It must be admitted that "The Incredibles 2" has many flaws in the script, but I still think that it is Pixar's boldest attempt in recent years. Whether it is the creation of the atmosphere of the spy movie, the excellent imagination of the action scene scheduling, or the rebellion against the stereotyped performance. It is not perfect, but it has grown sharp edges and corners once again, letting people see the Pixar who will always find another way.
In 2004, when "The Incredibles" appeared on the big screen as a revolutionary, the audience was conquered by the film. Even the famous film website Metacritic also gave a high score of 90. So far, Hollywood has produced countless superhero movies, but "The Incredibles" is still the highest score of Super British movies on Metacritic.
Because "The Incredibles" turned out to be too subversive.
When the super-English movie was not popular, it made a family carnival movie of "anti- super -English" , and it was the first Hollywood masterpiece of 3D animation film with human characters. The plan of "The Incredibles" itself is already very groundbreaking. Then coupled with excellent styling and performance, tightly-fitted script structure, bold and smooth lens language and spy war movie style jazz soundtrack-such a movie is hard to imagine.
Fans of "The Incredibles" have been eagerly looking forward to the sequel of this work, but Pixar's sequel has the lessons of the "Cars Story" series, and fans will inevitably feel a little uneasy.
Fourteen years have passed, and even the audience, who were still elementary school students at the time, have begun to gradually enter the society. Super British movies have already occupied a large number of movie screens, and 3D animated movies with human characters have become commonplace. The most groundbreaking points of "The Incredibles" at the time seem to be no big deal now.
Legislation restricts superheroes? I am afraid that even children will not think this setting is so cool. Now even the "Lego Batman Movie" is being shot like this. A superhero who is overwhelmed by the burden of life? There are a lot of funny daily movies like "Celestial Warriors" in Japan , and there are even domestic animations on this subject, which is not new for a long time.
In this environment, we finally ushered in "The Incredibles 2" . As a fan, are you satisfied with "The Incredibles 2"?
For different viewers, what may be important is the different aspects of the movie. Losing the aura of a "subversive", "The Incredibles 2" may not be able to make the audience feel new again with the original framework. Naturally, quite a lot of fans sighed that "Life is as good as first sight". But looking at it from another angle, it might not have given us a chance to re-examine Brad Bird and the Incredibles series.
In my opinion, from the perspective of the script alone, this time, "The Incredibles 2" is difficult to achieve the height of the previous story due to congenital defects-I will explain this later-however, "The Incredibles 2" 2" still made some very bold decisions:
It not only retains Brad Bird’s iconic authoritative audiovisual language style, but also captures some contemporary issues more acutely than ever before: such as changes in women’s social functions, simulacra society under the control of media , And rarely mentioned by film critics, a re-understanding of fan culture.
The sequels of the series are often conservative, and the creators often hold the mentality of "not seeking merit, but seeking no demerits". After all, there are always fans of the previous work as the backing of splurge; but "The Incredibles 2" has chosen a rather radical posture. This kind of boldness makes me feel very valuable, especially at the moment when Pixar has gradually moved closer to Disney, "The Incredibles 2" even gave me a touch of Pixar as if it had regained the feeling of entrepreneurial passion.
I once wrote in a film review that " "Dream Travels" represents the best Pixar, and also represents the worst Pixar", but for "The Incredibles 2", even if it was criticized in the script, I was right on the contrary Pixar has expectations again. Make a response sheet that is welcome by everyone. That is not the Pixar I want to see. On the contrary, it is the quirky, angular and flawed Pixar, which reflects its vitality even more.
Because the shortcomings can be gradually made up, and the bold spirit is lost, but it is difficult to find it again.
Before commenting on "The Incredibles 2", let us review the pioneering move of "The Incredibles 1".
In 2004, superhero movies were not yet popular. Whether it was the pioneering work of the Marvel universe, "Iron Man," or Nolan's work "Batman: The Dark Knight" , which was highly respected by many fans , it had to wait until 2008 to appear. Except for Fox's "X-Men" and Sony's "Spider-Man" series and a few other works that performed well in the market, the overall Super British movies are still in a downturn.
Under the market environment at that time, it was very dangerous to make super-English films. But "The Incredibles" was not only filmed, but also boldly chose the "anti-British" method: Because superheroes are prohibited by law, the protagonist's family had to choose to adapt to the lives of ordinary people. Superheroes will also encounter the mid-life crisis that ordinary people will face.
