Incredibles 2 and the corporatisation of hope | Little White Lies

Incred­i­bles 2 and the cor­po­rati­sa­tion of hope

14 Jul 2018

Words by Henry Bevan

Figure in red costume jumping over gap on motorcycle against fiery sky
Figure in red costume jumping over gap on motorcycle against fiery sky
Super­heroes don’t just exist to save the day, as Brad Bird’s ani­ma­tion sequel proves.

Entre­pre­neur­ial sib­lings Win­ston and Eve­lyn Deav­or (Bob Oderkirk and Cather­ine Keen­er) per­ceive their shared ori­gin sto­ry dif­fer­ent­ly: their father was killed dur­ing a home inva­sion while call­ing supers” Gazer­beam and Firon­ic. Win­ston blames his father’s death on the Super­hero Relo­ca­tion Act (SRA), a law ban­ning super­heroes, while Eve­lyn believes her father’s blind hope that some­one else will deal with our prob­lems caused his death. To her, hope is cru­el, it makes us too pas­sive to pro­tect ourselves.

The sib­lings play an impor­tant role in Incred­i­bles 2 as they elect Elastigirl/​Mrs Incredible/​Helen Parr (beau­ti­ful­ly voiced by Hol­ly Hunter) to spear­head a pub­lic­i­ty cam­paign designed to bring supers back”. Mrs Incred­i­ble is right­ly cho­sen over her hus­band, Mr Incredible/​Bob Parr (Craig T Nel­son) because the sib­lings know Bob’s reck­less­ness only dam­ages the super’ brand even more. As a mar­ket­ing expert, Win­ston under­stands the way the mes­sage is pack­aged is more impor­tant than the mes­sage itself. From one event, there can be mul­ti­ple inter­pre­ta­tions and Win­ston believes his plan is the best way to con­vince civil­ians super­heroes are need­ed and restore hope in heroics.

Direc­tor Brad Bird has always fought against the idea that ani­mat­ed movies are strict­ly for kids, and there is a clear polit­i­cal under­cur­rent in both The Incred­i­bles and Incred­i­bles 2. Both films draw on Bob’s glo­ry days as a strap­ping young super­hero, shown briefly in the pro­logue of the first film. The open­ing 10 min­utes are sat­u­rat­ed with super­hero iconog­ra­phy, from the Incred­i­mo­bile’ to the span­dex cos­tumes to a cat stuck in a tree. It is every­thing you might expect from a Sat­ur­day morn­ing ser­i­al or the lat­est Mar­vel Cin­e­mat­ic Uni­verse expan­sion pack.

These super­heroes sell cere­al box­es and toys, and Bird intro­duces an audi­ence sur­ro­gate in the form of Bud­dy Pine (Jason Lee), the self-pro­claimed num­ber one fan” of Mr Incred­i­ble, who, like the kid queu­ing for the next Spi­der-Man movie, has appar­ent­ly pur­chased every­thing patent­ed, pack­aged and sold to him with his idol’s face on. Bud­dy puts his hope in Mr Incred­i­ble, only to have to shoved back in his face.

Animated family in superhero costumes against fiery backdrop.

Super­heroes are pre­sent­ed as brands both in this fic­tion­al ani­mat­ed set­ting and our own real world. The cos­tumes that seem­ing­ly appear out of nowhere in most super­hero movies are here designed by Edna Mode (voiced by Bird him­self), who makes clear in the sequel that she expects pay­ment to be the Incred­i­bles’ exclu­sive design­er. Edna’s inclu­sion and her pre­emp­tive deci­sion to design a new cos­tume for the in-hid­ing Parrs reveals an unease between pub­lic and pri­vate enterprise.

In both films it is sug­gest­ed that super­heroes’ liveli­hoods are deter­mined by their hero­ics and that in turn their hero­ics are a means of grow­ing their per­son­al brand. The SRA’s intro­duc­tion effec­tive­ly kills an entire indus­try, and as G‑man Rick Dick­er (Bud Luck­ey) sug­gests in the sequel after the gov­ern­ment pulls the fund­ing for the SRA, Politi­cians don’t trust any­one who does a good thing because it is right. It makes them nervous.”

The orig­i­nal intro­duc­tion of the SRA in the first film saps the world of hope and turns the Gold­en Age into a dis­tant mem­o­ry for Bob. He is now a paunchy mid­dle-aged man work­ing a desk job for an insur­ance com­pa­ny. Bird desat­u­rates the colour palette from the hon­ey dew tones of Bob’s nos­tal­gic mem­o­ry and presents the post-SRA scenes in mut­ed shades of grey. This new world is one where peo­ple active­ly ignore every­day crimes, like mug­ging, and dis­miss decen­cy if it detracts from the bot­tom line. From Bob’s per­spec­tive, gov­ern­ment con­trol is dam­ag­ing, and he is too dis­tract­ed by his malaise to notice that his fam­i­ly is his great­est adventure.

Mr Incredible’s dis­trust in the first film, and Mrs Incredible’s deci­sion to break the law in the sequel, gives these films a fas­ci­nat­ing anti-author­i­tar­i­an streak. This is noth­ing new in super­hero cin­e­ma. In Bat­man Begins, Bruce (Chris­t­ian Bale) becomes Bat­man because he believes the GCPD is inef­fec­tu­al. Even though the Incred­i­bles’ even­tu­al vic­to­ry opens the film up to some thorny polit­i­cal read­ings, those who nev­er lost faith have their feel­ings towards super­heroes and their spe­cif­ic role in soci­ety cer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly reaffirmed.

After the release of the first film, Bird dis­missed accu­sa­tions that it effec­tive­ly amount­ed to Ayn Rand pro­pa­gan­da, telling writer Michael Bar­ri­er it’s non­sense”. Ignored extra­or­di­nar­i­ness is part and par­cel of the genre, often posi­tioned as a metaphor for var­i­ous civ­il rights move­ments. The X‑Men franchise’s agen­da is more explic­it in this regard, and Super­man is arguably the defin­i­tive immi­gra­tion sto­ry in Amer­i­can culture.

The X‑Men, Super­man and the Incred­i­bles could destroy us with a flick of their fin­gers, but they choose not to. It’s a dis­con­cert­ing thought that hope should be drawn from the fact our pro­tec­tors don’t harm us, but this old-fash­ioned mode of hero­ism is still potent. Heroes don’t just exist to save the day – as Incred­i­bles 2 shows through its new cast of supers includ­ing Voyd (Sophia Bush) – they serve to inspire out­side of their sta­tus as brand­ed enter­tain­ment or con­duits for gov­ern­men­tal pol­i­cy. Bird, through Mrs Incred­i­ble, pro­pos­es that every­one is spe­cial if they do the right thing. It doesn’t mat­ter how it is packaged.

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