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Zoom: Academy of Superheroes
Zoom: Academy of Superheroes 2006
I bought this movie a little while ago when I found it on clearance at a half price bookstore for two bucks. When I watched it a few years ago, I saw it right around the same time as I saw Sky High which I will be reviewing on Thursday. Sky High came out a year earlier than this one, but they’re both very similar movies. When I watched them the first time around, I enjoyed this movie better, simply enough, it made me laugh more. And it still makes me laugh just as much. But when I watched it this time, I did notice some pretty glaring problems with the plot, but as long as I was laughing, I didn’t care as much. I rewatched Sky High just a couple days later and it didn’t make me laugh nearly as much, but it did have a much better story, and almost all the characters were more well developed, but I’ll talk about that more in my full review on Thursday. Jena watched this movie with us, but she never really had much to say about it, she stayed with it through the entire movie, but when it was over, she was ready to move on to the next thing.
The Meteor Man
The Meteor Man 1993
I watched this several days after Blankman, a movie that came out one year later with a couple cast members from In Living Color, and yet I liked this movie a lot more. I had seen this movie a long time ago and I remembered liking it, but judging from the general internet opinion I was expecting a complete disaster. But when I actually put it in to watch it again, I surprisingly enjoyed it. In my opinion there’s a heck of a lot more laughs in this movie than there ever was in Blankman. It still goes a little over the top into the cheese train, and it tries with varying degrees of success to inject a message into it. But at least it’s a lot more inspiring than whatever message you can take from Blankman.
Now I’ve gone into this month looking at Black superheroes, and most of them are just a typical comic book movie that happens to have someone black as the main superhero. This feels much more like a superhero movie made for a black audience. It has a ton of cast members that you can recognize from something or another. They may be famous for other things, but I recognized the mother from Family Matters, one of the women from 227, Benson, James Earl Jones, Cyprus Hill, Sinbad, and even an early appearance by Don Cheadle as one of the goofy blonde gang members. Even though he doesn’t say a word, Bill Cosby is the standout and every time he’s on screen he’s fantastically hysterical. But looking at it from the perspective of it being a black movie, it’s kind of odd that the head of all of the gangs is an old white guy. Even though he’s the bad guy, it’s just weird that the guy with the most power is still white. And the music is a real standout from a ton of popular acts which also have cameos throughout the movie. Unlike Blankman, I thought the music for this movie actually fit into the world of the movie much better, I think it helped that the music itself was a lot better too.
One of the first things to notice about this movie is how many superhero cliches are avoided in this movie. The main character played by Robert Townsend of the movie is not a typical heroic guy. He’s seen encouraging smaller kids to run and hide from bullies instead of standing up and fighting. He even hides in a dumpster to avoid gang members and stays there for several hours after they’re gone to make sure he’s safe. Not only that but when he gets his powers he would rather not use them, it takes the convincing of his parents and the rest of the community center to push him into cleaning up the neighborhood. A community that all know his “secret identity”. Even the gang members know his secret identity. And at the end, he loses all his powers and becomes a normal guy, which does kind of kill the idea of a sequel. Heck, even though he gains the ability to fly, he’s afraid of heights and spends most of the movie flying just a few feet off the ground.
The next thing to notice about this movie is the extremely odd assortment of powers given by the meteor. There’s the standards that pretty much just mimic Superman’s abilities of flight, invulnerability, super speed, x-ray vision, heat laser vision, and frost breath. But on top of that he has the abilities to absorb all the information of a book for thirty seconds, talk to dogs, heal injuries by touch, move objects with telekinesis, grow plants at an extraordinary rate and size, and control electronics. Some of the abilities are used for their comic effect, but most of them are used just to help sell one of the more dramatic elements of the plot. It would have been great if more of the abilities were used for comedy or even if just the sheer amount of abilities was used for comedy in some way.
The costume is something of a selling point of how bad this movie is and I just don’t agree with that. I think the costume is really great for what it is trying to convey. It’s set up as a costume that’s made by the guy’s mother in one of those familiar bad costume montages. The logo looks pretty great, but the costume looks like something that could have been made by an actual person. And not something that was made by a complete moron like in Blankman. There’s no way anyone outside of a professional costume designer could make Spiderman’s new costume by themselves. There’s also a great scene towards the end where they throw Meteor Man a thank you party where many of the members of the community are wearing those turned down bad costumes of his.
