It’s been awhile since I’ve written in either of my blogs, so it feels weird that this will be the thing that breaks my blogging silence.
Last night, I was bored and decided to rent The Incredibles 2 on YouTube. Hadn’t seen it yet and wasn’t really eager to watch it. Not that I thought I’d hate it, I am just tired of Pixar sequels and didn’t think they’d be able to top the original. But I figured I’d have to watch it eventually, so I decided to get it over with.
Much to my surprise, not only is a good film (which you probably guessed I thought that by the fact I’m doing a Casabloga post about it and not a Desolation of Blog post), it far exceeded the original! It literally starts where that one ended. I just assumed we’d never find out how the fight with the Underminer went and it’d start a few months later or something. But no, you could remove the credits of the first film and watch these two back to back, that’s how close they happened.
One thing about the film I wasn’t aware of until after I watched it was that it was a little controversial. There are a few minor swear words in the film (like, someone says they’ll “promote the hell out of it”, someone else says, “I’ll be damned”, Frozone says, “What the fu–” and it gets cut off, things like that. Someone tweeted at Brad Bird about it, and I love his response!
He is absolutely right! Just because it is an animated film does not mean it is strictly a kid’s film. This film has surprisingly mature themes. Adults debate politics, Mr. Incredible has a realistic nervous breakdown, he and Elastagirl have marriage issues (subtly), etc. Little kids watching this film won’t be able to comprehend large parts of it. If they wanted to make it strictly for kids they’d have made it a wacky slapstick with superheroes.
But Pixar has been making more and more mature content over the years. Look at Toy Story, then look at Toy Story 3. I don’t know anyone who gets emotional watching Toy Story, but the first thing people talk about when they mention the third one is how emotional they got watching it. Can you have imagined them making Inside Out in the early 2000s? Or Coco? I made this my Snapchat story after watching Coco. I can’t imagine having the same reaction to A Bug’s Life.
My point is that I love this direction Pixar is heading. I never really gave it much thought until I saw Brad Bird’s tweet. It was just “the Pixar thing” for them to get deep nowadays. But looking back, I can’t imagine Pixar making something like the Shrek movies or Minions. Pixar films are usually high quality. I am seriously looking forward to what they’re doing next.
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