Throwback Breakdown: The Incredibles- Pixar's Dark Magnum Opus

About three weeks ago since I wrote this script, the much bigger and better Shipfoolish Productions channel released a video praising Ratatouille as Pixar's masterpiece. Now, if you haven't seen Shiv Village's number one productions, you are missing out on who this mysterious voice is. a question you probably want to have an answer to from the beginning so you can foreshadow it and develop the story's themes around it. No, they really had no idea who this voice was supposed to be, and secondly, it has a near ironclad monopoly on the video. essays on disney on

pixar

, but a 30 minute video that he hasn't made, at least as far as i could find, is about the

incredibles

and it would happen that i would say that the

incredibles

is

pixar

's true masterpiece over the last half anus.

On this channel, I've made a recurring effort to look specifically at animated children's entertainment writing, though I wanted to see how some of the great fiction we all grew up with balanced the whimsical lightness of animation with the

dark

ness of the shocking and gritty. Telling stories, managing these tones is not easy for a writer, but when done correctly, proper execution can lead to the creation of fiction that can captivate both children and adults. My hope for this video and others like it is that it can help writers you want to create similar stories or it could simply act as an interesting deconstruction of one of your favorite childhood movies, either one is fine with me, so please For what it's worth, I think Pixar's Incredibles are their greatest achievement regarding this narrative tightrope routine of

dark

ness and lightness. and since big daddy chopralis has so generously left the topic unspoken, let's take the next half hour or so to dive into the third entry in the

throwback

series focusing on the unbelievable, let's set ourselves at the beginning of our journey back to the beginning of the decade from 2000.

I've been watching Pixar hit it out of the park over and over again for years. Up to this point, Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, each of those films is considered a landmark animation and a staple of millions of childhoods, but something else they all What these films have in common is the enormous amount of collaboration and teamwork that went into creating the narratives that would make it to the big screen. Toy Story had seven writers. A Bug's Life had six writers and 2 directors. Toy Story 2 had 7 writers and 3. Directors Monsters Inc had 6 writers and 3 directors and Finding Nemo comes with a small group compared to 3 writers and 2 directors and when you think about the level of quality that Pixar was striving for and What they've been able to achieve A huge group of creative minds for each film starts to make sense by putting so many skilled and experienced storytellers behind the wheels of their multi-million dollar releases.

Pixar hoped to create the best, most compelling story possible that these writers and directors of the films were to be used as a check on each other, covering for each other's weaknesses and elevating their strengths so that the final narrative product would be as good as the entire film story could be. Pixar's production culture is based on the diverse collaboration of experts in the writing room and that has led to stories with points of view and perspectives that no one could have imagined. However, everything changed in the year 2000 and the change came through this man. What if I went to bed right now?

Such as? And that elegant beast was Brad Bird, director and writer of The Incredibles, and when I say director and writer I mean the only director and the only writer, as you can imagine, based on what I just talked about in the last minute, it was a huge A change for Pixar and a really huge gamble for them, like I said their success came from adhering to a specific creation formula centered around multiple writers and collaborators, but now with Brad Bird they were completely deviating from that, but the risk Not only do they come from giving complete creative control to a single writer, the risk arose from Brad Bird's industry history.

Let's go back a little further to understand that Brad Bird graduated from Cal Arts in the 1970s and found work at Disney as an animator. working on films like Zorro. and the dog and the black cauldron, but as good as it sounds, don't get too excited, he would later be fired from Disney due to his constant vocal criticism of senior management, saying that they refused to take risks in animation and were going too safe. Storytelling, and as any idiot could imagine, getting fired from Disney isn't a great start to a career, but Brad Bird's indomitable nature kept him from being restricted, and after his time at Disney, he jumped into animating and writing for several shows. television, even directing some. episodes of the simpsons, but brad bird's directorial debut for a feature film came when warner bros agreed to create his creation that you've all probably heard of is a little movie called the iron giant now it's a recurring theme that they're going to see What you notice in this video is that Brad Bird never makes anything easy and, of course, The Iron Giant was no different, Brad not only directed the feature film, but he was also in charge of writing it all and, for his monumental efforts , The Iron Giant received almost universal critical acclaim once it hit the big screen.

