Remember how fans were going nuts when word was going around that the Fantastic Four movie was going to treat the FF like a humorous family comedy.
Well, based on the evidence of Pixar’s “The Incredibles,” it might well have worked, because that’s essentially what “TI” is. The powers of the Thing, Invisible Girl, and Mr. Fantastic are all there (albeit switched around somewhat) as is the Fantasticar. Not to mention Iceman and Quicksilver.
Nevertheless, Ti remains wholly original and wholly fun. The first Pixar film that actually could have worked as live action, the sophistication of its script might actually some of the very youngest in the audience who are expecting “Finding Nemo II.” And, frankly, they could have trimmed the script and picked up the pace (for instance, a scene involving young Dash getting in trouble at school could have been trimmed to a ten second flashback and incorporated into the dinner scene, since all the information we learn from that scene is present in the dinner sequence). So know your kid before bringing him or her.
Particularly hysterical is the voice work of writer/director Brad Bird on costumer designer Edna, who looks like the love child of Linda Hunt and Yoda, and gives a hilarious dissertation on something fans have discussed for ages: Why capes simply aren’t practical. The identity of our heroes’ nemesis is telegraphed early, but fortunately it’s then revealed about halfway into the film, so it’s not some climactic Scooby-Doo reveal saved for the end that we all saw coming.
Plus the film makes fun of everything from superhero cliches, such as a villain “monologuing,” to educational cliches, such as mom Elastigirl tells her educationally-challenged son, “Every child is special,” to which Dash sardonically but correctly replies, “If everyone is special, then NO ONE is special.” A savvy comment on the blanderizing of America in which mediocrity can reap great rewards while quality withers on the vine.
Overall a far more “human” movie than a lot of movies with genuine human casts.
As for the FF film, I can tell you with authority (but without going into detail) that it is not at all the goofball comedy as first reported, but instead faithful in tone and style to the Lee/Kirby comics. There’s some major changes in terms of the origin, but less than what they did in “Ultimate FF,” and besides, c’mon–four people trying to get to the moon before the Russians? Just a TAD dated. How do I know this? Because I’ve been hired by Pocket Books to do the novelization of the film. So this’ll be my fourth novelization of a Marvel comics movie.
PAD
• 
I enjoyed “The Incredibles” immensely, but I couldn’t help turning to my friend in the next seat after Dash’s big chase scene to whisper, “That ten-year-old kid just killed six people!”
That said, they were trying to kill him (not showing restraint, as his mother had warned him earlier) and he really hadn’t had a lot of opportunities to try things like, oh, jumping onto a moving object with blades spinning around its perimeter at high RPM. It didn’t shock me nearly as much as the apparent killing-off of the principal recurring villains in the first-season finale of “Megas XLR.”
I’d still highly recommend the movie, just maybe not for really little kids…although they might miss some of the messier things that are implied, judging from the kid two rows behind me who loudly suggested a title for the sequel that the climax of the film would seem to rule out.
And, in case anyone cares, Metroville’s streets were occupied by 1964 Ford Galaxies, 1966 Thunderbirds, 1960’s-vintage Mercedes 280 sedans, 1959 Cadillac DeVilles and late-50’s-early-60’s vintage British sports cars of some kind (I wanna say Triumph TR3s melded with Austin-Healey Sprites). Bob and Helen’s cars (before the ‘Vette-like thing)were pretty generic, although Bob’s had kind of a weird European thing going on with the turn signals up on the roof.
Paul
Doesn’t know how to use Spoiler text.
Paul 1963 said:
Bob and Helen’s cars (before the ‘Vette-like thing)were pretty generic, although Bob’s had kind of a weird European thing going on with the turn signals up on the roof.
Actually, Bob’s first car (as i said) is either a Nash or a “Nash Metropolitan” (the lower body and front end) mated with Something Else (the greenhouse). (“Nash Metropolitan” is in quotes as it was actually an import built by Austin with a Nash-style body shell; the chassis has quite a bit of commanality with the Bugeye Sprite…)
[b]PAD wrote (with much glee, the bášŧárd): “As a direct result of the Spidey and Hulk novelizations, I’ve had nice face-to-face chats with Kirsten Dunst and Jennifer Connelly.”[/b]
Dish, dish, dish, man. Was it just at-a-comic-con-say-a-few-words or were you trying to get into the character’s heads when you were writing and decided to ask the actresses themselves what they were getting at? Helpful? Non-helpful? Enlightening? Aggravating? What?
