San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Elastigirl is front and center in “Incredibles 2.”
Incredibles 2 (PG) opens Friday, June 15, in Bay Area theaters.
In “Incredibles 2,” Helen/Elastigirl (voiced by Holly Hunter) is chosen to lead an effort to restore superheroes to their former glory, leaving husband Bob/Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) home with the baby.
But the “Incredibles” ’ superheroic matriarch already was a great female role model in 2004, when the first film was released. Helen could lean in or stretch way back, dispensing with bad guys while always trying to do what was best for her family. She was the richest female character in the superhero movie subgenre before Gal Gadot donned her Amazonian bracelets in 2017’s “Wonder Woman.”
At the start of the first “Incredibles,” a young Elastigirl is just as sure — and full — of herself as Mr. Incredible, to whom she is not yet married. She is not at all swayed by expectations for women of her era, the mid-20th century.
“Girls, come on!” Elastigirl tells an interviewer. “Leave the saving of the world to men? I don’t think so.”
When lawsuits mount against superheroes for damages incurred during their feats of derring-do, the government sends superheroes into witness protection. Bob/Mr. Incredible goes to work in insurance, and Helen stays home with the couple’s three children, where she remains assertive, reminding Bob, who is distracted by memories of his superhero past, to be in the present, with his family. When Bob indulges in new, down-low superheroism, endangering himself in the process, Helen and her special-powered children go off to help him.
During an interview at Emeryville’s Pixar Animation Studios in April, “Incredibles” creator Brad Bird told The Chronicle he has been surrounded by strong women his whole life. You can see their influence in Helen/Elastigirl, who held the line for years as the most interesting female character to don a mask onscreen, after Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman, from 1992’s “Batman Returns,” had held it for years before that.
Helen/Elastigirl stood out as special even though the release of “Incredibles” was sandwiched by those of two rare female-fronted comic-book films, “Catwoman,” starring Halle Berry, and “Elektra,” with Jennifer Garner.
Neither Berry nor Garner was bad, but their movies were; and women-led projects do not get a lot of second chances. Hollywood can follow a disappointment like Ang Lee’s “Hulk” with another Hulk movie with Edward Norton six years later, or keep rebooting the “SpiderMan” franchise every other year, but there would not be another female-centric comic book film until “Wonder Woman.”
There have been highly memorable supporting characters, including Scarlett Johannson’s Black Widow in the Marvel movies and Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn in “Suicide Squad,” and women took the lead in “The Hunger Games” and “The Force Awakens.” But 2008, in which the one-two punch of “Iron Man” and “The Dark Knight” ensured comic-book films would be the default for
Hollywood for the next decade, turned out to be a watershed year only for male characters. The drought was so obvious and long that female moviegoers welcomed Gadot’s Diana like their long-lost Amazonian sister, cheering her strength and overlooking a story in which a man saved the day. It seemed like a reasonable enough trade-off at the time, since the man was a good guy, played by the likable Chris Pine.
There is another female superhero film in the pipeline, “Captain Marvel,” starring Brie Larson (“Room”). Maybe Hollywood inserting a recent Academy Award winner from a gritty indie drama into a superhero costume will work better here than it did with the post-“Monster’s Ball” Berry and “Catwoman.” But judging by Larson’s wan expression through much of “Kong: Skull Island,” she might not be a natural big-budget type.
But female breakthroughs that do not require compromise already are happening, in 2018. In “Black Panther,” women are scientists and warriors who, most remarkably for a comic-book film — as Elle pointed out — conduct conversations with each other that are not about men.
We also have Helen/ Elastigirl taking the action lead this time out. Moving the character to the forefront was not a reaction to the #MeToo movement, Bird said. It takes so long for an animated film to get from script to screen that the subject matter cannot be too topical.
And we believe him, because Elastigirl was already fierce 14 years ago.