What the film didn't receive were profits. The Iron Giant had a reported budget of $50 million but throughout its entire theatrical life it only earned $33 million no matter how much you liked the story of Hogarth Brad Bird's directorial debut was a box office bomb, which again is not a great mark for your career and this brings us back to Brad Bird's courtship with Pixar . Here was a man who was fired from Disney for basically what amounted to insubordination and the man whose script and directorial debut was a huge flop in Hollywood and this same man was standing in front of Pixar now seeking to get them to move away from their established storytelling traditions to being able to take almost complete creative control over their next big movie.

Now I can't say anything for sure, but something tells me it was a tough sell, but luckily Brad Bird had an ace up his sleeve, an ace named John Lasseter, a college friend and long-time director of some of the Pixar's most important films, John Lasseter. He desperately wanted his friend Brad Bird to come to Pixar, but he knew that for that to happen, Brad would have to bring a really compelling idea and that's where the stars aligned. One thing that is imperative to understand is that many of Brad Bird's previous works saw him working. on already established material, such as The Black Cauldron based on the Chronicles of Purdain's book series or The Fox and the Dog based on the novel by Daniel Mannix or The Iron Giant based on the 1968 book The Iron Man, as well that when Brad Bird left Pixar, he decided to do something completely different, something deeply personal.

In the early 1990s, things were not going well and were not easy for Brad. He was struggling to balance his marriage, his family life, his work life and his personal aspirations, but like any creative person would. Did he use his inner turmoil as inspiration and outline a family of heroes who would use his powers to overcome their own personal problems? Brad created this family in 1993 and had been sitting and thinking about this story since then in 2000 seven years later, when Pixar asked him to deliver the goods, he decided to stop working on adaptations of existing fiction and focus solely on bringing it to life. to what he had thought, so he released the Incredibles and Pixar loved it, in fact, they loved it so much. but they allowed The Incredibles to be his most unique film, and while that may sound like YouTube clickbait hyperbole, it really isn't.

I've already talked about how this would be the first Pixar film with a writer and a director, but that's just the tip of the iceberg, while it may seem strange to think about it now, since there are films like Brave and Coco, The Incredibles was Pixar's first human-centric film, sure there were humans in Toy Story 1 and 2, but the focus was squarely on the toys. The Incredibles was Pixar's first full step toward telling a truly human-centered story. The Incredibles also deviated from the 90-minute running time tradition that Toy Story Monsters Inc. had established in the life of a bug.

The Incredibles would last almost two hours. and to this day it remains the second longest Pixar movie ever, only beaten by Cars by 18 seconds, but we're not done yet. The Incredibles was the first page-rated Pixar film and had by far the most mature content according to the official kill count. the incredibles are 21 people one pixar first the movie showed blood and wounds another pixar first this was the first pixar movie to talk about alcohol consumption this was the first pixar movie to show guns pointed at a person and this was the first pixar movie in showing a suicide attempt the incredibles from scratch was different, brave and new and that was the point when recounting his time launching the incredibles to pixar brad bird has said give us the black sheep i want artists who are frustrated i want the that they have another way of doing things that no one listens to us.

All the guys who were probably walking out the door, many of them were unhappy because they saw different ways of doing things, but there was little opportunity to try them as the established way was working very well. Alright, we gave the black sheep a chance to test his theories and changed the way several things are done here, even Brad himself had to adapt to the new frontier he was crossing, since The Incredibles would be the first movie 3D animated what would I do. I'm still working, but as a lesson to all us struggling writers out there, he didn't run from the challenge, he accepted it, but in some ways we're getting ahead of ourselves.

All Pixar had in the year 2000 was a sketch of a family and a rough story. idea that what they would need was a complete narrative and to arrive at that story that we all know and love today, Brad Bird would need to find inspiration in a lot of places that represent another great lesson for aspiring writers: the first place he goes. Brad Bird resorted. because the inspiration was his own life I can't believe you don't want to go to your own son's graduation it's not a graduation he's moving from fourth grade to fifth grade it's a ceremony he's psychotic anything specific anything real life you're coming of your own life, enter the movie, yes, everywhere, I mean a discussion that is in the first incredibles where Bob and Helen argue about the graduation of one of their children in quotes, it is a discussion that my wife and I was old.