Not tryin to be gossipy, just wondering about the process.
Ok, a little gossipy. But only a little.
As a direct result of the Spidey and Hulk novelizations, I’ve had nice face-to-face chats with Kirsten Dunst and Jennifer Connelly.
Well, I’m doin’ something wrong. I’ve novelized both Resident Evil movies and Darkness Falls, and I haven’t any manner of chat with Emma Caulfield, Milla Jovovich, Michelle Rodriguez, or Sienna Guillory.
Fooey.
—KRAD
JamesLynch [a.k.a. me]: “So, did anyone else think Elastigirl was hot?”
[Robert Jung] Hoo yeah, though Mirage was scorchin’! 😀
Yeah, but there’s something about the costume, and the voice talent… Elastigirl could wrap her legs around me again, and again, and again…
“Yeah, but there’s something about the costume, and the voice talent… Elastigirl could wrap her legs around me again, and again, and again…”
Have a thing for Holly Hunter, do you?
PAD
About 5 minutes after my last post, I saw a commercial for Tide that had Elastigirl as the, well, spokesperson for using Tide.
Does this bother anyone else? They’re using a cgi character (heck, the whole commercial is done as cgi!) to promote a real product. This is like Ford using a car from Grand Theft Auto to promote its latest car, or Lara Croft posing for Victoria’s Secret, or Wonder Woman endorsing Maybelline.
“Does this bother anyone else? They’re using a cgi character (heck, the whole commercial is done as cgi!) to promote a real product. This is like Ford using a car from Grand Theft Auto to promote its latest car, or Lara Croft posing for Victoria’s Secret, or Wonder Woman endorsing Maybelline.”
Or Superman promoting “American Express.”
Or the Hulk used in a commercial for Sears pants.
Sorry, but this has just been going on for way too long to bother me at all. For that matter, let’s face it: If there really WERE an Elastigirl, she might very well accept endorsement opportunities. She’s got bills to pay, same as anybody else. For all we know, that’ll be part of the inevitable sequel film.
Now I’ll tell you what DOES bother me: You apparently having a problem with Lara Croft posing for Victoria’s Secret. In what alternate universe could that be considered a BAD thing?
PAD
Playboy actually ran an issue in October that featured all-CGI “babes of video games.”
No Lara Croft in that one, I’m afraid, but it had to have been some sort of precedent in the marketing world.
Some Incredibles spoilers…so if you’re worried, just skip this post!
This whole “kids killing people” thing just reminds me how sanitized our entertainment has become. Does anyone remember the “A-Team”? Thousands of rounds of ammo and pounds of explosives used, and no one is ever hurt. The old GI Joe cartoons. No bullets, but lasers firing thru metal, and every time a plane or tank is hit, there’s always a shot of the pilot jumping out before the explosion. Both shows were about war of one kind or another, but neither showed any of the results of war.
Dash didn’t “kill” anybody. Some people were killed as a result of their pursuing and attempted murder of Dash, but I don’t remember a scene where anything he did acutally caused a death. I was more shocked when Elastigirl flung the goon off the fortress and down the mountain without any sign of remorse. Somehow, I don’t think the goon survived his decent. It did fit into her character of someone that’s lived the life of conflict, and when forced back into it, slips back into the role completely by instinct and training.
I found the capes deal very funny. Yeah, it was a lot of slapstick, but I’m a sucker for slapstick. Especially the heroine (can’t remember her name…only seen the movie once) that saved the airplane, only to have her cape (and I presume her) sucked into the jet engine. So much for saving THAT plane! But, maybe she was invunerable and managed to recover with only a costume malfunction and was able to save the plane again. : )
Finally, for children, I found the violence in the first several minutes of “Finding Nemo” worse than anything in “The Incredibles”. Nemo’s mother and siblings were more personal to the audience than the goons in Incredibles.