I’ve gone through a lot of what I liked about this movie, but it is far from perfect. While it is pretty funny throughout, it does have a few moments that are a little too unbelievable and also aren’t really played up for being funny. Like when Robert Townsend first sees two of his students snatching a purse, and when he goes to stop him, what seems like the entire Golden Lords gang comes out of the shadows and they have a frikkin tiger?! And once in a while when they shoehorn in a “message” which in places it comes off as heartfelt, but in others it feels a little too off, especially during the Cyprus Hill non Golden Lords gangfight. On top of that, some of the effects feel a little dated, but the movie isn’t really built around the effects and I didn’t think it took too much away from the movie because of it. I think the biggest problem really is the fact that the main antagonist of this movie, the Golden Lords gang, is really silly. There’s just something goofy about a bunch of black guys, and young black kids called “baby lords” with weird bleach blonde hair, and the leader uses a Slinky of all things to intimidate his victims. And I’m pretty sure I mentioned the tiger. Seriously, they have a frikkin tiger with them and it just makes no sense to me.
All in all, it was a lot of fun to revisit this movie. I enjoyed it a lot, it was fun seeing all the actors that I recognized and if you’re a fan of sitcoms and/or rap artists around this era it’s great to catch all the cameos. If you’re looking for a serious superhero movie, look somewhere else. But this movie has a whole lot of funny moments and when it works, the dramatic moments can surprisingly hit home. I just wish they could have been a bit more consistent on that front. The Meteor Man is definitely worth a look. Next up for me is one I haven’t seen before but I imagine will be neck and neck between Catwoman for worst movie of the month, check out my review of Steel on Thursday. Until next time this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Blankman
Blankman 1994
It had felt like it had been a while since I had watched a movie, nobody else in the house was interested in watching a movie. My wife was laying in bed not feeling well and Jena just plain wasn’t interested. So I picked a movie I didn’t think either of them would miss watching, Blankman. I think I made a good call on that one. I thought Catwoman was funnier than this movie and it’s not even technically a comedy. I do have to admit there were a couple times I chuckled at the jokes but they were few and far between. I’m also not going to list which jokes they were, but when I was telling my wife about this movie I looked up the trailer to show to her and every single moment that I thought was funny was crammed into the trailer.
Anyway this movie was released shortly after In Living Color finished its run on television and it starred two of the show’s cast members, Damon Wayans and David Allen Greer. If you’ve seen the show you might think this was an attempt to bring Handi-man to the big screen, but instead of being physically handicapped, Blankman is just socially handicapped. He’s a nerd that lives with his brother and grandmother and makes gadgets out of junk. Unlike most other comedic characters that invent weird gadgets like Data from the Goonies or the guy from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, pretty much all of his gadgets actually work the way he intends them to, they just look like trash. One of the things he creates is bulletproof fabric and he uses it to create a costume so he can become a crimefighter. And then there’s a series of increasingly ridiculous crimefighting scenarios where he’s given a chance to save the day.
My biggest problem with this movie is when it feels like it’s trying to be serious, it’s goofy, and when it’s trying to be funny, it’s just not funny. Like every time Blankman gets kissed he has a total spaz because we’re supposed to believe that he’s never had an erection before and is surprised and confused by it. And the mob boss villain happens to have dozens of explosives all set to go off at the exact same time, twice. The first time it blows up an entire bank, and the second time it’s supposed to blow up an entire skyscraper but it’s contained in a washing machine robot. And the second time the mob boss shows up, he’s wearing satin for some inexplicable reason other than to make a joke about it that’s not even funny.