The old saying is: write what you know and that's exactly what happened. The fingerprints of Brad Bird's personal life are all over him. My middle son, Jack, was a baby when I first came up with the ideas and we called him Jack Jack syndrome. He himself is modeled. after brad bird's facial features if you look at the syndrome he is an exaggerated brad bird and as some others have pointed out mr incredible also bears a striking resemblance to brad bird and then there is the uncanny resemblance to brad and bob , if you look at it, it's an exaggerated brad bird the meat and potatoes of the movie set in style it was also brad's personal touch inspired by his favorite childhood spy movies like james bond even the plane in which helen flies the lockheed jetstar is an homage to the Bond films as it is the In the same shot that appears in Goldfinger, the character Mirage bears a strong resemblance to many Bond villains, especially those like Galore and Andrea Anders, who take a liking to her and eventually defect. from his truly evil employers, but the inspirations used also extend just from Frozone's personal water cooler scene. closely resembles samuel jackson in die hard with a vengeance the death of superheroes by capes listens to the death of the dollar bill by a vigilante who was shot by bank robbers after his cape got caught in a revolving door and while bradberg said that the watchman was the only slash comic graphic novel series he had heard of before making the awesomes.

Competing reports claim that she was also inspired by Jim Sturenko's Shield Comic agents for the espionage that would be included in the film, including Edna Mode, who was personally voiced by Brad Bird if you suppress your depression. Darling draws inspiration from legendary real-world costume designers Edith Head and Edna Taylor, but even with all this inspiration fueling his creative passion, Brad understood that not everything has the luxury of making it to the final cut. Well, I'll argue with you about Gooey Jack. -jack, you know I'm not going to argue, hey, I cut it,that's great, it was a great decision, one of the best, sometimes you have to kill your loved ones to upgrade the hole and some of your pets you had the idea. do doesn't really work, you know, because defeat this and this and this and if you're willing to lose this thing that was originally a big part of your speech that everyone laughed at or loved and you do like this and all these things go and They click together, you know that's what you have to do, do what's best for the story instead of doing what he wanted to do, it was always Brad's perspective and he listened to those around him to know the best path forward. follow, for example, the original.

The script called for Mrs. Incredible's friend, Snug, to fly the plane and the family to Nomadis, an island for rescue. Bob Bradberg originally conceived that to impress upon the audience what was at stake in the narrative and how deadly dangerous the villains were, Snug would die on the plane when they were hit by missiles, but people close to Brad told him that that route was not an option. really the best option. Instead, the script was adapted to have Mrs. Incredible fly the plane herself, not only giving her more agency in power but creating probably the most tense scene in the entire movie, that's what it was like for me emotionally. because I didn't want to let this go and you know I have to, but once we got it out it wasn't just saved.

It gave us screen time, which we needed for things that were more important, but it allowed us to make Helen the pilot, which I think expanded the missile block because now she's in charge of her family and I'm very happy with that one, one of the most intense sequences. In the movie, I think so, you can also see the remains of the original narrative plan when Mrs. Incredible looks at the remains that are supposed to be there. That long look she gives was the last chance Helen had to say goodbye to her friend. and that's just one example of the many changes that Brad Bird admitted would work better than his original vision and while we're at it, we can see possibly the biggest and most consequential change that came about through edits syndrome, believe it or not, the syndrome was only assumed.

To be in the movie's intro, the real villain was supposed to be a man named Zurich, who you can actually find in the Incredibles comic series. Originally, Zarek was going to be the main antagonist of the film and Mrs. Incredible's ex-boyfriend. The goal throughout the film would have been to convince Helen that her life as Robert Parr's wife was a complete waste of time compared to all the things he could give her. Syndrome, on the other hand, was simply meant to be a villain who was a means to an end. In the end, he was supposed to show the audience at the beginning of the film that the villains could track Robert and Helen even through their secret identities, creating constant tension in the future about when and if the family would be attacked next and shortly after Syndrome was supposed to die in a house explosion, but as we all know, that didn't happen because Brad Bird recognized what It was better for the movie, so I came up with this character with the syndrome and the interesting thing was that everyone when we did this sequence responded to the syndrome. much more than the villain that had been part of my original proposal, which was this is the character of Eric, understanding what is best for a narrative is a skill in itself, but biting the bullet and following that recognition is also a skill , I'm sure.

Brad Bird had all kinds of ideas that he wanted from his original script that couldn't be included; in fact, here's another clip of Brad Bird talking about those ideas, which conveniently also gives us an idea of ​​how he appreciates the darkness of storytelling. and the moment that I miss the most is when he has mom and dad frozen in the beam and he hears the sound of the baby and he goes and goes down the hallway towards the baby's room with mom and dad floating in the air and they are unable to do anything about it.