Our Mr. Super is not like an ordinary superhero with an enviable bodybuilding figure. Instead, he is a middle-aged man with a big belly and sparse hair. Only his strong chest muscles can vaguely see the traces of the high spirits of the year. And the elastic girl has also transformed from a heroic super-British girl into an all-purpose housewife busy with housework, and has to free up her hands to deal with all kinds of troubles in the process of raising children.
The story background of "Super British" and the themes of mid-life crisis and family conflicts were cleverly integrated by director Brad Bird , which made the audience easy to accept with a relaxed and cheerful tone, but at the same time borrowed superpower. Mr. (Syndrome) expresses deeper thinking- "When everyone becomes Superman, there is no such thing as Superman."
If the "anti-super-British" itself is not subversive enough, after all, although Hollywood blockbusters dare not play so easily, there have been similar themes in Super-British comics for a long time. However, "The Incredibles" also achieved another thing that the Hollywood animation industry dared not try at the time: the use of 3D animation to represent human characters.
Because at that time, 3D animation technology was not mature, rendering was rough, and performances were stiff. It was very easy to fall into the "uncanny valley effect" when representing human characters -if a 3D animation character has a human appearance, but can't feel the vitality and behavior When the behavior is weird, the audience will only find it scary and hard to empathize.
Whether it is Pixar’s early Toy Story and Monster Company , or DreamWorks ’ Shrek and Blue Sky’s Ice Age , they have cleverly used toys, monsters and other non-human characters to avoid this problem. However, the Japanese 3D animated film "Final Fantasy: Deep in the Soul" with humans as the protagonist had reached its peak in technology at the time, but it still suffered a bitter loss.
When Brad Bird submitted the original proposal of "The Incredibles" to Pixar, the human character was a bigger adventure than the super-English theme. His solution is to take two-dimensional animation exaggerated Hollywood golden age of caricature (caricature) like styling and performance style to shape the role, quite a bit of charm that year Milt Carr (Milt Kahl). This kind of caricature-style human characters not only avoids the audience falling into the uncanny valley effect, but also avoids the homogenization tendency of Disney-style soft cuteness.
If you summarize these two points in a general way, then it is: making a family carnival story with novel themes and at the same time has another profound meaning in the eyes of adults, as well as a unique style and performance style .
This is the advantage that Pixar distinguishes from Disney, but it is also the disadvantage that Pixar has always been unable to open the Chinese market. Even if we fans admire Pixar again, it is undeniable that in the eyes of the vast majority of Chinese audiences, Pixar's story is alternative, and the modeling and performance are also alternative.
For the first time, "Dream Travels" won Pixar a huge success at the box office in China, but at the same time we should also see that it is essentially the result of assimilation to Disney , a family fairy tale that has no edges or corners and is completely pleasing to the public. .
Even, we saw that even Pixar's own modeling and performance style were completely assimilated by Disney, and we began to use sleek outlines and streamlined lines to emphasize the childlike innocence, in order to induce empathy from the audience. And Green Keane’s iconic stock expressions finally began to occupy Pixar after he ruled Disney for 30 years.
This is the biggest magic weapon that Disney can gain popularity with the public in terms of styling and performance. It is safe enough, but it also loses creativity. Once you realize this, almost all Disney protagonists have become Princess Ariel of "The Little Mermaid" , just making cameo appearances with different skins.
I don't like Disney's "safety" route, but you can have your own opinion. The point I want to emphasize is not whether the Disney route itself is good or not, but Pixar should have its own appearance.
Not all animation companies should become Disney, they will lose themselves instead.
So for "The Incredibles 2", I still value the most aggressive part of it. Breaking out of the shadow of Disney style once again is Pixar's most important task at present, and Brad Bird accomplished this task very well.
In scripts, we often have external stories (A story) and internal stories (B story) . Story A will be revealed through the background introduction from the first act of the film, which is the most obvious storyline; Story B is usually revealed only in the second act. It carries the theme of the film.
For "The Incredibles 2", the A/B story is still the same as the previous one: A story is obviously how Mr. Super's family legalized the superhero status again, and the B story once again reiterated the family. Meaning.
From the second act of the film, the A/B story begins to intersect: the elastic girl goes out to save the world, and Mr. Chaoneng stays at home to raise her baby. This reversal of the traditional cognition of "male leading outside and female leading inside" is the biggest selling point of the early stage propaganda of this film, but in my opinion, "The Incredibles 2" is more ingenious to the personality of the two. add.
