The Incredibles (2004) remains one of the best animated features ever made. A sequel was long promised and long delayed, fourteen years delayed. It was hard to imagine that Pixar had lacked decent story ideas, but twenty minutes into The Incredibles 2 (2018) it was clear that they had.
Like many Pixar sequels, The Incredibles 2 stank. How could you take such interesting characters set in a world where you could literally do anything and still fall flat? Well, in the intervening years Disney bought Pixar and, well, there’s your answer.
So, let’s fix The Incredibles. They deserved better from beginning to end, so how about we just leave The Incredibles 2 alone, forget it ever happened (a la Cars 2) and fix the franchise moving forward.
The Nerd Cut: The Incredibles 3
Twenty-six-year-old Violet Parr is driving her compact SUV on a busy freeway with one kid in a carseat and another in a booster. As her children begin to argue she turns around to intervene in her best mom voice and, through the rear window, sees a rocket tearing through traffic on a collision course with her vehicle. At the last second, she creates a force field around her car. The rocket explodes and the blast sends her vehicle bouncing across the freeway like a superball.
In the backseat the toddler claps and laughs. The other child screams. Violet holds on till the vehicle comes to a stop. Violet grumbles, “Great.” She dons her eye mask and turns to her kids, “Mommy has a job to do. Wait here, and DON’T touch each other.”
“Okay,” they say, and immediately fight with each other to get a better view out of the windows.
Violet stands in the freeway and faces down a villain with a shoulder fired multi-rocket launcher.
“Incredigirl!” he says.
“The name is Violet, Rocket Man,” she says and goes invisible.
The villain turns and shoots a rocket into a van full of tourists. Violet produces a force field to protect it. They repeat this with three more vehicles.
Violet is getting tired and overwhelmed when Elastigirl’s elongated arms lower from above. They remove the rocket launcher from the villain’s shoulder and Elastigirl’s other hand slaps him. “Hi honey,” she says, looking down from a freeway overpass. “Where are the kids!?”
“They’re fine,” Violet says, motioning toward the van with her head.
“Hey, kids!” Elastigirl waves enthusiastically with her free hand.
“Hi Grandma!,” they wave back.
While Elastigirl is distracted, Rocket Man slips away from her and launches into the air. Mr. Incredible shows up in a jet vehicle.
“Hi, sweetie. Where is he?” he says, getting out.
“Up there,” Violet points.
“You let him go!?”
“I didn’t let him go. He can fly, Dad. Can I fly?”
“Hi, Grandpa!” the kids yell from the car.
“Hey, guys,” Mr. Incredible says, walking toward Violet’s car. “I hear sooomeone’s got a biiiirthday coming up,” he teases.
From high in the air, Rocket Man looses another salvo of rockets upon them, and Violet forcefields a dome over the freeway. “Can we talk about that later, Dad?”
“We need to get up to him,” Elastigirl says.
“Yeah, with what? I can’t fly either, you know,” Mr. Incredible says as his phone rings.
[On the video phone] “Hey Dad, saw the commotion online. Need me to run on over?”“No, we’ve got this. Hey, did you get my text? Jane’s birthday is this Friday. We’re doing barbecue at…” He looks at Violet. “What time is the party, Sweetie?”
“3:00!” she says, struggling to keep the forcefield. “No wait, we changed it to 2:00.” A truck pulls up next to her. The driver is her husband, Tony.
“Hey. Want me to take the kids home?”
“Please. Okay kids, go with daddy.” Then to her husband, “Oh, and don’t forget to pick up the mail at the post office.”
“I got it.” He transfers them to his truck and says, “Love you babe,” as he waves and drives off.
“Bye mom! Bye Grandma and Grandpa!”
“Bye, see you this weekend!” Elastigirl and Mr. Incredible wave.
“Okay,” Elastigirl says, “Let’s do slingshot.” She grabs hold of two light posts and contorts herself accordingly.
“Not slingshot,” Mr. Incredible grumbles while walking toward her, head down.
“What, are you going soft on me in your old age?” she teases.
“The landing always hurts,” he says, settling against her torso which is now shaped like a pulled-back slingshot.