Peter, congrats on your FF novelization work! Please keep us posted on if the movie sucks as much as some fans are expecting, or if we’ll be pleasantly suprised (based on the script).
PAD said:
For all we know, that’ll be part of the inevitable sequel film.
Unfortunately, according to the 11/8 “Studio Briefing” on IMDB.com:
(A) Pixar has no plans in the works for a sequel (so says Brad Bird, who ought to know)
and
(B) After the Disney/Pixar deal expires next year, apparently the right to make sequels resides with Disney (with Pixar getting just an 8% royalty), whose ability to make a proper sequel to this film i sincerely doubt.
As to the “kids killing people” question: If someone sets out to harm or kill another and winds up dead or harmed as a result of his own actions, then he has no kick coming.
As Keith Laumer once wrote in one of his “Retief” stories: “Ain’t nothin’ more peaceful than a dead troublemaker.”
OK, I saw the movie yesterday, and I think I understand the contextual reason for the cape-related fatalities — though I still have to wonder why the superheroes should have had cape mishaps at all. None of them thought to include some sort of “safety detach” feature?
Ah, well. That aside, I thought the movie rocked.
“Yeah, like that Alan Moore guy who mocked capes in that crappy WATCHMEN comic. He obviously Doesn’t Get It. What the heck is wrong with that guy?
Yes, folks, that’s sarcasm. :)”
Well, a prominent subtext of WATCHMEN was “the traditional conventions of superhero comics are totally ridiculous and would never work in the real world” — which rather ignores the point that superheroes were created to exist in a FANTASY world where outrageous propositions (like gaudy costumes with capes) are part of the territory. If it’s reasonable to ask the audience to believe that a character could have super-powers, then it’s surely no less reasonable to ask them to believe that a superhero would NOT get himself killed by getting tangled up in his own cape. That’s why the cape scene from INCREDIBLES irked me — it seemed like another instance of “clever” Moore-esque deconstructionism.
Think of it this way: would anyone insist that the heroes in LORD OF THE RINGS shouldn’t be wearing capes because “realistically” they’d get in the way during a battle?
– Frank
Saw it last night at the Regal in Union Square right after we conducted a research screening John Turturro’s writer/director debut, Romance and Cigarettes (produced by the Coen brothers). When my duties were over, I just walked into the theater next door.
Wow.
Edna was HILARIOUS (Brad Bird really did a great job doing her voice), and the action was just GREAT. I loved it. I know Bird has stated they have no plans for sequels (Pixar split with Disney, but Disney owns primary rights to those characters, and woudl therefore have to be dealt with for sequels, with Pixar gettting 8% royalties), but man, it would be SO worth it.
Thank God I’m not the only one who thought Elastigirl was a hot momma. And what an ášš! 🙂 And yeah, Holly Hunter’s nice.
Peter David: The first Pixar film that actually could have worked as live action, the sophistication of its script might actually some of the very youngest in the audience who are expecting “Finding Nemo II.”
Luigi Novi: Did you miss a word or two in between “actually” and “some”?
Craig Welsh: The kids kill people in this movie.
Luigi Novi: Can you refresh my memory? I remember that guy in the “razor craft” who fly into the side of the mountain, but that was his fault, not Dash’s.
Joel Finkle: If Elastigirl can change her shape, why does she worry about the size of her hips in her reflection?
Luigi Novi: Because that’s her “natural” state, and perhaps using her powers is something she cannot simply do continuously without strain.
Mike Weber: Anyone who accuses Brad Bird of not fully understanding 60s comics and other pop culture of the era probably doesn’t understand it himself; for further evidence of that, see Iron Giant if you already haven’t.
Luigi Novi: Ironically, the movie where Vin Diesel showed the most range. 🙂
You apparently having a problem with Lara Croft posing for Victoria’s Secret. In what alternate universe could that be considered a BAD thing?
Well, it’s always wonderful to see those characters out there that are so top-heavy they should be tipping over.
I mean, seriously – I knew a woman who was overweight, but her breasts were so naturally large that, when she tried to run, she had to hold them in place otherwise they could bounce around enough that they could knock her out. 🙂
So, Lara Croft must’ve gotten some state-of-the-art metal implants or something.