Regarding that, I think we made the right decision in terms of what's in the movie, what the movie is. I don't think we made a mistake, but I miss those aspects of this moment and there was a particular feeling that I got from that that we don't have that feeling, we have a lot of good feelings in the movie, but we don't have that specific one and I wish we had that feeling that Brad Bird longed for, especially in that proposal. The scene arose from how personal the conflict was for the characters, the action of a villain approaching a child while the parents watch helplessly speaks to the characters and the moment they are in, and when a moment of action becomes At one point in the character, that's when the audience really becomes inverted when he runs on water he thinks he's going to fail and then he finds out he can run on water and he's excited about it, you know?

So it wasn't just the action, the action wasn't enough, it's how the character does it. I feel about action and then action becomes character, which becomes more interesting even though The Incredibles was different from any other Pixar film in many ways, one of the key aspects that made it unquestionably Pixar was its focus on the characters and the fight of their hearts at the center of the narrative, no matter which Pixar film you watch, whether before The Incredibles or after Everyone focused on the characters and the deep struggle that existed within them , but if we look specifically at the films released Before The Incredibles, their themes and messages were made more impactful by the allegories they used.

What I mean by this is that sometimes when you are too close to a problem or conflict it becomes difficult to appreciate or even recognize, but when those real and deeply human problems are shown through toys, monsters or ants that the distance from our own world makes the themes a little more distilled a little easier to understand monsters inc's message against xenophobia was empowered because the characters were friendly monsters toy story's message of purpose and utility was empowered because the characters were toys the life of an insect the teamwork message was successful because it focused on a colony of ants the animation and allegory and exaggeration can take us back so we can see the themed forest of the trees and I'm not saying all this just because I'm an esoteric English student, I actually wasn't an English student at all.

I say this because it's important to recognize the hill The Incredibles had to climb relative to its Pixar predecessors, where the other films were able to create distance with the audience. because the characters were fantastical and exaggerated, therefore making the thematic messages a little easier to recognize and swallow. The Incredibles didn't focus on toys, monsters or ants, they focused on humans, on people on a basic level, there is no inherent message locked into a 20th Century Family, meaning important themes can be lost due to how close which sounds like the theme to us in our everyday lives, but if you're watching this video, it means you've probably seen The Incredibles from start to finish, which means you already know the movie.

It has a fantastic delivery of messages and themes, so the question then arises: what did Brad Bird do to achieve success? That requires a two-part answer. First, let's hear him talk about how he sees animation and how you can use it to find the most distinctive essence of something is cartoon, that's what animation is great at and cartoon is often a word that is often used in a derogatory way, but it actually means reducing something to its essence and that doesn't just mean making things bigger in a drawing or making things stronger it can also mean making things smaller or smaller, it's about intensifying whatever the essence of it is. that thing and the drawing of the person would look more like the person than the person and you just say: how come it's because they? took what was distinctive about the person and emphasized it and removed the things that didn't emphasize it so that it becomes this, it's almost stripped down to its essence, well, animators do that not just with the style of how something looks but also with how it moves.

Hearing that, you may begin to realize that everything in The Incredibles is a cartoon meant to distill the characters down to their thematically significant essence, from Mr. Incredible's enormous upper body and tiny lower body to the syndrome's devilishly wide smile or the violet hidden behind their hair itself is a caricature meant to highlight the essence of that character, although these human characters look like us, the parts of them that are thematically significant and important are so exaggerated that We can't help but notice them and that brings us to the second part. of the answer because, interestingly, this approach from caricature to the reduction of essence extends beyond the character designs and goes directly into the narrative when you really look closely at the incredibles, everything in the story is exaggerated to send a message, but it is done with sufficient precision.

In a way that doesn't break our immersion, Brad Bird has said that I don't think the movie feels realistic. I don't think it looks even remotely realistic, but it feels realistic and those markers of simultaneous caricature and realism are hidden throughout the film. in plain sight I want to show how Mr. Incredible is obsessed with being a hero make him late to his own wedding because of heroin I want to show the unintended consequences of actions make a guy angry because you stopped him from committing suicide hey I saved you life, you didn't save my life, you ruined my debt, listen to my client's comment right now, I want to show that bob hates the normal, mundane life he was forced to make him literally throw away the physical representation of his horrible work life through a wall, but only In case you are thinking that these conflict caricatures are still too subtle, there are even more exaggerated ones that want to show the duality of the fantastic and the mundane.

