The Incredibles

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—Overview
—Trailers, Photos
—About this Film pdf
—Spiritual Connections

How I identify:

At first I was disappointed that Elastigirl got married. I wanted her to be Super-single Elastigirl! But that’s my problem. As it turned out, she did a pretty good job of giving me someone to look up to. I know that many women have a hard time with heroines who are too “Super.� It puts too much pressure on us when we’re already spread too thin. I understand this. But what makes Helen’s story rock is that she gets to recover the Super Identity that she had to sacrifice in order to compensate for her husband’s inability to loosen his death-grip on his own. She’s not all about her own accomplishments, but neither is she completely other-centered and without a self -like the “Christian� ideal that I often feel pressured to be. She had a good foundation from which to build a safe place to nurture the growing Identities of her children, and she did it pretty much on her own because hubby was too self-absorbed by his loss.

[Since I am a woman relating this hero’s story, I offer a note in defense of the men]

While Helen’s journey was articulated very clearly, Bob’s story of loss was shown only in still pictures, while his recovery got tacked on near the end like a yellow sticky note. I realize that much of what Hollywood turns out centers on the male journey, and that this could be seen as a hushing of their voice so that a woman’s story can be given some well-deserved prominence, but I still feel shame when a man has his Power to do good taken from him and his voice is silenced. Cartoon or no, I want to see Bob vindicated in a more concrete manner.

The story:

After our heroes are interviewed on TV concerning their Secret Identities, the story begins with Bob (Robert Parr a.k.a. Mr. Incredible) driving through town on his way to some special event. He is interrupted by a radio report of a crime in progress, and after his car transforms into the Supermobile we would expect, he races off to the rescue. He stops criminals, rescues a cat from a tree, impatiently deals with a young fan, waves to his friend Frozone who is stopping another crime, runs into Elastigirl as she’s stalking a purse snatcher, rescues a jumper, interrupts a bank robber, gets interrupted himself by the aforementioned young fan and stops a runaway train. This happens until he finally explains to the police that he must leave for a prior engagement. He pulls up to a church and enters in to attend his own wedding. Late. Frozone greets him at the door while Elastigirl is already standing at the altar. She scolds him and informs him that in order to be married to her, he must be more than Mr. Incredible. Does he get that? “I do,� he says and the ceremony is done.

Right away an element from the real world breaks in. Litigation. People sued Mr. I and other “Supers� for various damages incurred while being rescued -an unexpected blow that deeply wounds him and takes away his sense of purpose. It cost the government so much money to defend him and the others that Congress outlawed their Super behavior from society. So, they traded in the use of their Powers in exchange for legal protection and relocation. Bob, now a husband and father, has a lot to lose if he exposes his Powers, but he cannot resist the urge to help people and be the Hero once again. Apparently, he doesn’t truly get it that he must now be more than Mr. Incredible.

Enter mysterious femme! Bob is being tailed by a woman who watches as he and his friend Lucius (a.k.a. Frozone) get tips from a police scanner about scenes of crime or disaster where they can go rescue people. She cryptically reports back to someone that these men are indeed the ones they had been looking for.

He gets fired from his insurance job after his boss squeezes him for letting too many clients collect their claims after they suffered loss. Insurance companies, it seems, are not in business to pay out to clients, but to earn money for stockholders! Who’d a thunk it? But just in the nick of time, mysterious femme identifies herself as “Mirage� and offers him an alternative job using his Superpowers working for the government. He must call her and meet her at an undisclosed place to perform a service for her employer. Bob uses this assignment to hide from the missus the fact that he lost his day job, saying that he is being sent to a conference. With the lie, the trouble starts.

Bob is brought to a tropical island to battle a runaway robot, and besides the embarrassments of weight gain and slowed reflexes, all goes well except that we become increasingly suspicious of Mirage and her secretive employer. After returning home, the more fulfilled Bob is less distracted and more emotionally available to his family (really cute adult humor here!). He starts working out and getting back in shape after the long years of depression and passivity have taken their toll.

When he discovers that his Super Suit got torn while on assignment, he visits his tailor/designer (Edna Mode a.k.a. “E�) to have it repaired. Edna is clearly pining for the good old days herself and refuses to let Bob go without designing a new and better suit for him. She joyfully plunges back into the work and designs suits for him and his whole family!

