The Incredibles, like The Simpsons, are eternally the same age, although for them the miracle has been brought off by just starting the sequel at the exact point the first movie left off. We are still in the LBJ 60s, superheroes are still illegal and the Incredibles’ stroppy teen daughter Violet (voiced by Sarah Vowell) is on the verge of dating that nice boy she met in school.
It is indeed incredible to think that the first film came out in 2004, just before the Marvel Studios explosion of fan-oriented superhero films changed the cultural weather, creating an audience for whom the Incredibles’ uncanonical characters and satirical deconstruction of superhero conventions (capes, monologuing) are not entirely cool, however affectionately intended. But The Incredibles is for me still the greatest film from the Pixar studio and a masterpiece of the noughties’ golden age of digital feature animation, when these films’ graphics and visuals took the world’s breath away. How blase we all became. The Pixar signature ident is still thrilling to me: the little standard Anglepoise lamp bouncing the “i” in Pixar down to size and then turning on us its blank and challenging stare.
In some ways it’s disappointing that I2 just starts where the first film finishes: I would have liked to see the Incredibles 14 years on, at the beginning of the 80s, with Jack-Jack now a teenager, the kids young adults and Mr Incredible, Elastigirl and their friend Frozone (voiced superbly as ever by Craig T Nelson, Holly Hunter and Samuel L Jackson) settling into retirement. But how great to see them back in this funny, exciting, if less audacious film.
The sequel reprises the familiar tropes. The family are still living in the shadow of illegality; one of them is separated from the pack by a mysterious rich person, necessitating a dramatic rescue-reunion. This time around, the family is contacted by a corporation fronted by a brother and sister team, Winston Deavor (Bob Odenkirk) and Evelyn Deavor (Catherine Keener), whose late father was a massive fan of the postwar first-gen superheroes and now his grownup children have a plan for a new PR offensive to persuade the politicians to change their minds about the ban. And they want Elastigirl to be the face of this campaign, so alpha-male Mr Incredible is going to have to swallow his pride and get used to being a househusband. But of course the Deavor siblings are not exactly what they seem.
It’s all terrifically enjoyable, and it is great to see the whole Incredible world back as well the Incredibles themselves – the weird hyperreal 60s cityscapes and the huge Ken Adam-type designs. Costume designer Edna Mode (voiced by the writer-director himself, Brad Bird) returns briefly with her Anna Wintour bob, though without saying anything as quotable as the now legendary maxim about never looking back because it detracts from the now. She merely comments on the fact that children and family life were not for her. A prequel might perhaps dramatise the life of young Edna and perhaps her lost loves.
It’s a sugar rush of innocent fun.
