After 14 long years, fans of Disney•Pixar's The Incredibles are finally getting the sequel they’ve been craving this summer. Considering how long the wait has been, it’s going to take a pretty great movie to live up to the hype.
This is what makes the first two trailers a bit concerning. While the movie doesn’t look bad by any stretch of the imagination, it does feel a little bit too familiar. Of course, since The Incredibles is one of the best animated movies in history and a landmark in superhero filmmaking, it’s reasonable to want to recapture some of its magic in the sequel. Even still, there are some elements from these two trailers that are practically identical to the original film.
The first movie saw Mr. Incredible secretly going off to relive his superhero glory days on a remote tropical island. This time around, it’s Elastigirl’s turn to be the hero, leaving her husband home to look after the kids. The movie looks like a lot of fun, as seeing Bob struggling to be a stay-at-home dad provided the funniest moments in both trailers.
Elastigirl was also responsible for some of the coolest action sequences in the first film, so seeing her go on her own missions will certainly be entertaining. However, having one parent do the bulk of the superheroing while the other stays at home was the cause of the conflict between Bob and Helen in the last movie, so revisiting this kind of dynamic is a bit surprising.
This wasn’t the only part of the trailer that looked very similar to the original. From the whole family coming together to save the day at the end, to Frozone’s marital problems, Incredibles 2 runs the risk of being a bit too similar to its predecessor.
Filmmakers today ride a fine line between pleasing fans of existing movies and being accused of safe, unoriginal storytelling, and from what’s been released so far, it looks like Incredibles 2 might fall a bit too far on the safe side.
Safe doesn’t mean the movie will be bad since I think most of us can get behind Elastigirl kicking butt on a motorcycle, but the end of The Incredibles implied something different. The film’s climax shows Frozone and the Parr family (minus Jack-Jack) come together to save the day. The last scene even sets up the whole family fighting the Underminer together.
While director Brad Bird probably added this scene without any intention of returning to it in a sequel, the Underminer scene nonetheless implied that the family would be fighting together as a team. However, the trailer released during the Olympics showed otherwise.
Of course, it makes a lot more sense for Bob and Helen to not want their kids breaking the law and putting themselves in danger, but it still felt like a bit of a letdown after 14 years of wondering what happened next.
Of course, these are just trailers we’re talking about here, and it’s entirely possible that the majority of the film will focus on the Parr family fighting as a team. This is Pixar, after all. The studio’s track record speaks for itself, so no matter what the trailer might suggest, the movie should end up being pretty good. But for now, we can only hope that the movie doesn’t feel like it’s just retracing the steps of the first film.
Are you concerned about Incredibles 2, or do you trust our Pixar overlords? Comment below!