INCREDIBLES 2

“MAKE ALL SUPERS LEGAL AGAIN!” SO cheers Winston Deavor (Bob Odenkirk), a Pr-savvy entrepreneur who wants to help banned heroes restore their good name in Pixar’s 14-years-in-the-making follow-up to its 2004 smash, The Incredibles. Winston and his sister, Evelyn (Catherine Keener), are among the enigmatic new additions to writerdirector Brad Bird’s sequel, which picks up immediately after the first movie— with very illegal heroes like Elastigirl (Holly Hunter), Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson), and their superpowered children facing the consequences of a very public citywide skirmish.

“It puts the public myth of Supers back on the table,” explains Bird, who won an Oscar for Best Animated Feature with the rest of his team for the first film. “Once crowds get a little taste of what superheroes were and are, they kind of miss them. That doesn’t mean everybody misses them ... but the populace is starting to question their banning of Supers.”

Enter the Deavor siblings, telecommunications bigwigs (with a link to superheroes in their past) who have the money and resources to change public perception and legalise Supers. “It’s like when Bill Gates decides he and his wife want to get rid of malaria,” jokes Bird. Since every campaign needs a face, the Deavors select Elastigirl to lead the mission—leaving Mr. Incredible with more household responsibilities and more time to bond with these increasingly active children.

At home, baby Jack-jack’s budding powers are out of control—an idea Bird had fun developing over the years— while invisible Violet (Sarah Vowell) and agile Dash (Huck Milner) have mastered their abilities and are finding that the banality of suburbia is no longer their speed. Unleashing their powers in the first film “has totally changed the relationship between the kids and their parents,” says Bird. “The kids have been to Paris now, and they don’t necessarily want to go back home.”

One could make a similar argument for audiences, who greeted The Incredibles as a genre revelation in 2004 but have watched the superhero-movie category bubble and burst in the decade since. “When we did the first one, it was maybe just X-men and Spider-man out,” remarks Nelson. “There was not the glut that there is now. So what do you do? How do you compete against that? Brad really had to stretch his imagination and creativity to come up with something that was going to be contemporary, yet at the same time, still retain that original story.”

Fortunately, stretchy things are nothing new to the world of The Incredibles.