And I haven’t even mentioned the girl, Kimberly. She’s a star reporter for the local news station while Blankman’s brother Kevin played by Greer has the hots for her. But of course as soon as Blankman starts showing his face stopping crime she has the hots for his badly homemade costume and acts like a total fangirl over him. It’s totally ridiculous and not even in a funny way. She spends the entire movie talking about how great Blankman is because apparently the audience needs someone in the movie to convince them that Blankman is a good superhero because he doesn’t even really do anything. Aside from the finale, the only thing that you see Blankman do to actually stop any crime is use a boot to the head to a convenience store robber. Kevin has some pretty unconvincing Karate moves that easily make whoever he’s fighting fall limply over. I understand that it’s a comedy but the fight scenes should have gone one of two ways. Either they should be surprisingly convincingly real which was used to good effect in Kick-Ass, or they should be so over the top ridiculous that the fight itself is a joke. Blankman appears to make it seem like they are really fighting, but it’s worse than B-movie fight choreography.
It really felt like this could have been a good superhero sendup but they didn’t go far enough. Most characters in a superhero story whether it is a comic book or a movie are already caricatures. From the hero to the villain to the damsel in distress, they are often portrayed as an exaggerated form of reality. It felt like most of the comedy in this movie came from trying to play the characters as caricatures of real people instead of caricatures of caricatures. In other words, most of the characters in this movie felt like just badly written comic book characters rather than funny exaggerations of comic book characters. The only side character that I thought was pretty funny was Jason Alexander as the no nonsense editor-in-chief of the tabloid news show… or paper, I forget which.
Taken as a superhero movie, the fights were awful, the costumes were awful, and the characters were awful. Taken as a comedy, all that awfulness didn’t translate to awfully funny, it was just… how do I say this without sounding repetitive, awful. If you’re a fan of In Living Color… go watch In Living Color. I just don’t really have anything good to say about this movie at all. Even the music seemed out of place, it was kind of nice to hear some old school hip hop music, but a lot of it was made for the movie and wasn’t very good, and besides that it didn’t seem like it was mixed well. I’m not usually one to pay attention to sound design or anything, but when the music started it just seemed to come out of nowhere and tried to take over the scene. Anyway, I’ll be taking a look at The Meteor Man for Tuesday’s review on Valentine’s day which is a lot funnier than this movie. Until next time this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Hancock
Hancock 2008
It’s time for my third movie that fits into February’s theme of Black Superheroes, and it’s probably one of my favorites for this month. I believe I watched it sometime after it had come out on home video and I had the same reaction of many people that I knew or read about online. The first half of the movie was great, but the second half sucked. And watching it again, it’s still pretty much how I feel about the movie although I feel like I’ve softened up to the second half a little bit. I was watching the unrated version this time, I think I watched the regular PG-13 version the first time. There wasn’t a whole lot in it that seemed to warrant the unrated part aside from one kinda sex scene which was played for laughs and possibly a few more swear words.
The movie is about John Hancock played by Will Smith. He’s basically what most people would really become if they were given superpowers. He’s drunk most of the time, anything he needs or wants he just takes, though he limits it to stuff he actually needs to survive plus copious amounts of alcohol and Jiffy Pop, and he plays the hero in his free time. But instead of doing things the smart way, he does it the brute force way. Watching Will Smith act like a jerk with superpowers was hilarious and I spent a lot of the first half of this movie laughing. Especially when he starts interacting with Jason Bateman, I’ve seen the movie twice and still don’t remember his character’s name, mostly because he plays the same character he always plays, but I love it. He’s a PR guy that decided to make over Hancock’s image and it starts with him going to jail for all the destruction he’s caused. My absolute favorite part that had me laughing on the lead up to it because I remembered what was coming was the jail scene… I’ll just leave it at that… no I won’t, there’ll be a picture of it right below this paragraph. I can’t resist.
The second half of the movie is where it goes a little off. The mythology of Hancock and how he came to his powers is that he is one of the last two immortals on Earth. Immortals who have access to their own off switch in the form of their mate, so when they grow tired of the eternity of life, they simply find their mate and they will become mortal, grow old, and die. The only problem is that Hancock’s mate left him 80 years ago and is married to Jason Bateman. That’s ok, but the way they reveal it is that she kisses Hancock, then throws him out of her house literally, meets him to explain their story but ends up fighting him in a big action setpiece instead. It just feels like a cop out excuse to have two superpowered beings fighting in the middle of the city, and why the heck does their fighting cause a storm? I also thought the final battle scene was handled pretty poorly, I wasn’t sure if she was actually supposed to be feeling his pain, or if they were trying to line up what was happening to each of them separately so they connected. Like he happened to get shot at the same time that the doctors used the heart paddles on her. I think it would have made for a better scene if the latter happened.