Anyways, in the end, it comes down to realism – something that Victoria’s Secret, video games, and comic books all lack when it comes to the female figure.
It suddenly occurred to me that Edna might have been modelled after Linda Hunt’s character Regina Krum in Pret-a-porter (Ready to Wear) — she played a clothing designer in that movie, and looked very similar to Edna. Would have been perfect if she had done the voice as well.
But, that being said, I have to give a very enthusiastic thumbs up to the movie… loved just about every minute of it.
After my lascivious comments about Elastigirl, PAD wrote: “Have a thing for Holly Hunter, do you?”
Not inherently, though I did like her voicework here. I thought the character just looked really good; and her character’s body type was also realistic, not the typical top-heavy comic book heroine.
[about using cgi to promote real products]
“Or Superman promoting “American Express.”
Or the Hulk used in a commercial for Sears pants.
Sorry, but this has just been going on for way too long to bother me at all. For that matter, let’s face it: If there really WERE an Elastigirl, she might very well accept endorsement opportunities. She’s got bills to pay, same as anybody else. For all we know, that’ll be part of the inevitable sequel film.”
Call me old school, but I think commercials for actual products should feature those products. Even with the way commercials can slant their products, commercials should still be based on their reality. If a commercial shows how Tide removes a stain, you have some idea what it can do; if you think Tide does well because someone made a picture on their computer showing how good it works, that tells nothing (unless we’re all in the Matrix and the computer is the reality).
[PAD}
Now I’ll tell you what DOES bother me: You apparently having a problem with Lara Croft posing for Victoria’s Secret. In what alternate universe could that be considered a BAD thing?
Same issue: I don’t think real products should be represented by fake endorsements. If someone wants to post some Internet pics of Lara in the entire Victoria’s Secret line of products, wonderful. If Angelina Jolie wants to recreate her Lara role in sexy lingerie, I’m there so fast there’ll be a James Lynch-shaped cloud of dust where I was where I heard the news. (In the meantime, gotta love the recent ESQUIRE where Angleina’s in a wet t-shirt.) But I wouldn’t buy a real product based on a fictional version of the product. (I may be a pervert, but I’m a pervert with standards!)
Doug Burton posted: “It suddenly occurred to me that Edna might have been modelled after Linda Hunt’s character Regina Krum in Pret-a-porter (Ready to Wear) — she played a clothing designer in that movie, and looked very similar to Edna. Would have been perfect if she had done the voice as well.”
Actually, Edna’s based on the famous costume designer Edith Head, who has previously been paid tribute in comics and They Might Be Giants tunes.
I know Bird has stated they have no plans for sequels (Pixar split with Disney, but Disney owns primary rights to those characters, and woudl therefore have to be dealt with for sequels, with Pixar gettting 8% royalties), but man, it would be SO worth it.
No, it wouldn’t.
I would trust Pixar to do a sequel, but Disney has racked up an impressive and depressing pile of poorly-crafted straight-to-video sequels. There will be Incredibles walking around Disneyworld and tons of marketing and a Saturday morning carton show that tanks after one season. Oh, and an Incredibles Ice Capade.
Just back from a second viewing (took Kate along who doesn’t go to movies much — last theatrical film she saw was the original release of “Lilo & Stitch”).
I now note at least two places where they apparently rewrote/recut after the animation was finished or mostly finished — one relating to Mr Incredible’s visits to Edna (this relates to the sequence with the belt in the teaser footage and to Edna’s first dialog), and one where a flashback shows an encounter in Mr Incredible’s den/trophy room that we never saw. Be interesting to see those scenes as originally visualised.
As to the cars — Mr Incredible’s “transformer” car in the beginning appears to be a Studebaker — a Hawk, i think, and his sportscar has an early Jag E-type nose, the rear end of a mid-60’s split window ‘Vette coupe and the doors/midesction of a Mercedes gullwing coupe. (The emblem on the Jag-type nose is a blank Lotus logo, BTW.)
Oh, and on the subject of weight, I liked that even after trying to get back in trim, Mr. Incredible was still a bit paunchy.
