The Incredibles
(coloring pages)The Incredibles is an Academy Award-winning Pixar Animation Studios animated feature film. It was written and developed by Brad Bird, former director of The Simpsons and previously best known for directing the animated movie The Iron Giant. The Incredibles was originally developed as a traditionally-animated movie, but after Warner Bros. shut down its animation division, Brad Bird moved to Pixar and took the story with him.
The Incredibles is Pixar's sixth feature film. It was presented by Walt Disney Pictures and released by Buena Vista Distribution in North America on November 5, 2004, and in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland on November 26 of the same year. It is the first Pixar movie to be rated PG by the MPAA and the first to feature an entirely human cast of characters. It was released in a two-disc DVD (in both widescreen and full frame versions) in the U.S. on March 15, 2005. According to the Internet Movie Database, it was the highest-selling DVD of 2005 with 17.18 million copies sold.
MSN Movies ranks The Incredibles as the fourth best superhero movie to date, behind X-Men, Batman Returns, and Spider-Man.[
Plot synopsis
After a brief scene depicting an interview with three superheroes (Mr. Incredible/Bob Parr, Elastigirl/Helen, and Frozone/Lucius), the film opens with a youthful Mr. Incredible capturing two criminals while saving a kitten from a tree. He then meets Buddy Pine, his self-proclaimed “number one fan,” who wants to be his sidekick, Incredi-Boy. Mr. Incredible rejects his offer and then, along with Elastigirl, captures a thief. After saving a man from falling to his death, Mr. Incredible finds Bomb Voyage in the act of robbing a bank but is interrupted once again by Buddy, who still insists on being his sidekick. Buddy’s interference results in Bomb Voyage blowing up an elevated railroad and escaping. Mr. Incredible stops the train from falling off the broken track and sends Buddy home before rushing to the church, where he and Elastigirl are married. After the marriage scene a montage of news reports reveals that a wave of lawsuits against superheroes has resulted in the government banning all superhero activity.
Fifteen years later, Bob is an insurance claims adjuster and has three children with Helen: Fourteen-year-old Violet, who has invisibility and force field powers; ten-year-old Dash, who has incredible speed; and baby Jack-Jack, who has no known powers. Bob and his friend Lucius secretly moonlight in fighting crime, causing a huge argument between Bob and Helen when Helen finds out.
Furious with the immorality of his job and especially his boss, Mr. Huph, Bob throws him through several walls and is fired. Upon returning home, he finds an invitation by the mysterious Mirage. She reveals that a highly dangerous robot, the Omnidroid 9000, is wreaking havoc on an uncharted island and that her employer wants Mr. Incredible to stop it. Bob tells Helen he is going on a business trip and heads to the island, where he successfully defeats the Omnidroid. Not only is he much happier and involved with his family after proving that he is still a superhero, his reward of triple his annual salary allows him to pretend that he is still working at the insurance company and even buy a new car. He also gets a new super suit from Edna Mode, who is extremely prejudiced against capes because of their tendency to get caught on things.
Soon after getting the new super suit, Mirage calls again saying that she has a new assignment for him. Helen suspects that something is going on when Bob suddenly announces that he’s going on another business trip, but does nothing. When Bob returns to the island, he is attacked and nearly decapitated by an improved version of the Omnidroid and is greeted by the supervillain Syndrome, a grown-up Buddy Pine. It is revealed that Buddy, after being rejected by Mr. Incredible, created deadly weapons and sold them to armies to become rich enough to develop the Omnidroid. Meanwhile, Helen talks to Edna, who has already made super suits for every member of the Parr family, and discovers that Bob was actually fired from his job over two months ago. She breaks down, certain that he is cheating on her, and Edna advises her to take control of the situation. Back on the island, Bob discovers that Syndrome killed many of his superhero friends in the process of developing the Omnidroid, and is now planning on unleashing the robot in a major city where it will cause mass destruction.
