This review’s a little late, I know. But at least it didn’t take fourteen years.
Alright, now that we’ve got that obligatory joke out of the way, how does Incredibles 2 fare?
The first thing I’ll praise about this film over the first one is how much better the animation has come. There’s definitely a lot more detail with the hair and the clothing, and the action scenes look very fluid and impressive. But even with all this detail, it still manages to maintain the stylized Iron Giant-esque character designs from the first movie, which I appreciated.
I will say that even though the animation is much better, the first movie had a better mastery of light and color. The first movie had some really cool shots with really effective mood lighting and colors given the situation, and in this movie, it felt like a lot of it had ever-present bright colors and everything was washed in this soft golden light. While it makes for a bright and colorful movie, it also makes for a less visually interesting movie than the first one.
The Jack-Jack stuff is funny and cute with how they show all of his powers, especially that battle with the raccoon. And I appreciated the dynamic shift that happens in the movie between Bob and Helen, where she’s the new hero in action and Bob has to stay home with the kids. It’s a side of both of these characters we didn’t really see in the first movie.
By and large, I’m glad that the sequel doesn’t feel like a rehash of the first movie, which was a big fear I had after watching some of the trailers. There’s some stuff that feels like repeats of the first movie (a superhero doing missions for a corporation, a tech-based villain who hates supers, etc.) but it’s all pretty superficial. It definitely feels like its own movie.
That being said, the movie’s pretty predictable, especially when it comes to the villain. As I predicted in my Ant-Man and the Wasp article, they opt for another Disney surprise villain reveal. Admittedly, the villain has some pretty good speeches and understandable motivations (I mean, for a superhero movie), but I am getting so sick of this recent cliché with Disney films, especially now that it’s bleeding into Pixar. With Incredibles 2, the past two Pixar movies have had a twist where a supposed ally was the villain all along, and I’ve just grown so bored with this twist. It’s becoming so predictable when every Disney movie is doing it now. Why can’t villains just be out-and-out villains anymore?
On the whole, Incredibles 2 is nowhere near as good as the first movie, which is to be expected. The Incredibles is a classic, one of my favorite Pixar movies, and one of my favorite superhero movies. It would be hard to beat, or even match the same quality. But that doesn’t mean this movie is bad. It’s good, just not as good as the first. I just hold Pixar to such high standards with animated movies that when they deliver one that’s just okay, it feels like a bit of a disappointment. But if this movie were made by a lesser animation studio (like, say, Illumination) it would probably be seen as really great.
The feeling I got from leaving this movie reminded me of the feeling I had after leaving Finding Dory: it’s a fine movie, but it doesn’t have the emotional weight or impact that the first movie had. Thus, the sequel doesn’t feel as important as the first installment and, in some regards, a little unnecessary.
That feeling could also come from the fact that Incredibles 2 was released in 2018, when there are already a butt-ton of superhero movies on the market. The first movie was back in 2004, before the superhero movie boom, at a time when superhero movie releases were more sporadic and not always of the best quality. It had it’s own identity to set it apart from not only other superhero movies, but superhero entertainment aimed at children and families. Incredibles 2, while a fine film, feels like just another superhero movie in an already overflowing sea of tights and masks. It doesn’t have what the first movie had that made it stand out, be that the subject matter or the time of release. Maybe Syndrome's plan actually came true: "When everyone's super, no one will be."
Also, it needed more Frozone and Edna in it. Come on, Disney, you love to give every character and their mother a spin-off movie, why not give one to these two?
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