Category Archives: animation

There is a concept in animation called the Uncanny Valley, a term coined by Japanese roboticist Doctor Masahiro Mori, which says that the human mind works in such a way that it responds to images or robots or other human-looking objects which are close but not quite close enough to true humans very negatively. As computer-generated animated films (or video games) get better and better at depicting reality, the makers need to take care not to fall in to it.

I bring this up because the visual quality seen in The Incredibles makes it clear that the years remaining until films can jump across the valley is probably measured in single digits. Comparing the images of humans and other objects like trees and ocean waves, I thought that the Pixar staff probably lowered the human characters’ resolution; they certainly seem somewhat more wooden and less detailed.

Even so the film has the highest quality I’ve seen yet in a feature-length animation. And writer-director Brad Bird (previously acclaimed for The Iron Giant) makes superb use of it for the first Pixar film that features only human characters. The basic story is superheroes versus would be supervillain, though with the added fillip of the superheroes being husband and wife with their three kids plus one superhero buddy. Craig T. Nelson was a terrific choice as Bob “Mr. Incredible” Parr, the other outstanding voicework comes from Bird as supercostume designer Edna Mode.

Bird uses the family subplot as counterpoint to the main story though one of my complaints is that the main conflict doesn’t feel hefty enough. If this were, like so many action movies, the first screen version of a well-established comic book and telling the origin story that might not even be worthy of mention but Bird said that he didn’t make Incredibles to launch a series. Over half the movie goes by before we truly meet Syndrome (Jason Lee voicing a credible villain) and I was wondering if there was going to be a single bad guy, or just the story of a man beaten down by modern life.

Because if anything, the script goes all out showing how our litiginous, all victims culture deals with people who stand out from the crowd. Not just by shutting all the superheroes down with lawsuit after lawsuit and the government pushing them into witness relocaiton-like programs but with the small details of the Parrs’ lives. Bob must cram his huge body into a tiny car and drive to work at a tiny job where he is berated by a tiny boss and sit in a tiny cubicle; son Dash must hide his speed instead of even competing in sports and daughter Violet retreats so far into shyness that no one notices her becoming invisible at the least attention.

How good they all feel when forced to confront Buddy “Syndrome” Pine! No problem with lawsuits since the action is off on a tropical island where there are no innocents. Even when the action moves back to the big city, no one stops to think about shutting down and letting Syndrome have his way. I’m tempted to say this is another small flaw but by the last scenes Bird has dialed the action and pace up to where it’s immaterial.

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