This movie surprisingly reminded me a lot of Super and Kick-Ass although in a different way. All three movies try to present superheroes in a pretty realistic fashion where the heroes face very real consequences based on their actions. But where the first two feature normal men becoming costumed crimefighters, this movie features a normal guy with a lot of flaws who happens to have superpowers and wants to do good. Kick-Ass and Super both deal with consequences like gunshot wounds and getting beaten up, Hancock deals with consequences like collateral damages, public opinion, and at least in the unrated version what happens when someone with Superman’s power climaxes. The other thing about the three movies is they follow a similar pattern of very comedic first and second acts followed by heavy drama in the third act. Aside from my complaint earlier, I think it works pretty well in Hancock’s favor. Will Smith does a great job conveying both the asshole moments as well as the more human side. Charlize Theron has her moments but for whatever reason, I just didn’t like her character very much, I liked her as Jason Bateman’s wife, but I just didn’t see her as a superhero. For whatever reason it just didn’t fit.
But as I mentioned in the beginning, I really liked this movie and had a blast watching it. The funny parts are really funny, the touching moments are pretty touching, and the action scenes are pretty decent. There’s really only three action scenes in this movie, the first one is great even though it’s pretty subdued where he takes out the robbery as his first act as a real superhero, the second one is kind of annoying with unnecessary special effects, and the third one is overtaken by overblown dying drama. This is another movie like the Incredibles that I would only half love to see a sequel to. I think Hancock is a great character, yet I’m not sure if there’s really a worthy story to make into a sequel. As far as Jena’s part, she didn’t watch this movie but I would have let her, she just wasn’t interested. Coming up next I go back to the downside of Black Superhero movies with Blankman. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Kick-Ass
Kick-Ass 2010
I’m ready to watch my last movie of January, I picked Kick-Ass up with one of my Christmas giftcards to finish out the card after getting the Simpsons fourteenth season, both on Bluray. It was my second sight unseen purchase for this blog after Super. I was about to get the DVD for $5, but saw that the bluray + DVD was only $10 so I just couldn’t pass it up. In all the reviews of Super that I read after watching the movie, it was compared to Kick-Ass, and there is definitely a very strong connection to the two movies.
Even though the movie is called Kick-Ass, it should almost be called Big Daddy and Hit Girl, as they are the actual Batman-like heroes of the movie. In fact, Big Daddy’s costume looks like a simplified version of Batman’s costume. A funny sidenote, I read a funny blog somewhere that talked about the eyeliner used wearing the batman mask that mysteriously disappears when the mask comes off. This movie actually has a brief scene where you see Big Daddy put the black paint around his eyes that shadow the area not covered by the mask. They are both martial arts and gunplay masters even though Hit Girl is only around 12 years old. They also have the money and the arsenal to back themselves up, since they fund themselves from the coffers of the drug dealers they take out. Kick-Ass is just a high school kid that has dreams of being a superhero and the guts to actually get a costume and a couple batons and make it happen, with varying degrees of success.
There feels like quite a bit of realism to the scenes with Kick-Ass. He gets hurt pretty bad during his first real encounter with a couple small time thugs and acts pretty scared during his early brushes with real criminals. But whenever you get to the fight scenes with Hit Girl and Big Daddy and the final fight scene, things get pretty fantastic and John Woo-esque. And even though this is technically an independent film, this looks a lot less like an independent film than Super does. Where Super uses a lot of muted colors outside of the costumes of The Crimson Bolt and Boltie, Kick-Ass has vibrant colors everywhere, from all of the costumed heroes, and even in the backgrounds of the mob boss’s family moments. Kick-Ass also uses a lot more fantasy martial arts choreography and fancy camera moves while Super tends to have a lot more straightforward action scenes.