“Man up.” She gives him a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll make it
up to you later.”
He grins. “Fire away.”
He lifts his feet and Elastigirl shoots him into Rocket Man, who Mr. Incredible
punches while passing him in the air. Rocket Man falls to the ground
unconscious. Mr. Incredible flies into the distant countryside and we hear a
far-off crash followed by a very faint, “Oww.”
Elastigirl and Violet stand over Rocket Man. Violet is exhausted. “You look flushed. Kids are taking a lot out of you, huh?”
“Mom, you have no idea.”
Elastigirl gives her a side hug while Violet lays her head on her mom’s shoulder. “Oh, I’ve got some idea.”
[Newsreel footage overlays the following:]
It seems like only yesterday that the supers burst back onto the national stage, saving the world from calamity once again and regaining their rightful place in a grateful society. But not all societies agree. The old debate about liability and insurance soon reared its ugly head. Questions of liberty versus security manifested in the halls of state legislatures. Some states required supers to register with the government. Corporate sponsors and city contracts ensured supers can make ends meet, but the insurance premiums keep most supers on a very tight budget. Other states granted them immunity in exchange for lucrative security contracts. Soon most supers fled to Super friendly – or SF – states where crime soon evaporated. Others stayed put in non-Super friendly – or NSF – states that became crime-ridden battlegrounds.
The country they fight for, divided. Super or nonsuper? If you were a super, where would you choose to live?
The Parr family is in conflict. Bob (Mr. Incredible) wants to remain in Chicago, an increasingly dangerous NSF city, as does Dash (now 18). Helen lobbies relocating to the most popular SF state, Florida. A main sticking point is Jack Jack, now ten. He’s one of the most powerful and effective young Supers around and as a result, the government watches him like a hawk. Helen thinks it is unfair to lay such scrutiny on such a young boy. Bob thinks the city needs him to be all he can be. Jack Jack is just trying to navigate childhood with vying responsibilities – one to his parents, another to his crumbling community.
At the birthday party, Violet and Tony announce that Tony is taking a promotion to Florida, in a beautiful coastal city with almost zero crime. The family debates breaking up the team. The economics of Super work is also pressing. All these factors converge to convince Bob to grumpily agree to relocate along with his daughter and son-in-law and accept the prospect of little or no super work.
Dash is angry and wants to stay. Violet feels pulled in two directions. Nobody is satisfied.
They relocate, and visit Edna’s Florida estate. She is one of the richest women in the world, a marketing diva with several lines of Super-related paraphernalia as well as government contracts. She and Frozone explain to the Parr family that many supers in SF states are being given secret contract work in NSF states under the table. Many supers commute to NSF states on a kind of rotation with secret exemptions. Bob and Dash sign up and want to take Jack Jack with them.
Helen argues against the corrupt nature of the underhanded deals.
“It’s shady,” she argues.
“It’s still a government contract,” Bob argues back.
“Just slapping a government seal on the cover doesn’t make it ethical. Or trustworthy. You know that as well as I do.”
She reluctantly agrees to let Dash go with his father but refuses to let Jack Jack in on the arrangement. They argue about it.
Frozone, Bob, and Dash have several successes in the program, and Jack Jack wants to be a part of it.
“If I have these abilities, shouldn’t I be using them? Why else were they given to me?” he argues with his mom.
“I just want you to learn to use them wisely and responsibly. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I’m not afraid of villains.”
“It’s not just the villains you can see that you need to worry about. You also need to be mindful of those who want to use you for their own purposes. Those villains sometimes walk around pretending to be on your side…right up until the moment they aren’t.”
“But aren’t you and Dad always telling us not to live in fear, and to not allow others to be afraid either?”
“Yes, but I also want you to have some fun before the cares of the world weigh down on you. You’ll be Super your entire life. You’ll only be young once.”
“What about the kids who live in those places though? Shouldn’t they have a right not to have to live in fear?”
Helen relents, but on one condition. She enrolls in the program as well.