Well, look at how much weight he gained in the 15 years after he retired. He’s only been back at the superhero thing for 2 months. Even with all the working out, you do not lose that much weight that fast. I know. I’ve done the up and down weight thing. It’s a nice little touch of subtle realism.
Besides, I find the realism of the weight issue to nicely set off the sheer unreality of his ankles. Incredibly BIIIIIG body, itty-bitty ankles.
PAD: “Now I’ll tell you what DOES bother me: You apparently having a problem with Lara Croft posing for Victoria’s Secret. In what alternate universe could that be considered a BAD thing?”
Depends — are we talking Angelina Jolie, or low-polygon-blocky-image-bad-texture-mapping-Playstation-One Lara Croft?
JamesLynch: “Call me old school, but I think commercials for actual products should feature those products. Even with the way commercials can slant their products, commercials should still be based on their reality.”
So how do you feel about those old computer-animated commercials (done by Pixar, no less!) featuring bottles of Listerine swinging through the jungles and rolls of LifeSaver Gummis doing the conga?
As for the “kids kill people” bit, all I can say is that while I grew up loving safe-for-kids-violent cartoons like [i]G.I. Joe,[/I] I’d have been really pìššëd if we spent more than 0.05 seconds showing a Generic Goon(tm) safely parachuting after a crash or whatnot. This is Pixar and Brad Bird’s baby; they shouldn’t have to compromise their artistic vision just to placate some Nervous Nellies. The PG rating is there for a reason…
–R.J.
Incredibles: Not Just A Clever Name
I only briefly touched on this last week, but I just wanted to remind you the Incredibles is a very good movie. The only thing that is not good about this movie is that there will probably be no sequel….
Posted by JamesLynch at November 9, 2004 12:27 AM
JamesLynch [a.k.a. me]: “So, did anyone else think Elastigirl was hot?”
[Robert Jung] Hoo yeah, though Mirage was scorchin’! 😀
Yeah, but there’s something about the costume, and the voice talent… Elastigirl could wrap her legs around me again, and again, and again…
Actually, I think Elastigirl does for female cartoon booty what Jessica Rabbit did for female cartoon bits.
And, already, on an adult auction site, someone is selling a nude portrait of Elastigirl.
Or so a good friend of mine told me. Yeah, that’s the ticket, a good friend told me about it.
Hands up, who saw this coming?
http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=3021&PN=1&totPosts=8
Hands up, who saw this coming?
*chuckle* Maybe they should call it the John Byrne Airport.
Cause, you know, if idiots were airplanes…
Well, first of all, I think the irony of a man who trashed everything from “Spider-Man 2099 #1” to “Fallen Angel” to “The Incredibles” without having read or seen the works in question now claiming that *I* didn’t do my research, pretty much speaks for itself.
Second, the FF’s origin was malleable even in its first year. In the first issue, it merely says they’re trying to get “to the stars.” In the second issue, it’s scaled back to “Mars.” By issue 13, it had been scaled even further back as the FF were “determined to win the space race and beat the Russians to the moon” (where they encountered the Watcher.” This, of course, was not to be confused with FF #98, I think it was, when they made it to the moon…for the “first time.” (And let’s not even get into the fact that the Negative Zone was a barrier created around the Inhumans while Subspace was this explosive other dimension, and somewhere along the way Stan started calling Subspace the Negative Zone and it stuck.)
In any event, as anyone who is not John Byrne or a blind Byrnebot could be able to tell, what I was talking about was an origin motivated by a determine to beat the Russians to the moon. It was the cold war mentality, not the ever-changing destination, that dates the origin. For instance, keep in mind that Reed was in such a hurry to beat the Russians that he didn’t put sufficient shielding on the ship to keep out the cosmic rays. That “we’re on the clock ’cause the Russkies might get there first” way of thinking was fine for the early 1960s, but would just seem odd now.
So all I was saying was that some changes to some aspects of the origin are pretty much mandatory no matter what.
Of course, anyone there could have just come here and asked me if they were confused, especially since you don’t have to jump through hoops to post here. That they chose not to tells you something.
As for John, perhaps he’d like to actually read or watch some of the stuff he’s talking about before opening his yap again.