The other thing that this movie and Super have in common is the death of one of the main characters. I won’t say which one, but in this movie it feels like the death was more earned. It felt a lot less like it was done for mere shock value and somehow felt like it was the natural progression of what had to happen for the characters to grow. I can’t put my finger on what the difference is, but I didn’t feel as cheated by the death as I did in Super.
I also find it interesting that this is often labelled as a comedy movie. Yes there are some comic relief moments, and a lot of the situations are so bizarre that they end up being comical by nature, but this really feels like a great superhero action movie. It doesn’t feel like the comedy moments are played to the detriment of the action scenes. All of the fights are well paced, visually intense, and straight up balls to the wall. The violence is bloody and it typically feels action movie real rather than comedy real. There were plenty of moments that made me laugh out loud, but that happened in Superman the Movie as well, yet that’s not considered a comedy. There were just as many moments in this movie that had me on the edge of my seat watching the scene play out.
The only bit of a downside was the relationship between Dave and Katie. It was played up a little too much in several scenes when she thought he was gay, and when he came out to her she seemed to come over to his side a little too quickly. I don’t disagree with the fact that they got together, I just didn’t quite agree with the way the actually got there. Overall I find I don’t have a whole lot to say about this movie just like most of the other good movies because there’s not much to pick at. I enjoyed the comedy, especially the parts with his two high school friends and pretty much anything Hit Girl, I enjoyed the action, even with the violence it was very comic book stylized violence with action movie choreography and editing, and I enjoyed the characters. My only other problem with the movie is a problem with how quickly things on the internet can change. Even though this was probably filmed only two years ago, all the references to MySpace instead of Facebook make it feel a little dated already.
And with this movie comes the end of my first full month of this project. I’m already well into the movies for February so look out for my review of Catwoman on Thursday and several Tuesday bonus reviews as I have 9 movies planned to watch for next month which has an easy “can you guess the theme” plus two extra movies after I realized that the new Ghost Rider movie comes out in February. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Super
Super 2010
This was actually the first movie that I bought sight unseen specifically for the purposes of this blog. It helped a lot that it was only three dollars at the rental store, technically two for six along with our other choice, Black Swan. I grabbed it at the same time as I rented the first four Superman movies and I held off on watching it until I found a good place to schedule it into this blog. It’s labelled a comedy, but it’s really a pitch black comedy with a lot of violence, gore, and drama. It’s also one of a recent trend in mimicking the real life superhero movement that’s been happening in a few places around the country. At the same time, it’s kind of a deconstruction of the typical superhero movie, there’s several places where a typical hero would make one choice, yet this movie makes a completely different choice, sometimes for comedic effect, other times for a more serious tone. There’s also a subtle difference that I only just realized after watching Kick-Ass, in most movies you root for the superhero, but often in this movie you worry about the superhero. Not always just for his safety, but often for his mental well-being.
The first act is by far the funniest, it starts off with oddball nice guy Frank played by Rainn Wilson who’s married to recovering (and lapsing) drug and alcohol addict Sarah played by Liv Tyler. She leaves him for a cool drug dealer Jacques played wonderfully by Kevin Bacon. After getting his ass kicked trying to convince Sarah to come back to him, Frank has a vision of God which was obviously an amalgam of the random TV shows he was watching, including a tentacle Hentai and a cheesy Christian channel superhero sendup of Bibleman called the Holy Avenger played by Nathan Fillion. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was also watching a little bit of Hannibal in there too. Although what the heck kind of cable or satellite service does he have that has tentacle porn only a few channels away from a cable access Christian station? The Holy Avenger bits were some of the funniest, especially the devil character that constantly flicked his tongue. Anyway, in his vision he sees a drawing of a mask with a starburst behind it. Eventually he comes to the conclusion that he should become a superhero.
The comedy continues into the second act as Frank becomes the Crimson Bolt, weilding a pipe wrench and accosting crime wherever he sees it, including drug dealers, pedophiles, and the worst of them all, line butters. While they do play up the blood in these scenes for comedy, especially in the line butting scene, I think a pipe wrench to the head would have killed most of those people rather than just seriously injuring them. I mean, it worked for Colonel Mustard, right? In these scenes there’s often a lot of blood, but usually along with comedic overreactions. He eventually ends up staying with comic book shopgirl Libby played by Ellen Page after he gets shot in his first attempt to retrieve his wife Sarah from Kevin Bacon’s drug mansion. She’s a great character who’s hyper, loves comics, loves the idea of being a hero, and loves the idea of Frank being a hero.
