Incredibles 2

Yeah, this is at least the second superhero movie just this year where the villain had a good point but bad conclusions and monstrous methods (which makes a compelling villain) and all the good guys are able to counter with is "but saving lives!"

(I'm counting nobody telling Thanos it's possible to increase productivity and sustainability. I'm disinclined to count Deadpool 2 because the heavies are deuteragonists who are both convinced that killing isn't the answer, though killing happened anyway.)

So I just came back from an Incredibles 2 event at my local artbook store where several artists from Pixar came over to talk about their work on the film: Josh Holtsclaw (photographed set references and designed the credits), Deanna Marsigliese (character design), and Teddy Newton (storyboarded brief character antics sequences). Here's stuff I learned:

• The opening credits with the 50s-style Disney Castle went through several iterations with wilder more futuristic designs but still keeping to the castle's silhouette. The front windows matching the Incredibles 2 logo was a lucky coincidence of the actual castle that they decided to keep.

• Galibaki, the other fashion designer mentioned to have designed Helen's new supersuit, was going to be in the film as a rival to Edna caring more about "fierce"ness than function. Edna was also going to play a larger role with a fashion show subplot.

• Winston was the hardest character to design because he was still being written at the same time (though they had already already settled he was not going to be a hero or villain). The final design of Winston relies heavily on attributes of sharks, from his hair to his brow and nose shape to the color of his suits, etc. (On a side note, Evelyn was not mentioned at all in the presentation.)

• The "Jack-Jack versus the raccoon" scene was originally planned for the first film. It was a lot darker; Jack-Jack fights against three raccoons who were explicitly trying to eat him, they try to carve him up with barbecue cutlery but he kills them all (drowns one, strangles another, smashes the skull of the third), and then he tears the tail off the last one and wears it on his head while doing some "Indian war whooping dance". ....yikes.

• The "wannabe superheroes" were originally going to be introduced in a Terrible Interviewees Montage. There were other failed superheroes that were either cut entirely or included at the event in the third act, such as: Floatbridge (a medieval-theme superhero whose only power is to float water out of buckets), electrical brother and sister Shock and Awe (they're both at the 3rd act event), Frozone's wife as superhero Honeybee (her design was also used for a background superhero in the third act), as so on. Voyd was apparently not actually designed as part of this group but originally the design of another character (unnamed, might've been Evelyn) that got split off into her own character.

• The Screenslaver's hypnotic image went through several different designs, including ones resembling eyes and with colors. The final one is a blend of multiple looping shapes animations.

• The Devtech logo, with a star overlapping a circle, is meant to visually resemble light striking an eye.

edited 23rd Jun '18 4:14:31 PM by Tuckerscreator

Woah those are all really interesting developments!! Thanks for the report!

The part about the other supers being part of a longer cut subplot actually explains a lot to about what confused me about their designs. Basically, a lot of them are designed to look unappealing and untrustworthy; lots of squat shapes, crooked mouths, and small eyes with blank stares. Note how many fans immediately guessed from the previews that they would be antagonists. But this runs counter to the way they depicted in the film, as the scene in which they’re introduced has Helen and the audience in rising hope, not suspicion, and they’re only antagonistic in the third act when Evelyn hypnotizes them. So learning that originally they were originally created for a different subplot explains a lot. It also explains why Voyd doesn’t resemble any of them, because of her design being split off.

edited 23rd Jun '18 5:14:08 PM by Tuckerscreator

I understand what you mean, but I also understand why people are hesitant about that. Because there are a lot of people who react to characters going "this is why you're wrong" as "talking down" to the audience. A lot of people have warped Show, Don't Tell to mean that any exposition or talk of a story's themes in the story itself is poor writing. Obviously it can be done poorly, but many people don't seem to make a distinction between good and bad commentary.

But for this movie specifically, I do think there could be a point made that Super heroes don't actually have a reason to try and refute the crazy super-villains world-view while trying to stop them from killing people or taking over the world, and the same applies here. Not to say you couldn't have Helen and Evelyn have a more in-depth discussion, or that it wouldn't be good, but that's sort of my take. Which is another thing, some ideas shouldn't be argued with, because doing so implies there's any worth in discussing it. As for whether you think that makes a story more or less compelling...eh, for me, it depends on what the message is.

So while I would have very much liked it pointed out that Evelyn herself was just acting out like a child in much the same way she claimed her brother was, I'm not particularly upset her "argument" wasn't explicitly picked apart by the characters.

edited 23rd Jun '18 6:30:01 PM by LSBK

A video i watched today say that Brad Bird came up with more than 2.5 movies worth of material and they had to scrap 1.5 of it! I can believe it. Especially with how much time has passed between films.

edited 23rd Jun '18 6:03:18 PM by kyun

Huh, I wonder if some of that would address the complaints people have.

Lemme see if I can find it.

Flicks And The Cities reveals some of the many deleted ideas the producers cut from the script.

x3

I totally validate that point. 'Reason You Suck' speeches can be a bit preachy. I do think that there are ways to do it subtly through actions AND have the verbal refutation because both are important.