When Bob gets a call for his next assignment, Helen overhears the conversation -but hears only Mirage’s invitation and Bob’s acceptance. We see her spirit shrink as she realizes that she may be failing at the very work she has tried so hard to succeed at. As Bob pulls away in the car, she offers the only thing she knows that she has over whatever temptation is out there for him, her truly incredible patient and long-suffering love. He is blind to the consequences of his dishonesty and sees only fulfillment for himself as he jets off to new adventures. When Helen discovers the repaired tear in Bob’s old Super Suit, she calls “E� to investigate. But Edna’s irresistible will draws her into meeting her at her studio to view her latest creations.

Meanwhile, the newly suited Bob, on the island awaiting his next assignment, is ambushed by yet another robot, bigger and badder than the first. We learn that the “employer,� someone with a grudge against him, is using Bob to research and develop a super weapon, and that they are now ready to unleash their robot on the world in order to gain the respect and notoriety they think they deserve. So Bob now finds himself genuinely in trouble with no back-up due to his cowardly secretiveness.

Back to Edna’s. Helen is shown the entire Incredible line from pre-walking infant suit, up through her Super son’s and daughter’s suits to her own new Super-stretchy, flame resistant Elastigirl suit!

Not only does each suit compliment the individual Super Power of the wearer, but they each come with a homing device to locate the wearer anywhere on the planet. After Helen and Edna finally get on the same page about why the new suits have been made, Helen makes the fatal call to her husband’s Insurance office and finds out that he’s been fired over two months ago. The walls close in on her.

Back to the island. After Syndrome, Bob’s new enemy, calls off the robot, they argue and struggle and Bob jumps off a waterfall, trying to get away. He eludes Syndrome’s mechanical search-and-destroy tactics and finds his way into the fortress to try and figure out how to save the world. He discovers that Syndrome has used all the Supers to strengthen his robots, and they have each been “eliminated� in the process. He sees that he himself has been counted as eliminated, but wife Elastigirl and friend Frozone are still on the list of R & D test subjects. Doom impends.

Back to Edna’s. E’s ego swells as her invention now becomes the most important weapon in Helen’s arsenal. She offers Helen the opportunity to find out where Bob is located using the homing device installed on his suit. Helen pushes the button just as Bob finishes retrieving the information he needs from Syndrome’s computer and the signal is bounced back. She finds his signal on a remote tropical island and bursts into tears. Edna, flaming with pride and purpose, flies into a rage and smacks Helen a few times to get her into battle readiness. Her speech is inspiring and is the heart of the movie.

Back to the island. The signal from Bob’s suit is detected by Syndrome’s security system and Bob is caught in an ingenious trap and taken prisoner. Mirage works the controls as Syndrome interrogates him.

Meanwhile Helen is packing her bags and thinking out loud about what to do with the kids while she arranges transport for her trip to the island. More reality interrupts as the children innocently spy on her and discover her secrets. Helen came home with suits for everyone, and they represent all the excitement and promise of any child’s most potent fantasy. Dash, their young son, steals the suits and distributes one to his sister Violet. As Mom’s attempts to conceal her purposes foiled, now she simply tries to protect her mission of trying to recover Bob from whatever is taking over his life. On the plane, she finds the island and tries to radio an approach but is met with silence. She struggles with her instincts to prepare for a fight because she has spent so long suppressing them and finally decides to suit up. Then she discovers that the two oldest kids have stowed aboard. Surprise! Not.

Syndrome meets with frustration as he requests one last time that Bob tell him who he was attempting to contact and why there is a government plane trying to approach the island. He decides to send a set of missiles to greet the plane. Bob hangs immobilized in a suspension machine.

Helen scolds the children but must switch back to battle readiness when she hears the signal warning of approaching missiles. Under the gun, she struggles to figure out how to defend her family while initiating her children into their positions of “Powerful Adult,� but the two worlds cannot converge in time, and the plane is taken down in one of the most terrifying and gripping moments in my personal film watching history. I was completely there and hurting and panicking right along side her. The Mama Bear instinct is primal and very much alive.

Bob hears the voice of Helen over the radio begging for the weapons to abort their mission because there are children on board -and tells Syndrome that he will say or do whatever he wants. As the plane explodes, Bob implodes and Mirage is moved by the clarification of value, which was previously obscured by her love of power. She begins to lose her loyalty to Syndrome.

