The Incredibles

Sarah Vowell

Spencer Fox

Jason Lee

Samuel L. Jackson

Elizabeth Peña

The Incredibles Theatrical release poster depicting the Incredibles running from an explosion Theatrical release poster Directed by Brad Bird Produced by John Walker Written by Brad Bird Starring Craig T. Nelson Holly Hunter Sarah Vowell Spencer Fox Jason Lee Samuel L. Jackson Elizabeth Peña Music by Michael Giacchino Cinematography Andrew Jimenez Patrick Lin Janet Lucroy Edited by Stephen Schaffer Production company Pixar Animation Studios Distributed by Buena Vista Pictures Release date October 27, 2004 (London Film Festival) November 5, 2004 (United States) Running time 115 minutes Country United States Language English Budget $92 million Box office $633 million The Incredibles is a 2004 American computer-animated superhero film written and directed by Brad Bird, produced by Pixar Animation Studios, released by Walt Disney Pictures, and starring the voices of Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Sarah Vowell, Spencer Fox, Jason Lee, Samuel L. Jackson, and Elizabeth Peña. The film follows the Parrs, a family of superheroes who are forced to live a quiet suburban life while hiding their powers. Mr. Incredible's desire to help people draws the entire family into a confrontation with a vengeful fan-turned-foe and his killer robot.

Bird, who was Pixar's first outside director, developed the film as an extension of the 1960s comic books and spy films from his boyhood and personal family life. He pitched the film to Pixar after the box office disappointment of his first feature, The Iron Giant (1999), and carried over much of its staff to develop The Incredibles. The animation team was tasked with animating an all-human cast, which required creating new technology to animate detailed human anatomy, clothing and realistic skin and hair. Michael Giacchino composed the film's orchestral score.

The film premiered on October 27, 2004, at the BFI London Film Festival and had its general release in the United States on November 5, 2004. It performed well at the box office, grossing $633 million worldwide during its original theatrical run. The Incredibles received widespread approval from critics and audiences, winning two Academy Awards and the Annie Award for Best Animated Feature. It was the first entirely animated film to win the prestigious Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation. A sequel, Incredibles 2, was released on June 15, 2018.

## Plot

Public opinion turns against superheroes—also called "Supers"—due to the collateral damage caused by their crime-fighting. After several lawsuits, the government initiates the Superhero Relocation Program, which forces Supers to permanently adhere to their secret identities. Fifteen years later, Bob and Helen Parr—formerly known as Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl—and their children Violet, Dash, and baby Jack-Jack are a suburban family living in Metroville. Although he loves his family, Bob resents the mundanity of his suburban lifestyle and white-collar job. Together with his friend Lucius Best, formerly known as Frozone, Bob occasionally relives "the glory days" by moonlighting as a vigilante.

After his supervisor prevents him from stopping a mugging, Bob loses his temper and injures him, resulting in his dismissal. Returning home, Bob receives a message from a woman called Mirage, who gives him a mission to destroy a savage tripod-like robot, the Omnidroid, on the remote island of Nomanisan. Bob battles and disables it by tricking it into ripping off its own power source.

Bob finds the action and higher pay rejuvenating. He improves his relationship with his family and begins rigorous physical training while awaiting more work from Mirage for the next two months. Finding a tear in his suit, he visits superhero costume designer Edna Mode to have it mended. Assuming that Helen knows what Bob is doing, Edna also makes new suits for the other family members. Setting out for Nomanisan once again, Bob discovers Mirage is working for Buddy Pine, a disaffected former fan whom Mr. Incredible had rejected as his sidekick. Having adopted the alias of Syndrome, he has been perfecting the Omnidroid by hiring different superheroes to fight it, killing many of them in the process. Syndrome intends to send the latest Omnidroid to Metroville, where he will secretly manipulate its controls to defeat it in public, becoming a "hero" himself. Later, he will sell his inventions so that everyone can become "super", rendering the term meaningless.