After ascertaining Bob’s location using the homing device Edna built into his super suit, Helen departs for the island on a jet plane, unknowingly accompanied by Violet and Dash. Syndrome, meanwhile, tortures Bob for information and launches a missile attack against Helen's airplane. Although Helen, Violet, and Dash survive, everyone on the island believes they are killed. Out of rage, Bob grabs Mirage and threatens to kill her unless Syndrome frees him; Syndrome refuses, but Bob relents. Mirage is disgusted with Syndrome’s willingness to throw away her life and begins to pity Bob. Meanwhile, Helen and the children swim to the island from where the plane blew up.
While Helen infiltrates Syndrome’s base, the Omnidroid is launched on a rocket towards its target, which turns out to be Metroville (the city where the Parr family lives). The children sleep the night in the jungle but then are discovered and chased by Syndrome’s henchmen. In Syndrome’s base, Mirage secretly frees Bob just before Helen arrives to do the same thing, then the two superheroes rush to find their children, who are successfully fighting off the henchmen. The family is reunited, but just as they are about to defeat the armed guards Syndrome arrives and captures the Incredibles using his zero-point energy fields. After explaining his plan to save Metroville from his own Omnidroid and become a hero, he leaves the Incredibles in an energy prison. Violet’s force fields allow them to escape, however, and with Mirage’s help they depart for the mainland after Syndrome.
In Metroville, Syndrome arrives during the Omnidroid's destructive rampage and attempts to stop it, but the robot knocks him unconscious after figuring out that his remote control is allowing him to stop it from hitting him. Then the Incredibles arrive and, with the help of Frozone, fight the robot. Together, they are able to get the Omnidroid to dismantle itself. The town applauds them for their achievements; the possibility of superheroes coming out of hiding is also mentioned. Syndrome wakes up to find that the Incredibles have just done exactly what he wanted to do.
The Incredibles return home to find that Syndrome is kidnapping Jack-Jack; as he attempts to fly up to his jet using his rocket boots, Jack-Jack suddenly reveals his super powers by transforming into fire, metal and then an alien-like monster. Syndrome drops Jack-Jack, who is caught by Helen, and attempts to flee. However, Bob hurls the family car into the jet; Syndrome is knocked into the turbine and is killed when his cape is caught in the engine and pulls him in. Violet then protects the family from the raining flames and debris as the jet explodes, much to the amazement of their young neighbor.
Three months later, the family is much happier, and even Bob is content with their civilian life. Dash is running in a track meet, which Helen wouldn’t let him do at the beginning of the movie because she was afraid he would accidentally reveal his super powers. Dash promises to run no faster than the average human pace and finishes in second place at the track meet. Violet, who used to feel out of place to the point of using her hair to hide her face, is also found with her hair pulled back and successfully asking her crush for a date to the movies. As they walk out of the sports complex, The Underminer rises from the ground and “declares war on peace and happiness.” The family, including Jack-Jack, puts on superhero masks and prepares to fight; the movie ends with Bob opening up his shirt to reveal his Mr. Incredible suit underneath.
Trivia for The Incredibles
This is the first Pixar movie to be rated PG and the first Pixar film not to have lyrics to any of its scores (see below).
Production of The Incredibles began in March 2000.[6]
The score to the film was composed by Michael Giacchino. At Brad Bird's request, it is a stylistic tribute to the action scores of the 1960s, such as John Barry's scores for the James Bond franchise, which combined swinging big band and jazz lounge music with symphonic action scoring. In fact, the first teaser trailer uses Barry's opening credits theme from the James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service. The score was recorded in analog. Giacchino elected to forgo the standard practice of recording each soundtrack element separately, recording the orchestra, brass, and percussion simultaneously in the same room.
Musical homages to James Bond movie scores by John Barry include:
The Incredibles main theme => On Her Majesty's Secret Service main title/theme
The incidental music when Mr. Incredible is sneaking into Syndrome's headquarters => the incidental music when James Bond is sneaking into Auric Goldfinger's Swiss industrial plant
The building music as Mr. Incredible discovers the Operation Kronos files => the "Space Capsule Capture" theme from You Only Live Twice
The Incredibles popularized the term "monologuing."
Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas in the movieVeteran Disney animators Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas have character and voice cameos at the conclusion of the final battle sequence. Brad Bird had them both appear in cameos previously in The Iron Giant. Unfortunately, Thomas did not live long enough to see the finished film.
The scene where Elastigirl warns her children that their opponents are a deadly threat who will not show mercy to anyone, regardless of age, was a deliberate attempt by Bird to subvert the typical atmosphere of minimized jeopardy in Saturday morning cartoons.
The movie takes place no later than 1976[citation needed]. Several of the characters with capes are listed as having died in the late 1950s. The technology is anachronistically advanced, such as the existence of CDs, which did not hit the retail market until 1983. When Bob bought the new cars for himself and Helen, they did not even exist in the mid-1970s. Also note how comparable their life is to today's. But, according to the Bonus Features DVD, Bird intended that the movie take place in a specific era (mid-1960s according to the disc), yet also be timeless.
Another supposed anachronism is that Mr. Incredible's lawyer(s) should have gotten the Sansweet lawsuit dismissed, as suicide was illegal everywhere in the late 50s. Therefore, Mr. Incredible was actually stopping a crime in progress, and Sansweet should have been committed to a mental health facility for observation and treatment of his depression.
The name "Omnidroid" is owned by George Lucas as seen at the end of the credits.
There are scenes that depict vanity on the parts of Bob and Helen. Bob's vanity plays a significant role in the movie as Bob's confidence goes up while he works with Mirage. The scene that shows vanity on Helen's part (checking out her rear in a reflective surface) was in Brad Bird's original pitch: Bird himself has three sisters and he included the scene to reference the fact that women have a very critical eye on their bodies—and Helen is no exception. According to Bird in the DVD Director's Commentary: "The men are just glad that the women are around".
The inspiration for The Incredibles came from Brad Bird's family. Like Bird's wife, Helen is flexible; like his sons, Dash is full of energy; and like Bird's sisters during their teen years, Violet absolutely wants to fit in. Bird's middle son, Jack, was the inspiration for Jack-Jack.
The family's last name, Parr, is a homonym for the golf term "par" (or "average"); Bob therefore literally goes from being "Incredible" to "average" when superheroes are banned. Another theory behind why they choose the last name Parr is that Parr is just Pixar without the "ix" in the middle and an additional "r" added on to the end.
In some translations, Syndrome claims to use anti-matter instead of zero-point energy. An example is the Polish version.
This film is number 46 on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies".
The character of Bomb Voyage was originally scheduled to be Bomb Perignon as a spoof on Dom Perignon Champagne, but permission was refused.
The Parrs' home in Metroville appears to be an Eichler Home. There are 900 of these in Terra Linda, California, near Pixar's former homes in San Rafael and Point Richmond, California. Joseph Eichler build roughly 11,000 of these homes in California between 1950 and 1974.
Pixar insider references and jokes
- The opening high-speed police chase takes place on San Pablo Avenue, which passes near the studio's Emeryville headquarters. In fact, Mr. Incredible's GPS map shows the names of several streets near Pixar (including Park Avenue, Stanford Avenue, and Hollis Street), though the map itself is not accurate with many of the streets' names not correlating with the location of their real-life counterparts.
- When E is showing off the suits, Elastigirl tries out the tracking system, which points directly to Pixar's headquarters.
- A non-personified version of Cars' Doc Hudson can be seen parked in the background when Mr. Incredible tries to throw the tenth Omnidroid's claw.
- An appearance of the CalArts Animation School inside joke A113 appears in the middle of the film, when Mirage tells Mr. Incredible to report to conference room A113. The same in-joke appears later as the number for the containment cell holding Mr. Incredible: Detention Block A1, Cell No. 13.
- In the scene with the self destructing message, the boxing game from Toy Story is on the shelf, to the left.
- Helen's pilot call number, India Golf Niner-Niner (IG99) is a reference to Brad Bird's film, The Iron Giant, which came out in 1999.
- The storefront to the right of Lucious' car in the alley is the "Luxo Deli", a reference to "Luxo Jr.," the first Pixar short film. On the other side is "Andy's," a reference to Andy from Toy Story, Pixar's first full-length animated feature.