THE PROBLEM WITH BEING INCREDIBLE
There's no doubt that
The Incredibles is sensational entertainment, but it's appearance on numerous Ten Best lists is a little baffling. It pales beside
Spider-Man 2, which is admittedly as much a remake and reworking of the first film as it is a sequel, but it's still the best of its kind since Burton's
Batman movies.
The Incredibles, frankly, just seems a little
late. Marvel comics has been doing the dour middle-class lives of superheroes for 40 years, so I'm not sure why this aspect has critics so agog. And this may sound like sour grapes, but I think the film makes a fatal (and decidedly un-Pixar-ish) mistake in its conception of the villain, Syndrome. While there's something refreshing in its refusal to accept mediocrity, there's something almost Randian in its insistence that greatness is born, not made. The heroes are "all natural", after all, while the villain turns to crime after he's rejected for entry into the superhero family because his "powers" are artificial. No matter how great his technological ingenuity, the fact he uses a jetpack means he's forever a pretender.
I realize
The Incredibles consciously posits itself as the first post-9/11 family entertainment (Helen's warning to her super-children that the enemies they'll face aren't like the ones on TV shows who never harm kids could not mean to invoke anything but al Qaeda.), and as such suggesting that all evil needs is a good hug certainly isn't a hip attitude... but the guy's name is
Syndrome, for chrissake! Show the kid a little love, will ya?
I know we don't want to sugar-coat things for kids, but at the same time do we really need to be teaching them that there really is unredeemable evil in the world? Maybe I'm a soft, lefty loony, but I'm still more partial to the lessons of
Finding Nemo where even sharks can learn that fish are friends, not food.
Sticking with the post-9/11 theme, how galling is it that no matter how good his intentions, Mr. Incredible never has to accept even partial responsibility for how his arrogance ends up creating his nemesis in the first place? This isn't blaming the victim. It's taking responsibility for you actions. He's trying to make the world a safer place. The fact that his actions may in fact be resulting in the opposite is completely irrelevant. Despite a layer that would be the envy of any Bond villain, Syndrome doesn't want to rule the world. He just wants to rid it of "supers" only because they rejected him first. As we've seen, these ideological battles never really end well.
Our popular artists are best when they are anticipating the zeitgeist (or at least skewing current trends) rather than pandering to it. (It's the genius of Larry David to have created the comic self-absorption of
Seinfeld in one decade and then morph it into the comic horror of
Curb Your Enthusiasm in another.) Maybe the fact they're so time consuming to make is the biggest drawback to computer-animated features.
The Incredibles might have been mildly refreshing in the midst of Clintonia when writer-director Brad Bird thought it up, but in the midst of George Bush spending his political capital it's smug superiority is suffocating. Frankly,
The Incredibles isn't merely a critique of the lame notion that "everyone is special". Its real lesson is "I'm special, you're not". That's fine and dandy, you say, until you realize they're pointing at you.
There was a point near the end when Syndrome's evil plan goes awry that offered an opening to allow him to redeem himself by helping the family stop his mechanical monster. The fact the film doesn't take that opportunity can only suggest that its haughtiness was deliberate.
The key line of dialogue from
Spider-Man (both the comics and the movie) is, "With great power comes great responsibility." Peter Parker is constantly grappling with this issue, and it's what makes his quest to do good so moving. He's not just trying to be the best hero he can be. But the best nephew, the best friend, the best boy-friend, the best photojournalist, the best pizza delivery driver he can be. It's a humility that's shockingly absent from
The Incredibles.