Thinking back on the movie, I feel like the second big action sequence (the one with the news caster and the hilocopters) probably should have been cut as it just didn't really introduce any new information. To be sure, its a cool sequence and shows us more of Helen kicking ass, but it isn't too terrible different from the first one with the train. It introduces us to the diplomat, but she's not paricuarly relevant to the movie either.

It properly reveals the Screenslaver's MO, and shows us what the tech is capable of.

Honestly just go with a Shut Up, Hannibal!

At least "maybe not, but it makes you not dead" is a better retort than anything Thanos has gotten yet.

x3 Not to mention that tech is what gave Syndrome "powers" in the first movie and that was his whole MO and thing at the very beginning. It would have been a nice call back but I guess Bob would be the one to notice that and he's too uninvolved in the sequel to point it out.

BTW, Did anyone else think they'd actully killed off Evelyn when Elastagirl kicked her out of the plane? I thought it was a rather sudden and horrific end, but not as bad as Syndrome's and so I thought they might have just left it there. I was shocked, but ok with it.

edited 23rd Jun '18 6:58:34 PM by InkDagger

I also briefly wondered that, yeah.

I figured somebody was going to catch her.

Compared to the first movie, this one was remarkably bloodless, though to be fair, there was only one character who was willingly a villain this time.

x4 Yes, and I was slightly disappointed at first when that wasn't the case (because the first film's capacity to get dark/mature without being inappropriate is one of my favorite things about it). But really it's fine that they went the other way, especially when I realized the context of the final confrontation was so different.

Looking over those early ideas, I’m really glad they didn’t go with that original idea for the minor heroes.

For a series that hinges so hard on its “embrace what makes you special, because that’s what makes you great” message, having a “lol, look at these guys with loser powers!” sequence would’ve been a poor idea.

edited 23rd Jun '18 7:36:05 PM by KnownUnknown

Agreed.

Though I kind of felt like even the newer heroes were kind of played for one note jokes at times? Idk. I didn't know anything about them except their gimmick. I guess that's still Silver-Age ish but maybe... not quite in a good way?

They were a little one-note when they weren't hypnotised. I guess to focus the heroics on the family again, but I can think of a number of ways they could've been more useful at solving the obstacles at the climax. While hypnotised, though, they were pretty powerful.

RE: refutation. I disagree that refutation of a villain is inherently preachy or too obvious. Black Panther and The Dark Knight are both examples of films where the villain is demonstrated at the climax to be wrong, the former by T'challa quickly explaining how the villain's plan would be worse, the latter by visual demonstration, and neither of them feel like they sag in length because of it. TDK's example I note especially because the filmmakers could've easily gone with "the Joker's crazy so obviously nothing he says has merit", but part of what makes him effective as a villain is the doubt he plants of "maybe he's a little right, maybe people really will just drop their morals when the rules fall".

edited 23rd Jun '18 9:51:59 PM by Tuckerscreator

I think they were very non-action after being freed besides Voyd, which sucks. You'd think they'd help around, especially like say Kinetic.

@680

I'd say I agree with you. It could certainly come off as awkward or heavy-handed to have a long-winded refutation by the heroes of the villain's argument. Still, the refutation doesn't necessarily have to come from the heroes. In this film, it could, for instance, have come from Win, and it could have demonstrated that his character had more depth than originally indicated, and that he'd actually considered his own position instead of just reacting emotionally (which would also be a counter to Evelyn's accusing him of being a child—that is, unless Bird wants him to be a manchild, of course).

I suppose I'm just tired of seeing the accusations of Randianism and latent authoritarianism lobbed at the Incredibles films (take a look at the review from The New Yorker) which seem, to my mind, to be missing the forest for the trees.

Incredibles 1 wasn't really that Randian once you get down to the details (Syndrome is a self-made businessman portrayed as a villain, the superheroes's job is literally altruism for all other people). Same with a lot of Bird's films (Tomorrowland had a lot of bad points, but it isn't really Randian when the city of the future was always meant to be shared and the isolationist is the villain.)

I did notice that Incredibles 2 played the conflict with civilians and supers differently than in Incredibles 1. Incredibles 1 is "supers are here to protect society, but the civilians take them for granted and criticize all their specialness into conformity". Incredibles 2 is "supers are here to protect society, but civilians have gotten the wrong impression from biased narratives, and need more factual knowledge on what's occurring to realize what the truth really is."

edited 24th Jun '18 12:45:22 PM by Tuckerscreator

What’s interesting is that the nearest real world analogue to their solution would be police cams, which...well, saying that the public “doesn’t have all the facts” in such a scenario is...well, you get the idea.

Mind you, misinformation preventing the public from seeing the truth is the case for a lot of things, and most the problems for superheroes are inadvertent property damage rather than, saying, attacking people because they “looked like a villain” or whatever, but...

Well, this is a touchy metaphor, I think.

There was an incident recently in my city where three police officers shot a homeless man who they claimed was trying to reach for their gun, but their bodycams didn’t provide enough view of what had happened.

Additionally I can see that Devtech would have to edit some of Elastigirl’s recordings because they could contain classified information (most notably when Dash calls her in the middle of a chase).

So I can see a number of holes in the “bodycams will clear up all the ambiguity” theory, although I suppose it’s better than the alternative of where the public has no means of assessing the supers’ actions.