The third act is where things started getting real and uncomfortable. Libby’s infatuation with Frank’s Crimson Bolt caused her to become his kid sidekick Boltie who is way too much in love with the violent aspect of the job. Her first initiative was to go after a guy who she thinks maybe probably keyed her friend’s car. She broke a glass vase over his head which embedded shards of glass into his face and she almost smashed his head in with a large sculpture. When seeing a couple of Kevin Bacon’s thugs at a gas station, Frank gets chased down the street only to be saved by Boltie running Frank’s car into one of the thugs and Frank uses one thug’s gun to shoot the other thug. Both of them were left to most likely die while the crowd of onlookers around them actually cheer for the victory, before this point the news was reporting him as a violent pscyopath. The two heroes then go to the discount gun store to buy an arsenal of weapons to storm the drug lord’s palace and rescue Sarah once and for all. Boltie’s infatuation finally comes to a head when she comes into the living room and tries to seduce The Crimson Bolt while she is wearing her costume. Even though he shuns her advances, she forces herself on him in a very uncomfortable scene. Frank then goes to throw up and sees a vision of Sarah in the toilet which leads them to the final bloody confrontation at the mansion. And when I say bloody, I mean pipe bomb, limbs missing, smashing a guy’s head on a sharp tile bloody, as Frank essentially descends into madness, but succeeds in rescuing Sarah. Who leaves him again after a few months, but finds a great guy and starts a large family. But Frank’s ok with it because the guy is good for her and he’s still in the picture as their friend. And instead of helping people as The Crimson Bolt, you see that he spends his time helping people as Frank by doing little things like holding the door or saying “thank you”.
I’m not sure what to really say about this movie, I loved parts of it, I was shocked by parts of it, and parts of it were genuinely touching. I laughed out loud many times during this movie, like the line butting scene I mentioned earlier where he goes across the street to change into his costume in his parked car, where everyone can still clearly see him changing, comes back and smacks the guy in the head who starts profusely bleeding and writhing on the ground in agony, then also smacks the girl he was with for good measure, then runs off yelling “Don’t butt!” Rainn Wilson does a great job of making you really care about Frank even when he gets pushed off the deep end. He does what superheroes aren’t supposed to do aside from maybe the Punisher, but at the end of the movie, you still like him. And it bothered me a little bit that at the end of it all, there’s absolutely no consequences of his little killing spree.
The changes in pacing and tone throughout the movie might be a little jarring and there’s definitely a few places where the movie might shock you. There’s one spoilerific scene near the end of the movie. While I was watching it I guessed what had happened a few moments before the reveal, but it was still a pretty stunning moment. This movie is absolutely not for everyone, and it bears a lot of similarities to Kick-Ass, but in Kick-Ass things turn out more or less the way a Superhero comic should. In this movie, the results are more or less the same, but it just takes a different route to get there. So if you liked that movie it might be worth a watch. And my full thoughts on Kick-Ass will be up on Sunday. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
The Incredibles
The Incredibles 2004
It’s Friday evening and I’ve been looking forward to watching The Incredibles again. This has got to be one of the best superhero movies that I’ve ever seen, and next to Batman this is one of Jena’s favorite superheroes as well and she loved the movie from start to finish. While the Incredibles aren’t based on any existing comic books, they epitomize the classic Superhero types and of course they are very strongly inspired by the Fantastic Four. Some people even go so far as to say they almost directly copied them. Instead of Mr. Fantastic Reed Richards, there is Elastigirl Helen Parr. The Invisible Woman Sue Storm is replaced by the daughter Violet. Those two are pretty much direct copies, especially Violet since I’ve never heard of any other superhero that pairs invisibility with forcefields. The baby Jack Jack has a brief touch of the Human Torch’s powers and Dash has a little bit of the Torch’s personality. And Mr. Incredible is the brawn of the team as is The Thing, but those connections are a bit more of a stretch. And it’s not like one can’t count dozens of superheroes from different publishers that are essentially the same. I personally don’t think it’s a big detraction of the movie and I’m not even sure many people other than a few fanboys on message boards. In fact I think it’s kind of funny when I read that parts of the Fantastic Four script was changed because it was too close to this movie.
