THE INCREDIBLES (2004)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*


There's a rich irony in the fact that THE INCREDIBLES provided Hollywood's most incisive look at the superhero idiom, years before superheroes became a mainstay in popular entertainment. Arguably, Brad Bird's salute to the 1960s pop culture-- replete with references to James Bond, Jonny Quest, and the Fantastic Four-- has still not been equaled in terms of philosophical insight, particularly not by the aesthetically erratic Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Following on the heels of the 1989 BATMAN, Hollywood studios made substantial investments in big-budget s superhero films, though most of the completed productions focused on less-than-stellar properties like Judge Dredd, Blade, and the Mutant Turtles. The 2000s kicked off a short wave of studio investment in high-ticket American icons like X-Men and Spider-Man, which indirectly made possible the still-current success of the MCU. Many of these "second-wave" films sought to render the themes of Silver Age comics into the context of Hollywood blockbusters, but INCREDIBLES universalized those themes in such a way that they became practically timeless. For that reason the animated film has sometimes been called "the best Fantastic Four film that didn't literally star the Fantastic Four."

In the 1960s, the general public still conceived of costumed heroes as nothing more than colorful escapism, even when given touches of campiness, which is one reason the BATMAN teleseries touched a collective nerve. But the Silver Age superhero was far less represented by any version of Batman than by the 1961 debut of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's FANTASTIC FOUR, one of the first features to proclaim that being a superhero wasn't always a bed of thornless roses. The FF's world was one where, to get hyper-literary for a moment, William Blake's "innocence" and "experience" remained equally viable. Still, not until Roy Thomas masterminded his "Kree-Skrull War" (1971-72) did any professional authors make a thematic contrast between the "innocence" of comics' "Golden Age of superheroes" and the "experience" that Silver Age comic books sought to incorporate, usually in some form of politically-based "relevance."

INCREDIBLES doesn't have the history of Marvel Comics to play with, so its "era of innocence" takes place roughly 15 years before the main body of the film. Bird doesn't create a "continuity" as such; it's just loosely established that for some time bunches of  superheroes and supervillains have thronged the skies of modern-day America. Mister Incredible is one of the foremost heroes, seeming something like a cross between a boulder-shouldered version of Superman and the FF's team-leader Mister Fantastic. But he also becomes the crux of the heroes' downfall. Thanks in part to the interference of Buddy, an obnoxious kid who wants to be Incredible's sidekick, the heroes are all forced to hang up their capes, conceal their powers, and seek to "be like everyone else." It's probably not a coincidence, though, that this all happens to Incredible at the same time he ends his career as a "lone wolf" hero by marrying a costumed heroine, Elastigirl. Thus the law against superheroes fortuitously comes about just when the viewpoint hero is obliged to embrace domestic life and hold down a nine-to-five job.

Fifteen years later, Incredible and Elastigirl have maintained their regular identities of Bob and Helen Parr. Their two kids, Dash and Violet, have manifested their own unique powers, but they've had to conceal their abilities for the sake of conformity. Interestingly, each of the family-members copes differently. Helen seems to forget her superheroic past pretty easily, while middle-schooler Dash simply "acts out" by pranking teachers. Violet, the older sibling, acts as if the ritual of concealment has traumatized her, appearing as a slightly creepy "shrinking violet" who hides her face behind her long hair. Bob, however, can't cope. He still tries to fight crime and disasters in simple, non-costumed disguises, and he loses his temper when his smarmy boss keeps him from preventing a mugging. He seems ripe for a mid-life crisis when a mysterious benefactor, aware of Bob's heroic past, gives him the chance to be a superhero again.

Naturally, this devil's bargain has a devil behind it. Buddy, the annoying kid who once idolized Mister Incredible and wanted to be his sidekick, has channeled his former admiration of the hero and become a vengeful supervillain, Syndrome. The villain's main motive for employing Mister Incredible is to train a robotic device capable of killing any superhero-- one that has, in truth, already murdered several of the retired crusaders. Syndrome, in addition to wanting Incredible both humiliated and dead, plans to unleash the robot on a large city, so that he Syndrome can come to the city's rescue and become the world's greatest hero.

Domesticity, however, comes to Incredible's rescue. Even though Helen initially fears that her husband is revolving his mid-life troubles in a more mundane manner, her suspicions lead her to track Incredible down. For good measure, her super-powered kids manage to tag along, in tried-and-true Jonny Quest fashion, thus giving them the chance to undergo a baptism-of-fire in spite of parental protection. With all this setup done, the rest of the film is devoted to high-powered action as "the Incredibles" take on Syndrome and his organization.

I've devoted much space to the setup of  the conflict between Incredible and Syndrome because it also reflects the hero's ambivalence about domesticity. Even though he embraces marriage freely, society's celebration of mediocrity renders the domestic world joyless and uuinspired, until he finds a way to unleash his "inner superhero" once more. The movie's theme of "conformity vs. exceptionalism" is one that deserves fuller treatment in a separate essay, even though it should be noted Brad Bird has dismissed reviewers' attempts to link him with philosophical luminaries like Ayn Rand and Nietzsche. In truth, even if Bird never read a line of either philosopher, he nonetheless succeeded in mining the same imaginative potential one finds in the best Silver Age comics. If I was going to sum up that potential, it might take the form of a roundabout twist on a Blake aphorism:

"Time is in love with the productions of eternity."