On their first mission as a family (minus Violet), they get separated trying to quell a riot. Jack Jack becomes confused and disoriented, and in the chaos, almost kills a group of people in defending his family. In the aftermath Bob and Helen agree the work is too dangerous and complex for a child. They return home unified but dejected.
A new supervillain, Fireball, emerges with his eyes set on destroying the seven largest SF cities. In a surprise attack he destroys Dallas with fiery wormlike machines that burrow and emerge to burn whatever they touch. Supers all over the country are lured to Texas to stop the machines, leaving the other SF cities largely unguarded. Fireball unleashes his nationwide attack.
Edna’s estate is destroyed and several Supers are killed trying to defend her. She escapes to the Parr family residence while Florida is burning. The fireworms tunnel, then emerge out of nowhere only to take out everything in their path before retreating underground, igniting subterranean fires as well as surface structures.
A national alert system hits phones across the country. By Executive order, all NSF regulations and liabilities are suspended due to the new threat and all supers are asked to converge on the cities under siege.
The Parr family and a couple of other Supers are the only ones in the city fighting Fireball’s worms, but cannot keep up with the destruction around them.
“Jack Jack and Dad can take them out one at a time,” Violet says.
“But they’re too fast, too elusive. I can’t smash them if I can’t catch them,” Mr. Incredible says.
“What if Violet puts a force field around them? Maybe that will hold them in place?” Dash suggests.
She puts a forcefield around one and the forcefield only causes the worm to drag Violet along as it careens away. Violet screams as she’s pulled away.
“Dash, go after her,” Elastigirls says. He chases the worm down into a tunnel, Frozone following and extinguishing the fire as he pursues it.
“We’re running out of time,” Mr. Incredible says. “Any ideas, Edna?”
“What do you think I do? You’re the Super. Go! Super!” she scoffs. “I’m going to go soak my feet, Dahling. Let me know when it’s over,” she says, walking off.
“Water. We need water, lots of it,” Elastigirl says. “What if we can flood the city? Then they can’t retreat underground.”
They look to the ocean. Mr. Incredible looks at Jack Jack. “Slingshot Jack Jack.”
“What?”
“Like a bullet into the ground. Jack Jack can turn to lead and you can slingshot him to burrow a channel into the ocean. It would flood the city. He’d be like a human bullet.”
“I am NOT firing Jack Jack into the ground.”
“Let me mom. I can do it.”
“I know you can, Sweetie, but…”
“Mom. People are dying. We can’t live in fear. There are worse things than being afraid to die.”
Helen embraces Jack Jack. She turns into a slingshot. Jack Jack settles into his mom’s embrace. “You’re not my little baby anymore,” she says, and fires him. “You’re my little man.”
Jack Jack tunnels through the ground, into the ocean. It bursts forth and swamps the city, engulfing the flames and dousing the worms. Dash sees Jack Jack shooting deeper and deeper into the sea and swims like a torpedo to catch him. He surfaces with his brother, now unconscious, and back strokes to shore.
The Incredibles capture Fireball, mop up the extinguished fireworms, and pile them in a heap.
Dash returns with Jack Jack. They resuscitate him back to consciousness.
“How did the other cities fare?” Frozone asks, surveying the flooded but otherwise intact city.
“Three made it. Three didn’t.”
“Then I win,” Fireball gloats as the police carry him away in a boat.
“He never could have done this on his own, you know,” Mr. Incredible says, watching the police boats leave. “He must have had help from the inside. Someone who doesn’t want people to live in peace.”
“There’s a lot more money to be made in chaos than there is to be made in peace,” Dash says.
“It’s been that way long before we were here,” Elastigirl says.
“So, what can we do about it?” Jack Jack asks lying on the ground.
Bob takes off his mask, helps his son onto his feet. Bob kneels in front of Jack Jack. “We keep ourselves ready to fight it. It’s a dangerous, scary world, and there are people at all levels who want to keep it that way, but we won’t fear it, or them. We’ll fight them,” he says, the family gathering around as he smiles and takes Helen’s hand, “….together.”
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Check out the previous Nerd Cuts:
The Nerd Cut: The Terminator Franchise
The Nerd Cut: Avengers Endgame
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