Friday 15 June 2018

Incredibles 2 (2018)

The Incredibles was my favourite movie of 2004. It is one of my favourite superhero movies and one of my favourite animated movies. 14 years later and I still watch it with amazement and wonder. It captures so much that I find interesting about the questions posed by the possibility of a world with super powered individuals. There are few movies which come close to being perfect and it is one.

So going in to a sequel I just have to be prepared for it not to live up to the first film, right? While I have always felt The Incredibles was ripe for further adventures, a part of me knew any follow up would be a "let down" in that it could not be the masterpiece the first film was. But I also knew I could enjoy it for what it was, the further adventures of characters I feel a strong passion for, and the further exploration of ideas I am interested in.

And that's pretty much exactly what I got. Seeing these characters again was a true pleasure and picking up right after the events of the last film worked well. We get to see the implications of what happened in the first film, both for them and for the larger world. The story crafted is another fascinating one about the complexities and moral questions of living in a world where some people have super powers. The movie is exciting, funny, poignant, and mostly fun.

But throughout there was a linger sense for me that what I was seeing wasn't as magical as what I had experienced before. The story wasn't as cohesively compelling as the first, the characters didn't evolve as completely as they did in the previous installment, the whole package just wasn't as... incredible. Instead it was very good and very good is very good indeed. But it isn't incredible.

Don't get me wrong. I completely enjoyed myself and I'm on board for more Incredible advantures if Pixar feels compelled to make them (and based on the box office I assume they will be), but Incredibles 2 won't occupy the same space in my film loving heart as the first film. And it doesn't need to be a great movie. But a sequel can't help but live in the shadow of its predecessors.

Incredibles 2
Starring: Holly Hunter, Craig T. Nelson, Sarah Vowell, Huck Milner, Samuel L. Jackson, Brad Bird, Bob Odenkirk, Catherine Keener, Sophia Bush
Writer/Director: Brad Bird

No comments:

Post a Comment