We saw in the first part that the elastic woman is good at freely deforming and stretching her body to cope with various emergencies when raising and protecting children. In this one, the elastic woman who is solo and no longer has any worries is exposed. The pursuit of excitement in my heart shows us a brand new elastic woman that we have never seen before.
The elastic girl is obviously the absolute center of A's story. When the elastic girl got the new motorcycle and started to perform the task, there was a very interesting line that revealed her unknown past for us: before marrying Mr. Super, she was actually a speed girl! So after riding the motorcycle, the stretch girl instantly regained her arrogant attitude when she was young, and her hair that was blown away by the wind looked even more cool.
This kind of mature woman inadvertently reveals the little secrets of the past, making the elastic woman much plump and charming in character shaping than the previous housewives.
It’s just that when chasing the floating subway, the call from the family bus Xiaofei made the elastic woman instantly switch from the speeding hot girl state to the housewife. The transition between the two identities seems quite natural, and the strong identity contrast in the emergency state is also strengthened. The mature feminine charm of a stretch girl.
In story A, Brad Bird's boldest attempt—probably also Pixar's boldest attempt in recent years— is to make the action scenes in the family carnival movie more intense and intense .
As a diehard spy movie enthusiast who has watched "007" and "Mission Impossible" (a 60-year TV series) since childhood, Brad Bird showed a lot in "The Incredibles 1" The elements of the spy war movie are especially reflected in the period when the elastic girl sneaked into the villain's base to rescue Mr. Super.
In "The Incredibles 2", Brad Bird has further strengthened the spy film color in the film, making this film the most horrifying and suspenseful existence in the family carnival animation film. From the TV broadcast scene, to the rescue of the politician on the plane, to the infiltration of the screen tyrant base, the stretch of the second scene in the second scene is full of retro flavors of the 1960s, dark and mysterious spy film base.
Whether it’s the slow close-up of the close-up of the TV host staring at the screen and the fluorescence on his face, or the quick editing of the screen tyrant who suddenly appeared and the close-up of the elastic female who flashed by afterwards, it will bring people to the carnival cartoon. Long-lost horror feeling. To be honest, even I was a little scared, not to mention the audience of younger children-if they didn't fall asleep in the previous plot.
At the same time, the action scene of "Super Powers 2" in Story A is less comical than the previous one, and appears more intense. After accepting the baptism of live action movies, Brad Bird’s talent in action scene arrangement is more fully demonstrated in this work. No matter how the characters move in the scene, the mutual position between the characters remains. Clear, the intensity of the action scene is also more visually exciting.
It seems that this should be common sense in action dramas, but in fact most action movie directors can't do this. A large number of handheld cameras are used to produce vibration effects and special effects that flash around the screen have become a common escape method for action movie directors to make up for their lack of action movie scheduling.
"Super Power 2" is already the best superhero movie in recent years in terms of two action scenes, namely the stretch female drag racing and the infiltration of the screen tyrant base. There is no one. If the action scene of "Avengers 3" can reach this level, even if there are flaws in the script, it will become much easier to accept——
Everyone is watching a blockbuster action movie, isn’t it just for the action movie to have a good time? The fight is swaying and only the laser biubiubiu is seen, and when it comes to the group frame, it becomes a "run brother", so what's the matter?
One notable change in the action scene is that the frequency of guns in the film has greatly increased. Many people may not have noticed that although there are a large number of firearms in "Super Powers 1", but in "Super Powers 2", Elastic Girl used guns for the first time as a superhero-to unlock the locks. This is a fairly common segment in spy films, but it is often considered too dangerous for children in animated films.
This is exactly what is quite bold in "Super Power 2". I want to emphasize again that if it is only an action movie, then this choice can only be called a reasonable pursuit, but in a family carnival movie, it becomes a kind of rebellion.
In modern family carnival movies, especially animated movies, Hollywood predators will always pursue the conservativeness of the story and the visual level as much as possible, and try to avoid too frightening shots and highly stimulating action scenes, which can bring about , Conservative strategies will also lose some narrative possibilities.
However, in the 1960s when Brad Bird grew up, spy films full of suspense and action were one of the most popular types of children's audiences. Even if they were scared, the children were still interested. Brad Bird actually brings us back a question worth thinking about:
Is it really necessary to provide children with as safe content as possible?
In the B story, Mr. Chao Neng, who was originally a special man, was clumsy in handling housework and raising children, which made people laugh.