PAD
I don’t usually post on these things, but I enjoyed this movie and don’t have anyone to talk with about it.
Questions: If Elastigirl can change her shape, why does she worry about the size of her hips in her reflection?
Presumably, because she can only change her shape when she is actually using her power. I imagine it’s like flexing a muscle; she can’t go around all day holding the shape of a twenty-year-old model any more than you can spend every conscious moment with your gut sucked in.
What I thought would be a much more interesting variation of that scene would be for her to discover that white strand of hair on Bob’s suit, worry that she’s losing her husband, try to mould her shape in front of a mirror, only to have to drop it back to her “default” form when something intrudes.
I enjoyed “The Incredibles” immensely, but I couldn’t help turning to my friend in the next seat after Dash’s big chase scene to whisper, “That ten-year-old kid just killed six people!”
Okay, as a former military member and self-defense instructor, let me tell you my position on this, fantasy-movie-environment notwithstanding: Those goons were trying to kill those kids. In that case, ANYTHING those kids did to protect their own lives was justified, and if those actions result in the attackers’ deaths, it is NOT murder. They (the thugs) brought it on themselves. As far as the fact that it is just a movie for kids, lst me ask you how what these kids did was any morally worse – or emotionally damaging to the youngsters of the audience – than any number of westerns or cop’n’robbers movies we all grew up on? If a given child might be to sensitive or unstable for the scenes in this movie, than the adults who are responsible for those children shouldn’t let them see it. That’s what I thought “parental guidence” meant.
Well, Keith pointed out a bunch I didn’t do, to which I should add that I didn’t do the books of either “X-Men” or “X2,” “Daredevil,” “The Punisher,” “Catwoman” (phew).
I just wanted to say something for one of my all time favorite writers: Chris Claremont wrote “X2” and evidently due to script changes over the course of his writing it, there are some glaring continuity/editorial/[whatever-term-goes-here]errors. If you can work around that, you will enjoy this book, fan of the movie or novelizations in general or not.
For a hysterical take on the FF origin, check out Twisted Toyfare Theater (I forget what the story’s called; it’s in volume 3) where The Thing recounts the FF’s origin. After their transformation, the Thing comments “We decided to fight crime, which was kinda ironic considering the enormous federal crime we’d just committed.” Or, after the naming, “They called me The Thing… I shoulda killed them all in their sleep.” It’s crude and a whole lotta fun!
http://www.observer.com/pages/frontpage5.asp
There are apparently those who now see The Incredibles (along with Team America) as being part of some right wing republican mindset…boy, for some folks politics is not just a big thing, it’s the ONLY thing. (And it’s obvious that the writer hasn’t read any of the DC books lately).
I’ve heard some kooks ponder whether The Incredibles has a liberal slant as well, to the point of trying to compare Elastigirl’s looks to Hillary Clinton… O_o
Sometimes a kick-ášš movie is just a kick-ášš movie, folks.
Ya know, in the controversy about “children killing people” i’ve been seeing in various places, no-one has even mentioned that Mirage, an accessory (at least) to multiple cold-blooded murders, apparently walks away clean.
Wow. How did that happen?
Anyhow, I just read this: http://www.datelinehollywood.com/showarticle.php?articleID=340
Mmmmmm, that’s good satire.
I just want to make clear that the Craig Welsh who posted above is not me, Craig Welsh the Aussie who works as a lighter at PDI/Dreamworks….in case any of my mates read that post & thought I was going soft in my old age. Personally, I’m sick of everything being so sanitized. When I was a kid, there was plenty of spirited violence & mayhem in cartoons, and I’m only marginally psycopathic as a result.
Oh, and “Incredibles” rocks, even if it is the competition’s film – well done you Pixar people.
Ðámņ yo ! – Elastigirl got booty like J-Lo. Seriously fella’s she’s the bomb diggy and I don’t even get down with white women or cartoon characters – but Elastigirl!, I would hit that in a second despite the fact her husband could kick my ášš.
The part in the movie where she’s stuck between security doors and bent over – come on fellas you’re not telling me that wasn’t hot. Mirage is pretty hot too, she could use a little more booty, but I wouldn’t pass it up. Holla if you feel me.