Primordial Ooze

The Incredibles

"One of the best movies I've ever seen." -- Nick Codignotto

I'm not spoiling anything here, so read on.

Given that I'm a big fan of the genre, you have to take my recommendation with a grain of salt. That said, you'd be hard pressed to find another movie that matched the visual and storytelling perfection of the Incredibles.

While the characters weren't new in concept, the super powers have all been seen before, and the story was largely predictable, I have to say that none of that matters.

This wasn't a typical Pixar film. It was a bit gritty and real. There were mature themes that went over my 5-year old's head, but would be easily caught by someone just a few years older. People got hurt, people died, and it was all necessary to tell the story. I think I read somewhere that Pixar is positioning the film for Best Picture at the Oscars. Best Picture!

I have to admit that I need to keep my enthusiasm in check as I write this. Like I said before, I'm a fan of the genre and I would have liked the movie even if it kind of sucked. As long as it wasn't a train wreck, the film had me at hello.

The visuals were stunning. In my humble opinion, The Incredibles was by far the best looking Pixar film, nay, best looking 3D animated feature ever created. Rendering humans has always been a challenge for 3D animated features. I'm sure this is common knowledge, but the reason that Toy Story was invented was because the main characters could be easily rendered. They're not real, they're toys. For instance, the "hair" of a toy has none of the complex nuances of human hair. If you go back to Toy Story and Toy Story 2 and you look at the humans in those films, they're decisively artificial. Their movements and appearance are not nearly as convincing as the toys themselves.

Difficult objects such as hair were rendered better in Monsters Inc, another Pixar film, and another film that avoided the rendering of humans.

For The Incredibles, every aspect of the world has been improved (in terms of quality) over previous Pixar films. In particular, I took note of how well hair was rendered. A lot of attention was paid to the hair styles of the various characters. In addition, there was a lot of texture applied to the characters as they got wet, they sweated, or were covered in debris.

The scene construction was nothing short of brilliant. Being a computer film, the animators can take advantage of software tools that make it easy to make action cause reaction in precisely controlled ways. In one scene, Mr. Incredible throws a rock at a distant guard atop an elevated walkway. The rock hits the guard, wobbles his head causing the guard to drop his arms, become limp, and slop to the fauna 30 feet below. The scene was perfectly choreographed and the clarity of the sequence was profound.

As for the actual super heroes, referred to as "supers" in the film, a rich mythology was laid out and served as a lush background for the story. The creators of the Pixar films know a lot about economics and were able to use the background story to create both a mythology and provide fore shadowing to some key laughs at the end "No Capes!"

The Incredibles, I mean the family, used their powers in many effective ways and it was amusing to see this all happen by accident. When Dash was being chased by the goons of Syndrome, the look of surprise and delight on his face when he discovered he could dash across the surface of water was priceless. As I said, walking on water is nothing new to super heroes like the Flash or that Chinese guy in The Adventures of Remo Williams, but it was still fresh and exciting here.

I have doubts this film will ever be considered for something like Best Picture at the Oscars and I'm sure there are droves of folks might find the film yet another variation on a theme. For me, I can think of no other film that elicited the intense awe that The Incredibles drew out of me. It was truly the best film, animated or live-action, that I've every seen.