the great animation maestro Brad Bird (The Incredibles, Ratatouille), reminded me a bit of the kinds of films I grew up on—smart, wide-eyed, live-action family films like Back to the Future, War Games, and E.T.
With Tomorrowland, director Brad Bird (he of The Incredibles & Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol ) & screenwriter Damon Lindelof ( Prometheus ) remind us of the very fact that we are more than a Darwinian construct.
After all, even if there are plenty of adult themes in the movie (like we saw in “The Iron Giant” and “The Incredibles”), we have been conditioned as a culture to equate animation with children’s cinema.
And “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol” falls perfectly in line with its predecessors: helmed by Brad Bird, whose combination of brisk action and humanizing comedy made Pixar’s “The Incredibles” such a winner, the fourth film is its own entity, a bemusing but visceral thriller that ups the series’ stakes while staying true to its core concepts.
This time around, the directorial reins have been handed over to Brad Bird, making his live-action feature debut after directing the acclaimed animated films "The Iron Giant," "The Incredibles" and "Ratatouille," and while it might seem at first blush to be an odd idea to put a project of this size in the hands of someone who has never made a non-animated film before, he proves to be an incredibly inspired choice.
Continuing in the M:I movie series tradition of having a new director for each entry, animation maestro Brad Bird (The Iron Giant, The Incredibles) takes the rein of his first live-action film and instantly establishes his credibility with a cracking pre-credit sequence that combines many of the elements fans have come to expect (international locales, mortal danger, high-tech hardware).
This time, Pixar veteran Brad Bird (“The Incredibles”) got the nod.
Although spy intrigue is an essential element to the winning M:I formula, the feature films have always tilted more toward the action spectacle, and snagging Oscar-winning animation director Brad Bird to fill the director's chair proves to be an inspired choice--and, upon thought, a bit of a no-brainer, given that his The Incredibles was one of the most exciting action pictures in recent memory, animated or otherwise.
And mostly, there's Bird, quietly orchestrating all of this with his typically energy and affection for old cinematic forms - as with The Incredibles , there's a pronounced '60s vibe going on beneath the CGI and rapid-fire cutting.