The movie starts off in the past, with an interview of all the heroes talking about what they would like out of life, and it turns out later on that later in life they all end up wanting the opposite of what they want at that moment in time. Like Mr. Incredible says that he’d like to take a break from heroing, and yet fifteen years later, all he wants to do is to be a hero again. It also shows the heroes in their prime with a great action setpiece filled with a lot of funny bits like the obligatory cat in the tree and of course there’s the standard superhero rescues like a bank robbery, a train disaster, and the kid sidekick. And yet there’s enough of a twist for all of these to make them feel fresh, even the kid fan that goes on to screw things up. I noticed this especially with the train scene and there’s that quick moment where Mr. Incredible braces himself for the train impact. It’s not the typical steeling himself that usually accompanies these moments where the hero grits his teeth and prepares for impact, but instead he turns his head and closes his eyes. He’s prepared for it, but in a much more realistic way. I also really like the subtle nod to one of my favorite films when Mr. Incredible is trying to remember Incrediboy’s real name and starts off by calling him Brody, which was the name of Jason Lee’s character in Mallrats, he also happens to voice Incrediboy and later Syndrome. And it ends with the wedding of Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl.
It then goes on to touch upon the public’s distrust of superheroes and their love for litigation, which causes the government to discontinue their superhero program and place all of the current heroes into basically the superhero protection program. Jump fifteen years into the future and Mr. Incredible is a pencil pusher who’s gained a lot of weight and Elastigirl is now a happy homemaker with three children. Violet who is the shy, unsure of herself teenager who can become invisible, Dash is the hyper troublemaker with superspeed. The powers feel in this context feel a lot more symbolic than just being copies of the Fantastic Four. The introduction of both of the kid’s powers feel pretty organic, interesting, and funny.
Throughout this movie, there is what feels like a great blend of drama, humor, and action. The emotional scenes feel earned, and the action scenes are all exciting. My favorite of the action scenes are the two infiltration scenes with Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl alternately breaking into Syndrome’s inner lair. It’s not too often that someone with Mr. Incredible’s power sneaks in through the back rather than going into a frontal assault through the front doors. It’s also rare to see a hero get to where it feels like he’s truly been defeated. It’s a very subtle, yet fantastic moment after Mr. Incredible thinks that his family is dead and you can just hear him quietly sobbing in the background.
I can go on and on about what this movie does right, from the hilarious Edna Mode, to the great voicework of the kid actor playing Dash. I especially love the amount of joy and enthusiasm he has when he first gets to let loose with his superpowers on the volcanic island. Even the subplot of Mirage turning against Syndrome to help Mr. Incredible. And I’ve been thinking about it for a while, there’s just not much that this movie does wrong. My only question is that the interim fifteen years are rather glossed over. There seemed to be an awful lot of superheroes out there, and once they all go away, things just carry on as normal? Were there any supervillain uprisings, or did the supervillains pretty much go away too with no superheroes to pit themselves against? And if things were perfectly calm during those times, then does the world really need the superheroes to return? And even though I’ve heard a lot of people clamoring for a sequel, especially more than a sequel to Cars or Monsters Inc., but I’m honestly not sure what kind of story they could tell in a sequel and have it come out as complete as this movie. I get the feeling if they tried to create a sequel, it would end up just being much more of an action setpiece. Maybe if they set the movie several years in the future again and have the children ready to set out on their own, but it doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen anytime soon, if ever. Regardless, this is a fantastic movie and will be one of my favorites for a long time. This was a movie that I devoured when I got it on DVD. In fact, I believe several of my favorite moments talked about in the film’s commentary or special features. Which is something I don’t explore as much as I used to. I was even able to get Jena to talk about this movie for a little while, check it out right below. This Tuesday has a special bonus review of Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths instead of my usual blog, keep an eye out for it. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 