Helen visits Edna and learns what Bob has been up to. She activates a beacon Edna built into the suits to find Bob, inadvertently causing him to be captured while infiltrating Syndrome's base. Helen borrows a private plane to head for Nomanisan. She finds out that Violet and Dash have stowed away, leaving Jack-Jack with a babysitter. Helen's radio transmissions are picked up by Syndrome, who sends missiles to shoot her down. The plane is destroyed, but Helen and the kids survive and use their powers to reach the island. Helen infiltrates the base and discovers Syndrome's plan. Discontented with Syndrome's indifference when her life was threatened, Mirage releases Bob and informs him of his family's survival. Helen arrives and races off with Bob to find their children. Dash and Violet are chased by Syndrome's guards, but fend them off with their powers before reuniting with their parents. Syndrome captures them all, leaving them imprisoned while he follows the rocket transporting the Omnidroid to Metroville.

The Parrs escape to Metroville in another rocket with Mirage's help. As per its programming, the Omnidroid recognizes Syndrome as a threat and shoots off the remote control on his wrist, making him incapable of controlling it and knocking him unconscious. The Parrs and Frozone fight the Omnidroid. Bob acquires the remote control, allowing Helen to use one of the robot's claws to destroy its power source. Returning home, the Parrs find Syndrome, who plans to kidnap and raise Jack-Jack as his own sidekick to exact revenge on the family. As Syndrome is flying upward to reach his jet, Jack-Jack's own superpowers start to manifest and he escapes Syndrome midair. As Helen catches Jack-Jack, Syndrome boards his plane, but Bob throws his car at the villain, causing him to get sucked into the jet's turbine by his own cape, killing him and causing the plane to explode.

Three months later, the Parrs witness the arrival of a supervillain called the Underminer. They put on their superhero masks, ready to face the new threat together as a family.

## Voice Cast

* Craig T. Nelson as Bob Parr / Mr. Incredible, Helen's husband, possessing super-strength.
* Holly Hunter as Helen Parr / Elastigirl, Bob's wife, who has the ability to stretch her body like rubber.
* Sarah Vowell as Violet Parr, the Parrs' eldest child, who can become invisible and generate an impact-resistant force shield.
* Spencer Fox as Dashiell "Dash" Parr, the Parrs' second child, possessing super-speed.
* Eli Fucile and Maeve Andrews as Jack-Jack Parr, the Parrs' infant son.
* Jason Lee as Buddy Pine / Incrediboy / Syndrome, Mr. Incredible's fan-turned-supervillain who has no superpowers but uses his scientific prowess to create enhanced abilities.
* Samuel L. Jackson as Lucius Best / Frozone, Bob's best friend, who can form ice from humidity.
* Elizabeth Peña as Mirage, Syndrome's seductive right-hand woman.
* Brad Bird as Edna Mode, the fashion designer for the Supers.
* Teddy Newton as Newsreel Narrator, heard narrating the changing public opinion of the Supers.
* Jean Sincere as Mrs. Hoganson, an old lady to whom Bob Parr pretends to deny an insurance claim.
* Bud Luckey as Rick Dicker, a government agent responsible for keeping the Parrs undercover.
* Wallace Shawn as Gilbert Huph, Bob's demeaning boss.
* Lou Romano as Bernie Kropp, Dash's teacher.
* Michael Bird as Tony Rydinger, Violet's love interest.
* Dominique Lewis as Bomb Voyage, a French supervillain who uses explosives.
* Bret Parker as Kari, Jack-Jack's babysitter.
* Kimberly Adair Clark as Honey, Frozone's wife.
* John Ratzenberger as The Underminer, a mole-like supervillain.

## Production

### **Writing**

The Incredibles as a concept dates back to 1993 when Bird sketched the family during an uncertain point in his film career. Personal issues had percolated into the story as they weighed on him in life. During this time, Bird had signed a production deal with Warner Bros. Feature Animation and was in the process of directing his first feature, The Iron Giant. Approaching middle age and having high aspirations for his filmmaking, Bird pondered whether his career goals were attainable only at the price of his family life. He stated, "Consciously, this was just a funny movie about superheroes. But I think that what was going on in my life definitely filtered into the movie." After the box office failure of The Iron Giant, Bird gravitated toward his superhero story.

He imagined it as a homage to the 1960s comic books and spy films from his boyhood and he initially tried to develop it as a 2D cel animation. When The Iron Giant became a box office bomb, he reconnected with old friend John Lasseter at Pixar in March 2000 and pitched his story idea to him. Bird and Lasseter knew each other from their college years at CalArts in the 1970s. Lasseter was sold on the idea and convinced Bird to come to Pixar, where the film would be done in computer animation. The studio announced a multi-film contract with Bird on May 4, 2000. The Incredibles was written and directed solely by Brad Bird, a departure from previous Pixar productions which typically had two or three directors and as many screenwriters with a history of working for the company. In addition, it would be the company's first film in which all characters are human. "The dad is always expected in the family to be strong, so I made him strong. The moms are always pulled in a million different directions, so I made her stretch like taffy. Teenagers, particularly teenage girls, are insecure and defensive, so I made her turn invisible and turn on shields. And ten-year-old boys are hyperactive energy balls. Babies are unrealized potential." – Brad Bird, writer and director of The Incredibles.

