Pixar Month - The Incredibles & Incredibles 2 (2004/2018)

        Hey guys, Chuck here. Today, for Pixar Month, you're getting two movies reviewed together: The Incredibles and its sequel Incredibles 2. Both films are directed by Brad Bird and feature the voices of Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Sarah Vowell, Brad Bird, and Samuel L. Jackson. The first Incredibles features the voices of Spencer Fox, Elizabeth Pena, Bud Luckey, and Jason Lee, while the sequel features the voices of Huckleberry Milner, Jonathan Banks, Catherine Keener, and Bob Odenkirk. 

         So the story of The Incredibles is set in the world of superheroes, and one of the most beloved superheroes out there is Bob Part aka Mr. Incredible. On the day of his wedding to another superhero, a hero named Helen aka Elastigirl, Bob ends up stopping a car being chased by police, rescues a woman's cat from a tree, catching a guy who robbed a tour bus, who is knocked out cold by Elastigirl, and after a quick chat with best friend and superhero Lucius Best aka Frozone, jumps to save a suicide jumper. After saving the jumper, Bob sees criminal Bomb Voyage robbing the bank, but gets distracted by a kid named Buddy Pine, who is a fanboy of Mr. Incredible and is now trying to moonlight as Bob's sidekick Incredi-Boy. After pulling a bomb from Buddy's cape, which causes a part of the train tracks to be destroyed, Bob has to stop an oncoming train. After a chat with police, Bob hurries to his wedding, and he and Helen are now married. After the wedding, we see a news montage of Mr. Incredible getting sued for injuries caused by his rescues, the jumper and the train passengers. After more superheroes face lawsuits, the government creates the Superhero Relocation Program, where what is left of the National Supers Association, or NSA, will quietly relocate superheroes and grant amnesty for their actions, in exchange for discontinuing superhero work. 

         Years pass, and Bob is working a boring desk job, and he and Helen are raising three children: teenage social outcast daughter Violet, who has the power of invisibility and creating forcefields, prankster son Dash, who has the power of superspeed, and infant son Jack-Jack, whose powers have yet to be revealed. After a rough day's work, Bob and Lucius head out listening to police scanners, and rescue people from a burning building, only to be caught in a jewelry store by police, freezing one officer solid. The next day, Bob's boss at the firm he works for, Insura-Care, berates Bob for giving the firm's customers the help they need, when Bob sees a mugging, and is warned he'll be fired if he goes to stop the mugger. After the mugger gets away, Bob's boss makes a snide remark and Bob grabs him by the throat and girls him through several walls, costing him his job, and causing former NSA agent Rick Dicker to come deal with the situation. At home, Bob watches a video message from a mysterious woman named Mirage, who offers him a job in suiting up as Mr. Incredible again and fight an out-of-control robot called the Omni-Droid, which is on a rampage on Nomanisan Island, which is where it was created. Bob agrees and suits up once again. 

       So the fight with the Omni-Droid takes a while, but he finally takes it down, but unfortunately, his super-suit is ripped slightly. Returning home, Bob starts spending more time with his family, while also getting back into superhero shape. After getting to the shape he wants, Bob goes to see an old friend, super-suit designer Edna Mode, to get his suit fixed, and she instead designs him a brand new suit, along with stitching up the old suit. After getting the new suit, Bob gets the call from Mirage about a new assignment. 

      Upon arrival at Nomanisan Island, Bob learns that his former fanboy Buddy is responsible for the creation of the Omni-Droid, and has built a much larger Omni-Droid. Buddy, now going by the name Syndrome, plans to dispose of Mr. Incredible for making him feel inferior and unwanted. Bob escapes, however, and finds the skeletal remains of another Super, a Super named Gazerbeam. After hiding out from being tracked by Syndrome's scanner, Bob heads back and infiltrates the base where he learns that several Supers, including the likes of Universal Man, Apogee, Gamma Jack, Gazerbeam, Blitzerman, Blazestone, Stormicide, The Phylange, Hypershock, and so forth, were previously hired to take down earlier models of the Omni-Droid, but none survived the encounter. Some did defeat Omni-Droid models, only to be taken down by the next model of Omni-Droid. Bob also learns that Syndrome plans to release the final version of the Omni-Droid into the nearby city of Metroville, where it will go on a rampage, and Syndrome will fight it, stop it himself, and be hailed as a superhero. 

