A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW
Writer-director happy to oversee Incredibles after 14 long years
Time flies when you’re having fun — or, for writer-director Brad Bird, when you’re busy making movies. The two-time Oscar winner had always planned to make a sequel to 2004’s The Incredibles, it just took a little longer than expected. Incredibles 2 picks up pretty much where the original ended.
The sequel centres on Bob/ Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) struggling to be a stay-at-home dad as his wife Helen/Elastigirl (Holly Hunter) becomes the family’s crime fighting figurehead in a society where superheroes are no longer legal.
Used to being the lead hero, Bob has to navigate the dating life of daughter Violet (Sarah Vowell), help son Dash (Huck Milner) with his math homework and cope with baby Jack-Jack’s (an amalgam of gurgling baby sounds), erm, new superpowers — all while Elastigirl gets new crime-fighting upgrades thanks to billionaire Winston Deavor (Bob Odenkirk), who hopes to bring superheroes back in vogue.
A new threat — the mysterious Screenslaver — emerges causing the entire family (along with their pal Frozone, voiced by Samuel L. Jackson) to join forces to save the day. Of course, fashion designer Edna Mode (whom Bird voices) is back to outfit the heroes.
Bird says an Incredibles sequel was always going to happen. But after the success of the first one, his phone wouldn’t stop ringing with people wanting him to direct various projects — including Ratatouille, Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol and Tomorrowland.
Q Incredibles 2 kicks off shortly after the end of the first one. We’ve all aged 14 years. Why didn’t you want to have the Parrs age as well?
A One of the notions of the first film was I wasn’t interested in superpowers as superpowers, I was using them to comment on the family and the different parts of your life that you go through. Men are expected to be strong, so I had Dad be super strong. Mothers are pulled in 10 different directions at once, so I had her be elastic. Teenagers are defensive and insecure, so I had Violent be invisible with force fields. Ten-year-old boys want to push every button and open every door that they see, and babies are unknowns. If you age them up, it just becomes superpowers and it’s no longer interesting to me.
Q In your real-world films, you’ve done some amazing sequences. How did directing Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible or George Clooney in Tomorrowland impact what you wanted to try in Incredibles 2?
A Even before I did live-action, people were saying — I sound like Trump now, ‘Who are these people?’ (laughs) — some of my peers said that my animated films were staged more like liveaction films. I took that as a compliment. It wasn’t hard for me to make the move from animation to live action in the sense of imagining the shots. They’re still the same medium. Sets have to be designed, just as they do in a live-action film. You have all the same questions, it’s just how you answer them — the technique — is a little different.
Q The first Incredibles feature was a huge success, and since then Pixar features are big event films. What has it been like for you to see people embracing animation? A You hope that films stick around. They have a very brief time in the theatres now. When I was a kid, movies could stay in theatres for a while and people could discover it. A lot of people don’t remember, but Raiders of the Lost Ark was not a huge hit when it opened. It did OK, but it just stuck around. People think about it now and imagine that there were long lines around the block, but there were other films out that summer. It was word of mouth that kept Raiders in theatres for a year. That doesn’t happen anymore. Nowadays, they imagine that the audience is going to be gone in a month and it’s off to (home) video. That’s fine. It’s great that movies are gettable by people, but if you make films, you want people to experience them with a large screen, uninterrupted, in the dark with strangers. There’s something very specific about that experience. That to me is film at its best.
Q OK, we had to wait 14 years for Incredibles 2. How long are we going to have to wait for Incredibles 3? A This is the worst time to ask me. Let me get back to you. mdaniell@postmedia.com Twitter: @markhdaniell