Bird came to Pixar with the lineup of the story's family members worked out: a mom and dad, both suffering through the dad's midlife crisis; a shy teenage girl; a cocky ten-year-old boy; and a baby. Bird had based their powers on family archetypes. During production, Hayao Miyazaki of Studio Ghibli visited Pixar and saw the film's story reels. When Bird asked if the reels made any sense or if they were just "American nonsense," Miyazaki replied, through an interpreter, "I think it's a very adventurous thing you are trying to do in an American film.

### **Animation**

Upon Pixar's acceptance of the project, Brad Bird was asked to bring in his own team for the production. He brought up a core group of people he worked with on The Iron Giant. Because of this, many 2-D artists had to make the shift to 3-D, including Bird himself. Bird found working with CG "wonderfully malleable" in a way that traditional animation is not, calling the camera's ability to easily switch angles in a given scene "marvelously adaptable." He found working in computer animation "difficult" in a different way than working traditionally, finding the software "sophisticated and not particularly friendly." Bird wrote the script without knowing the limitations or concerns that went hand-in-hand with the medium of computer animation. As a result, this was to be the most complex film yet for Pixar. The film's characters were designed by Tony Fucile and Teddy Newton, whom Bird had brought with him from Warner Bros. Like most computer-animated films, The Incredibles had a year-long period of building the film from the inside out: modeling the exterior and understanding controls that would work the face and the body—the articulation of the character—before animation could even begin. Bird and Fucile tried to emphasize the graphic quality of good 2-D animation to the Pixar team, who had only worked primarily in CG. Bird attempted to incorporate teaching from Disney's Nine Old Men that the crew at Pixar had "never really emphasized.

For the technical crew members, the film's human characters posed a difficult set of challenges. Bird's story was filled with elements that were difficult to animate with CGI back then. Humans are widely considered to be the most difficult things to execute in animation. Pixar's animators filmed themselves walking to better grasp proper human motion. Creating an all-human cast required creating new technology to animate detailed human anatomy, clothing, and realistic skin and hair. Although the technical team had some experience with hair and cloth in Monsters, Inc. (2001), the amount of hair and cloth required for The Incredibles had never been done by Pixar up until this point. Moreover, Bird would tolerate no compromises for the sake of technical simplicity. Where the technical team on Monsters, Inc. had persuaded director Pete Docter to accept pigtails on Boo to make her hair easier to animate, the character Violet had to have long hair that obscured her face; in fact, this was integral to her character. Violet's long hair, which was extremely difficult to animate, was only successfully animated toward the end of production. In addition, animators had to adapt to having hair both underwater and blowing through the wind. Disney was initially reluctant to make the film because of these issues, thinking that a live-action film would be preferable, but Lasseter denied this.

Not only did The Incredibles cope with the difficulty of animating CG humans, but also many other complications. The story was bigger than any prior story at the studio, was longer in running time, and had four times the number of locations. Supervising technical director Rick Sayre noted that the hardest thing about the film was that there was "no hardest thing," alluding to the amount of new technical challenges: fire, water, air, smoke, steam, and explosions were all additional to the new difficulty of working with humans. The film's organizational structure could not be mapped out like previous Pixar features, and it became a running joke to the team. Sayre said the team adopted “Alpha Omega," where one team was concerned with building modeling, shading, and layout, while another dealt with final camera, lighting, and effects. Another team, dubbed the "character team," digitally sculpted, rigged, and shaded all of the characters, and a simulation team was responsible for developing simulation technology for hair and clothing. There were at least 781 visual effects shots in the film, and they were quite often visual gags, such as the window shattering when Bob angrily shuts the car door. Additionally, the effects team improved their modeling of clouds, using volumetric rendering for the first time.

