Why 'Incredibles 2' Wasn’t That Incredible

What makes a good sequel? Is it something different than what makes a good movie? If the job of a sequel is merely to succeed at the box office and give audiences a chance to pay beloved characters and fun settings a visit, then Incredibles 2 was a huge success. However, if the point of a sequel is to offer audiences a self-contained, interesting, worthwhile, entertaining, and well-crafted film that continues developing well-known character and adds dimension to a world the audience already knows, then Incredibles 2 failed.

One of the most important aspects of crafting a compelling story is developing characters, and building a realistic arc for these characters. Who are they at the beginning of the story, who are they at the end of the story, and what events forged the path from person A to person B? The original Incredibles showed Violet learning to enjoy her family and gain confidence, and Dash learning to respect his parents and the rules of society. Bob and Helen almost serve as each other’s foil, with Helen wanting the family to assimilate to a super-less society, and Bob wanting the family to embrace their identity regardless of the hardship that could bring. Bob has to learn to prioritize the family’s needs over his own needs, while Helen learns that she needs to address her own desires and reconnect with who she was before she was a mother. Together, the parents both learn to see their children as young adults who also have individual wishes, priorities, and goals. Does this all sound familiar? Incredibles 2 makes a classic sequel mistake: they reset the characters to who they were at the beginning of Incredibles and has them learn the same lessons for the second time.

In life, we often have to learn lessons over and over again, but we also tend not to learn our lessons through cataclysmic world-threatening episodes, like the one the Parrs experienced in the original film. What makes this choice even more baffling is the fact that the movie picks up exactly where the first one left off. Director Brad Bird isn’t even suggesting that these characters slowly regressed to the mean after a year or so of normal life, he’s suggesting that they never learned the lessons they seemed to in the original installment.

There are three particularly egregious examples of this:

1. Violet’s crush gets his memory wiped and forgets who she is within the first ten minutes of the movie, and her finding the confidence to go on a date with him once again serves as a vehicle to demonstrate her character growth.
2. The movie ends with the same exact scene (the family as a superhero squad, putting aside their own individual needs to fight crime together in a new world that is supposed to embrace them) as the first one. This scene is trying to show the exact same dynamic and hit the same tone as the scene from the first movie. The fact that they could use the same ending scene for the second movie highlights and underlines the fact that the goal post did not move at all.
3. For the first half of the movie Helen and Brad still don’t know Jack-Jack has powers. Except we’ve known that Jack-Jack has powers for over 13 years. When they show Jack-Jack’s powers for the first time in the second movie, it’s framed as a big reveal… but it’s not. Not only did we see his powers in the first movie, but we also saw his powers in the short Jack-Jack Attack.

Aside from not giving these beloved characters the chance to grow and develop, perhaps the biggest problem with this movie was its handling of thematic content. After all, what exactly was the central theme? Pixar movies, since they are at least theoretically targeted at children, tend to have a clear central theme which communicates some important idea about life or the human experience, and Incredibles 2 seemed to be gearing up for a theme about how to handle unjust laws. From the beginning of the movie (and even from the last film), it is made clear that Helen Parr thinks it’s important to follow the current laws, even while hoping that they change. Bob Parr, on the other hand, doesn’t believe it is right to ask his children to adhere to unjust laws. This sounds like a set up for an interesting story, right? Unfortunately, they back away from this idea. Helen, uncharacteristically, starts acting outside the law to increase superhero popularity. The idea is that if superheroes can win in the court of public opinion, maybe they can win in the court of law, and yet we see the Parr family acting outside of the law at times with no pretext of advancement. Dash steals back Bob’s stolen car, and even though Bob half-heartedly scolds him for it, it’s clear that he sort of approves of his kid’s actions.

Perhaps the biggest missed opportunity in this movie was the development of the villain. The reveal that Evelyn was actually behind Screenslaver didn’t come as much of a surprise, but her true motivations did. I was under the impression that the big ethical dilemma was going to be about the fact that Evelyn constructed an evil villain to allow Helen the chance to prove her worth. Would the end justify the means? Would she prove her goodness by refusing to participate in violence of any kind, even if it ultimately could lead to a better life for her and her family? This, however, was not developed. Instead, Evelyn’s actions were motivated by a deep hatred of superheroes, and her scheme was actually aiming to keep superheroes illegal indefinitely. So she used violent means to work towards an unjust end. That’s bad. But we all know that’s bad, and there’s no interesting or topical conversation to have with your children after seeing this movie… unless you want to circle back to the car and ask, “Is it okay to steal your car back if the government stole it from you?” which you probably don’t.

It is okay for movies to leave audiences with more questions than answers, but often filmmakers who write movies for children try to teach their audience a clear lesson that they might not have learned yet. These lessons can deal with complicated aspects of growing up—think about how Inside Out tackled how to express sadness and anger in healthy ways, and how Up! approached loss. Incredibles 2 flirted with discussing discriminatory governments and unjust policies, but in the final act took a sharp turn and veered into the “bad people are bad, and good people are good” territory. And to be fair, plenty of kids movies settle on this as a theme, but we've come to expect more from Pixar.

I enjoyed Incredibles 2, but only because I liked Incredibles and I was happy to be back in this world and with this family. But that doesn't mean it was a good movie, and if I had to choose between the two? I’d pick Incredibles every time.