      Helen, meanwhile, sees the stitching on Bob's old suit, and realizes that he went to see Edna. Helen call Edna, who invites her over, and shows her four new super-suits: one for Jack-Jack, one for Dash, one for Violet, and one for Helen. Edna does admit that the one for Violet was tricky, but she was able to craft a material that will disappear as quickly as Violet does. Edna also mentions that all five suits have a tracking device. Helen, after learning that Bob lost his job at Insura-Care, activates his tracker, leading him to get caught in a barrage of stickyballs. Helen, after a reminder of who she is from Edna, calls her old friend Snug, who gives her a plane to fly to Nomanisan and rescue Bob. Violet and Dash snuck onto the plane, after leaving Jack-Jack with a babysitter named Kari, and the plane is shot down by Syndrome. Landing into the water below, Helen, Violet, and Dash head to the island, and Helen leaves them in a cave while she goes to find Bob. A rocket is activated, forcing Violet and Dash out of the cave, and into the jungle, where the next morning, they inadvertently set off an intruder alarm. Helen reunites with Bob, and the two of them head to rescue Dash and Violet, both of whom hold their own against Syndrome's guards. However, when the four reunite, they stand off against guards, but are caught by Syndrome. Syndrome then heads off to Metroville to fight the Omni-Droid, but fails and flees. Violet help Bob, Helen, and Dash break free, and Mirage gets them set up in the rocker to Metroville, where they fight the Omni-Droid along with Lucius, who has suited up as Frozone once again. After defeating the Omni-Droid, Dicker takes the Parts home in a limo, where Helen hears a series of voicemail messages from Kari, who speaks of a replacement that Helen never hired, which turns out to be Syndrome, who attempts to take Jack-Jack, but is quickly overwhelmed by the baby's emerging powers. Helen saves Jack-Jack, and Bob throws a car at Syndrome, causing his cape to be caught by a jet turbine, killing him. 

       Weeks later, and the Parts are watching Dash participate in a track meet, where he goes for second place, while Violet, now with an added bit of confidence, sets up a movie date with a guy she likes named Tony Rydinger. Suddenly, a villain named the Underminer emerges, and the Parts get ready to fight him, ending the movie. 

            Released fourteen years later, the sequel, Incredibles 2, picks up with Dicker interrogating Tony about the Underminer incident, and wipes his memory of seeing Violet in her super-suit. Meanwhile, the Parts work together with Frozone to fight the Underminer, who gets away, but a major disaster is kept from being worse. After being berated by police, the Parrs are taken back to the motel they've been staying in, when Dicker tells Bob and Helen thatthe Relocation Program is shut down, and the best he can do is two more weeks in the motel. Later that evening, Lucius arrives, and tells Bob and Helen about an opportunity to make supers legal again. The figurehead of this is entrepreneur Winston Deavor, whose father had a direct line to two supers: Gazerbeam and Fironic. After the supers were forced underground, burglars broke in, and Winston's father tried both Fironic and Gazerbeam, only to get no answer and both he and his wife are killed. So, Winston, along with his sister Evelyn, has packaged together a plan to make people see from the perspective of supers, and decides that the best one to lead the charge in legalizing supers is Elastigirl. 

       So, Helen suits up as Elastigirl once more, in a suit designed by Alexander Galbaki, while Bob stays home with the kids. Helen does great work, fighting crime, causing no collateral damage, and proving to everyone exactly what Winston believes: superheroes are needed. Meanwhile, Bob is struggling to deal with Dash's algebra homework, Violet dealing with Tony forgetting all about her, and Jack-Jack's superpowers. Exhausted beyond measure, Bob seeks help from Edna, who agrees to take Jack-Jack when she sees he has powers. Bob finally gets some much needed sleep, and Edna shows the new suit she made for Jack-Jack, which has a tracker to alert Bob of what's about to happen with Jack-Jack's powers, and includes edible blackberry lavender flame retardant. Edna waives her regular fee for the exclusivity of being the suit designer for Elastigirl, Mr. Incredible, and Frozone. 

       Helen, meanwhile, meets a new group of supers, all of whom want to be able to fight crime legally themselves. Helen has also been working to take down a hypnotist villain called the Screenslaver, who uses light patterns to hypnotize people. However, the guy that gets caught is just a puppet for the real Screenslaver, who turns out to be Evelyn, who wants to show that the world doesn't need superheroes, and wants to put heroes under hypnosis to make them do wrong, so that supers can never be legalized again. Helen, Bob, Lucius, and all the new supers, are all nabbed and forced to wear hypno-goggles, but Violet, Dash, and Jack-Jack evade capture using the newly returned Incredibile. 

      Violet, Dash, and Jack-Jack head to Deavor's ship, the EverJust, where they save their parents, Lucius, the other supers, and Helen stops Evelyn, while the rest of the Parrs work with Lucius to turn the ship and keep it from causing a major disaster. Evelyn is arrested, supers are legalized, and the Parrs fight crime together as a family, leaving behind Tony, who was finally about to go to the movies with Violet. 

          Okay, so as I said in my review of Finding Nemo, I dislike how millennials have overhyped that film for years. However, if there is one Pixar movie I'm guilty of overhyping all the time, is would be The Incredibles. I mean, the movie is literally what I want to see when it comes to a movie about a superhero family. Not only that, but the James Bond vibes present in the film make it stand out over other family-friendly superhero stories. Fourteen years later, and I feel the exact same way about Incredibles 2 as I did about the first movie. The cast of both movies, from Craig T. Nelson to Samuel L. Jackson, are all, for lack of a better word, incredible. The art style is terrific, and Brad Bird's animation style works well here. If it wasn't obvious, I love both Incredibles movies, and I therefore give both movies the rating of 5/5. We have just a few more reviews to get through in Pixar Month, and next time, we're rejoining Woody and Buzz with another double review: Toy Story 3 and Toy Story 4.