Why it wasn't perfect

Rating: 8/10 (6 October 2005)

I wanted to throw out a couple of ideas as to why this movie wasn't completely perfect. The movie was slow in parts, and didn't always have the intelligence of other Pixar offerings.
1. The creator, Brad Bird, had a wonderful idea, but perhaps he refused to let other screenwriters fix up the problems with the script.
2. Or maybe Pixar's need to make a child-friendly movie resulted in the arch-villain being so lacking and the final scene being less than amazing, as compared to the action on Syndrome's island which blew my mind.
I realize that many fixes for the problems are probably to mature for such a movie. For example, Brad Bird mentioned that he originally had Syndrome taking the Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl's baby in the beginning of the movie. Keeping that would have made me happy because I would see more of the humanity in the superheroes at the dread of having a kidnapped baby. Way too much for young kids to digest, though. The final scene would have been helped by having the bots actually cause harm to people. However, even the best cartoons on TV will only allude to death indirectly (bomb goes off.. No one gets out of the building.. All adults watching know that means death.. Children might not realize, though). But, at least having some normal humans getting really injured would have given the threat some urgency.
However, I did enjoy the quiet desperation that the family was suffering in the beginning of the movie. And, Bird was able to sneak in actual evil into the villains of the movie. For example, Syndrome came across as very inhumane in his commands to his henchmen to kill the Incredibles, who also showed their evil by being so compliant. Shoot down an airplane with children on board? No problem! Terminate all superheroes on the island, regardless of age? Sure thing, boss!