The skin of the characters gained a new level of realism from a technology to produce known as "subsurface scattering." The challenges did not stop with modeling humans. Bird decided that in a shot near the film's end, baby Jack-Jack would have to undergo a series of transformations, and in one of the five planned he would turn himself into a kind of goo. Technical directors, who anticipated spending two months or even longer to work out the goo effect, stealing precious hours from production that had already entered its final and most critical stages, petitioned the film's producer, John Walker, for help. Bird, who had himself brought Walker over from Warner Bros. to work on the project, was at first immovable, but after arguing with Walker in several invective-laced meetings over the course of two months, Bird finally conceded. Bird also insisted that the storyboards define the blocking of characters' motions, lighting, and camera movements, which had previously been left to other departments rather than storyboarded.

Bird self-admitted that he "had the knees of [the studio] trembling under the weight" of *The Incredibles*, but called the film a "testament to the talent of the animators at Pixar," who were admiring the challenges the film provoked. He recalled, "Basically, I came into a wonderful studio, frightened a lot of people with how many presents I wanted for Christmas, and then got almost everything I asked for."

### **Casting**

Lily Tomlin was originally considered for the role of Edna Mode, but later turned it down. After several failed attempts to cast Edna Mode, Bird took on her voice role himself. It was an extension of the Pixar custom of tapping in-house staff whose voices came across particularly well on scratch dialogue tracks. Sarah Vowellwas offered the role of Violet unexpectedly, Bird wanted to cast Vowell as Violet after hearing her voice on the National Public Radio program, *This American Life*. Bird stated that she was "perfect" for the part and immediately called her to offer her the role.

### **Music**

The Incredibles is the first Pixar film to be scored by Michael Giacchino. Brad Bird was looking for a specific sound as inspired by the film's retrofuturistic design – the future as seen from the 1960s. John Barry was the first choice to do the film's score, with a trailer of the film given a rerecording of Barry's theme to On Her Majesty's Secret Service. However, Barry did not wish to duplicate the sound of some of his earlier soundtracks; the assignment was instead given to Giacchino. Giacchino noted that recording in the 1960s was largely different from modern day recording and Dan Wallin, the recording engineer, said that Bird wanted an old feel, and as such the score was recorded on analog tapes. Wallin noted that brass instruments, which are at the forefront of the film's score, sound better on analog equipment rather than digital. Wallin came from an era in which music was recorded, according to Giacchino, "the right way", which consists of everyone in the same room, "playing against each other and feeding off each other's energy". Tim Simonec was the conductor/orchestrator for the score's recording.

The film's orchestral score was released on November 2, 2004, three days before the film opened in theaters. It won numerous awards for best score including Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award, BMI Film & TV Award, ASCAP Film and Television Music Award, Annie Award, Las Vegas Film Critics Society Award and Online Film Critics Society Award and was nominated for Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media, Satellite Award and Broadcast Film Critics Association Award.

## Release

The film opened on November 5, 2004, as Pixar's first film to be rated PG (for "action violence"). Its theatrical release was accompanied with a Pixar short film *Boundin'*. The promotional campaign included an official website with video segments, games, and printable memorabilia. While Pixar celebrated another triumph with *The Incredibles*, Steve Jobs was embroiled in a public feud with the head of its distribution partner, The Walt Disney Company. This would eventually lead to the ousting of Michael Eisner and Disney's acquisition of Pixar the following year.

In March 2014, Disney CEO and chairman Bob Iger announced that the film would be reformatted and re-released in 3D.

On May 11, 2018, Disney and IMAX announced that the film would be reissued and digitally re-mastered for IMAX theaters (alongside its sequel, *Incredibles 2*) using their DMR Technology in a double feature for a one-day only, "Fan Event", on June 13.

### **Home media**

The film was first released on both VHS and a two-disc collector's edition DVD set on March 15, 2005. The DVD set included two newly commissioned Pixar short films, *Jack-Jack Attack* and *Mr. Incredible and Pals*, which were made specifically for this home-video release, and *Boundin'*, a Pixar short film that premiered alongside the feature film in its original theatrical release. It was the highest-selling DVD of 2005, with 17.38 million copies sold. The film was also released on UMD for the Sony PSP.

Disney released the film on Blu-ray in North America on April 12, 2011, and on 4K UHD Blu-ray on June 5, 2018; this marks Disney's first 4K Blu-ray reissue on the format

## Trivia

* This is the First Pixar Animation Studios Movie To be Rated PG by The MPAA