"Tough guy with baby" is actually not a new theme. As early as 1983, John Hughes's "Mr. Mom" had fully demonstrated the comedy potential of this theme. The foundation for the success of Story B of "Super Powers 2" lies in how the production team makes Mr. Super Power's character more fuller through some small sections and performances.
When President Winston Dvor proposed that the stretch girl was the best candidate to change the public’s impression in the first stage, Mr. Chao Neng subconsciously asked: "Better than me?" For this reason, he also suffered from his wife stretch girl. White eyes.
When persuading his wife to accept Winston’s invitation and take on housekeeping tasks, the husband’s complicated and tangled appearance, and after witnessing his wife’s success on TV, congratulated his wife on the phone while expressing a painful expression. Pixar's most interesting performance in recent years. It's not stereotyped at all, and it makes people laugh.
This is something that Pixar hasn't done for a long time.
Even the highly acclaimed "Brain Agents" , while having the most creative story and the most mature script design of Pixar in recent years, it failed to surprise people in performance-going back to what I said before, it is actually The above is also using a set of extremely symbolic expression libraries summarized by Disney to perform performances, which are effective, but monotonous. Not to mention "Dream Quest", the performance is really rigid.
If you have carefully studied the performances in a series of Pixar works from "Brain Agents" to "Dream Travel", you will find that they are almost indistinguishable from Disney. This is terrible.
(By the way, it is very ironic that many of us can see the over-symbolization of emoticons in Japanese animation, but turn a blind eye to the symbolic tendency in Hollywood anime emoticons.)
Pixar once again retrieved the creativity in performance in "Super Powers 2", and these performances were used to kindly satirize the latent male chauvinism in the hearts of many of our men. Fortunately, this point is not used in the film to strengthen the conflict between husband and wife. After seeing the omnipotent Mr. Super on the battlefield and the kneeling in the workplace in "Super Mobilization 1", we saw the other side of Mr. Super in the relationship between husband and wife, and his role modeling has become more flesh-and-blood.
Despite his reluctance, Mr. Chao Neng chose to take on the responsibility of his family. From the beginning, I thought that housekeeping was a simple trivial matter, and when I was exhausted by family trivial matters in a negative attitude to deal with it, and then finally realized the importance of family labor and turned to proactively think about how to raise children. Mr. Neng completed his transformation.
As the main theme of story B in the film: "As long as you do it well, being a parent is a hero."
This is actually a relatively rare theme in Carnival movies. We often see some movies that let one of the men and women make the sacrifice of staying at home, and finally talk about the importance of the family. However, just as the second act of the film begins, Mr. Chao Neng is willing to "sacrifice" for the family. It is not reasonable. Who is responsible for taking care of the family should not be a sacrifice, but only a choice.
Many men in movies, including male compatriots in reality, even if they are willing to bear the burden of the housekeeper, they often think that they are in the mentality of being "raised by a woman." Once you have a "sacrifice" mentality, in fact the relationship between the sexes is no longer equal.
This is a very realistic part of the B story of "The Incredibles 2": no matter who is in charge of the outside and the inside, the division of family functions does not have "sacrifice", whether it is social labor or family labor, the value of both There is no difference between superior and inferior.
I have exaggerated so much about "The Incredibles 2", but the first two scenes are wonderful, and it really can't conceal the flaws of the third act of the script.
In script writing, if we have two story lines, A and B, which represent the external and internal character of the character, then usually in the third act, the discussion of the theme in the B story will become the key to the final victory of the villain in the A story. . Only in this way can the emotional motivation generated by the protagonist in the B story become the driving force for victory in the climax of the final A story.
Take "The Incredibles 1" as an example. At the beginning, Mr. Super was too obsessed with the glory of the past, eager to take risks again, and ignoring the family is his most important adventure. After the family was captured, Mr. Chao Neng's guilty confession completed his completion of the role arc, and the re-recognition of the importance of family became the winning factor for him to defeat the villain Mr. Chao Jin later.
In this way, story A and story B are cleverly combined.
However, the A/B story in "Super Mobilization 2" until the end is also two parallel lines, and did not meet in the climax of the third act. In the process of fighting against the villain Evelyn (Screenmaster), the growth brought about by the B story has not turned into the power to defeat the enemy, and the theme of "parenting is also a hero" almost disappeared in the third act.
This also led to the fact that the script structure of "Super Powers 2" was not as tight as the previous one, and the final climax scene naturally did not have the strong emotional impact of the previous one.