The whole vibe of this movie is how mundane and how fantastical you know. mr incredible being known as robert parr a name that literally means robert average i want to show that everyone needs to accept the help of their support group make mr incredible in danger in a place called literally no man is an island currently 78 degrees i want to show how A support group may be helpful for Mr. Incredible's family to literally take him off Nomad is an island. I want to show how wrong it is to try to become a hero by creating negative situations for yourself to solve.

Name your villain syndrome literally based on your hero syndrome. a real psychological phenomenon in which a person seeks recognition by creating a harmful situation that he alone can resolve. I want to make a comment about family dynamics. In fact, I'll let Brad Bird handle this. Well, men are expected to be strong, so Bob is super strong. The mothers are pulled in 10 different directions at once, so I make her elastic. Teenagers are defensive and insecure so I made her be invisible and have force fields and 10 year olds or energy balls that want to open every door and press every button now. and the babies are unknown, they could have no powers or they could have all the powers.

The Incredibles is a movie based entirely on these over-the-top cartoonish depictions of conflicts and themes, but that's also why the movie succeeds. The Incredibles understood their own setting and how a story containing superheroes was already hype, meaning the only way to create a coherent, cohesive feel was to confront that hype head-on. The Incredibles completely understood the superhero cartoon genre it was in and turned its weaknesses into strengths somehow I managed to find the cover and what does the von ruthless gang do, start modeling, start monologuing, swipe, dog, me you got me monologuing, I can't believe, remember the bad guys on those shows you used to watch on Saturday mornings, well these guys aren't like those guys. it's going to kill you and of course like almost everything else we've talked about this started at the top with Brad Bird he said there are expectations for animation and you know you make this connection with animations and superheroes you think that Saturday in the morning and on Saturday morning they I have these very strange shows completely designed around the conflict and yet no one dies or is really hurt or has no consequences.

I think it came from a team of psychologists who determined that it is bad for children and I believe the opposite. I think it's better if kids realize that there is a cost and that if the hero gets hurt and still has to fight, it's more dramatic, it's closer to life and at the end of the day, that's really what It means darkness in animation, realism and closeness to life that's what makes incredible feel so powerful toWe, who beneath her over-the-top exterior are about genuine life struggles that we can all overcome, feel for Helen when she thinks her husband is cheating on her.

How soon can you get here? I'll leave tomorrow morning. We feel sorry for Bob when he finds out that he has lost his good friends. We feel sorry for Violet when she doesn't meet her mother's demands. Put a field around us now and we feel sorry for Dash when he's forced to do it. They live a lie, these are imperfect human beings who suffer and struggle and fight to get better and that makes it easy to connect with them, but at the same time they are superheroes with really cool powers that I have become fond of because at least they are a wonder for my inner child to see them and it's not just you and me and the other millions of people who have seen this excellent film who feel that way, it was the creative team they are also very endearing, they have flaws and You know they have, you know, these quirks that are very human so you connect with them and they also have these powers that are really cool so I can be a nerd with them at the same time the incredibles manage to walk the tightrope of entertaining adults and kids equally because no matter who you are or how old you are, you can understand the themes of the story being told.

You don't have to be an adult to understand that everyone needs help and everyone should have the freedom to do so. In themselves, you don't have to be a child to enjoy a superhuman running on water or taking a train. The incredible advantage of handling animation in the dark is that it's simply a well-conceived story that doesn't pander to or put down anyone and really this quote from Brad Bird sums it up perfectly, he said, look, I think if you talk down to a child or you're specifically targeting a child, most kids aren't really going to like it because most kids can sense when you're being condescending and If you're making entertainment that you wouldn't watch yourself, I think there's something insulting about the fact. that people have gone the other way and asked not just me but Pixar in general, how do they strike the right balance like there's something? complex equation that we follow is actually very simple we make movies that we ourselves would want to see and then we hope that other people want to see If you try to analyze audiences or believe that there is a sophisticated recipe for success, then I think you are doomed.

Anyway, you're making it too complicated. Thank you all for watching until the end. I hope this video can be helpful. any of you aspiring writers out there looking to create your own stories, if you like this entry in the

throwback

breakdown

series be sure to like, comment, subscribe and leave me a suggestion for the next one if you want to support in the best way Anyway, donate to Canaliza through Patreon and get amazing benefits in return, as always, it was a pleasure and I will talk to you all soon.