Another problem with the script is the congenital defect that I mentioned at the beginning from the "Super Powers" series: Although "Super Powers" does have a very easy to expand worldview setting, but because of the protagonist The superpower of a family originates from the symbol of each person's character and family positioning. Once the character arc in the previous work is perfected, then the direct connection between superpower and personality in the character will become a narrative obstacle in the sequel.
The most typical example is the plot of the two brothers and sisters, Ba Xiaoqian and Ba Xiaofei.
Ba Xiaofei's ability to run fast actually represents the most energetic and curious age of boys. In the previous work, Ba Xiaofei’s energetic energy used to be a big headache for his parents, but in the final climax, his parents let go of the restrictions on Ba Xiaofei and let him give full play to his running ability-this At that moment, Ba Xiaofei's nature was released, and a reconciliation was reached between the parents and the children.
Ba Xiaoqian's invisibility and defensive stance ability represents the inner anxiety and resistance of girls to the outside world during the most sensitive adolescence. In the previous work, Ba Xiaoqian lacked self-confidence when facing the boys she liked, and refused to communicate with his family, completely closing her heart.
In the final moment of the decisive battle, Ba Xiaoqian had no confidence in using the defensive stance from the beginning, and grew up to finally use the defensive stance to protect the whole family at the critical moment. The use of defensive positions here means that Ba Xiaoqian has opened up his closed heart and began to build confidence in himself.
Whether it is Ba Xiaoqian or Ba Xiaofei, the inner growth of the character will eventually be manifested externally in the form of superpowers, and it will become a powerful help to defeat the villain in the A story. And because the role arcs of all the characters are gathered together in the climax, this makes the final battle bring a strong emotional impact to the audience.
But this brings about a problem: the siblings have grown up once in the previous game, the role arc has been perfected, Ba Xiaofei can fully release his vitality, and Ba Xiaoqian has also stepped out of autism-what about the sequel?
Of course, we can set new obstacles for the character to establish a new character arc. In "Super Power Mobilization 2", Ba Xiaoqian faces the new distress of adolescence. But the problem is that this new obstacle and her ability (stealth and defensive position) no longer have the direct symbolic meaning of the previous work, so when solving the obstacle, it is difficult to have an extremely strong emotional impact like the previous work.
Normally, if the character arc of the sequel is difficult to write due to some obstacles in the setting of the character itself, the sequel will often adopt the most conventional method: simply let the sequel completely forget the growth of the previous work and start over. Let the character grow again.
"The Incredibles 2" didn't use this method, but it did fall into the serious lack of drama in some important roles (Ba Xiaoqian and Ba Xiaofei), and the lack of role arcs.
Of course, the film tries to make up for this by introducing brothers and sisters Winston and Evelyn as new roles. The screen tyrant image created by Evelyn is quite similar to Baudrillard’s discussion of simulacra, but Winston, as a superhero fan, appears uncharacteristically and completely sincere, becoming the biggest reversal of the plot in the film. It's an interesting contrast with the previous work's attitude towards fan culture.
The "super-real" illusion created by the video media in the consumer society and the change in the perception of idols and fan culture have become hidden (although actually obvious) issues in "The Incredibles 2". More interestingly, in fact, the same implicit issue also appeared in Pixar's previous "Dream Tour", and I also mentioned this in the film review of "Dream Tour". If there is a chance in the future, I would like to write another article to explain this trend in recent Pixar films, but I won’t expand it here.
The setting of Winston and Evelyn’s siblings and the hidden issues behind the two brought some highlights, but it’s just a pity that the two characters are somewhat inadequate in the shaping of them, and they failed to be in the third act. It is here to take on the important task of arousing the emotional resonance of the audience.
Regarding "The Incredibles 2", that's all I want to say. I must admit that "The Incredibles 2" has many flaws in the script compared to its predecessors, whether it is the problems caused by birth defects or the handling of the third act A/B story integration.
But I still think it is Pixar's boldest attempt in recent years. Whether it is the suspense of the spy movie, the creation of a dark atmosphere, or the excellent imagination in the scheduling of the action scene; whether it is the rebellion of the pattern in the performance, or the perfect interpretation of the family theme again-these all show Pixar's response Some look like.
It is not perfect, but once again it has grown sharp edges and corners, letting people see that Pixar, who will always find another way, bravely and innovate.
I hope Pixar in the future will not forget this spirit.
Stay tuned for the next part.
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