Stopping here gives plenty of space for you to discover for yourself how wonderful and surprising this movie is (and also serves to shorten this frighteningly long review!). But I wish I could go on in the spirit of good storytelling, as this is a story as old as humanity itself, full of giants and monsters and dragon-slaying and mortal combat. Yes, Parents, MORTAL combat! Cartoon characters die in this film. I kept wanting to hear the sound of George Jetson getting sucked into his conveyor belt and popping up on the other side unharmed, but that didn’t happen.

Character development:

So while the movie is mainly about Bob’s transformation from glory through loss and on into recovery and maturity, it also follows the journeys of each member of his family. Each person had Powers and Names to match their roles in the story.

Elastigirl: Helen was a Powerful, confident woman who knew how to act on her own as well as be part of a team. Her great strength was in empowering others while suffering no loss to her own Identity. While in her glory, she attracted the love and loyalty of Mr. Incredible, an equally Powerful and confident man. But after the lawsuits, Bob became trapped in a cycle of losing and trying to regain his purpose and could not break free enough to partner with Helen in empowering their children. Since Bob took up all of the family’s collected wiggle room for playing with the old hero roles, Helen was stuck having to play all the nurturer and discipline roles on her own. Elastigirl had to be buried deep in order to concentrate on the creativity, spontaneity and discipline instincts required to Parent children with such “Special needs.� But the time came when Helen had to recover and integrate the Superhero identity that she left behind so that she could show her children by example how to integrate their own Super identities. She was there when her kids needed to take up ownership of their Identities and be given permission to use their Powers. Bob was absent. She handled it all with all the force and grace required both for her kids and herself.

Mr. Incredible: Robert Parr was a big, strong guy who was lucky enough to be steered in the right direction by someone -God bless them! He enjoyed the benefit of human company and good feelings and attachments, though understood little about how all that was achieved. Bob had issues concerning teamwork. He gained his sense of Self by being the complete focus of gratitude and admiration. Sharing responsibility would have confused him about who he was. His enemy well understood his weakness and easily exploited it. Once Bob’s purpose and value were clearly marked out for him, he lost the weight he had gained and his mind cleared of all distractions and frustrations about doing things he wasn’t good at, and the depression that had weighed on his heart lifted. Helen also understood his weakness, but couldn’t really take the time to help him because she was counting on him to be a fellow grown-up helping her to nurture the actual children. He loved her, but was so wounded by his loss that there was no Self present to feel the reciprocation of her love for him. He felt isolated while surrounded by a loving family and empty while probably weighing over 400 pounds.

Edna Mode. A tiny woman, she once lived through the larger-than-life experiences of the Super Heroes that she designed for, but now is making clothes for small, insignificant people who can’t live up to the greatness of her artistic intent. Her brief appearance may fool you into thinking that she herself is an insignificant character, but she is not. I don’t think it’s an accident that her character is played by the creator and director of this film. As I mentioned before, her speech to Helen was the turning point of the movie. The marketers of this film tell us that her weakness is her temper -but I think they have misunderstood what is going on with her. Even though I love Helen, I think Edna is my favorite character. She is a creative, sensitive person who has built a fortress around herself because she is so vulnerable to the damage caused to greatness by the dominance of mediocrity. She is a snob and elitist to be sure, but has wisely built a buffer zone between herself and the world so she can erect her glories unmolested. I wish I could visit Edna and be smacked around by her when I needed it. Anyone who suffers doubt about Personal Power should have someone like Edna to help.

Violet. Violet is the oldest of Bob and Helen’s 3 children. She is a young girl, about 13 or 14 who is terribly shy and withdrawn like many girls her age. I think “Shrinking Violet� was intended in her name, even without the reinforcement of her gorgeous dark purple hair. At the risk of reading too much into this (my own personal trademark!), I’ll suggest that Violet was conceived while Bob received his most excruciating and painful wounds -and Helen was there trying to love him through it. Violet is clearly the most “interrupted� child. She longs for normality as she senses her Powers represent the family’s Curse. The idea of Power being a good thing was completely before her time, and she carries the burden of Society’s judgment and their family’s sense of shame on her shoulders almost as heavily as her father who is 8 times her size.

Dash. Dash is the middle child, in danger of being lost between the older, Princess of Gloom, and the Baby. So Dash gets in trouble at school and picks fights with his sister. Dash is the family’s anger, borne out into the world. I’d say he’s about 9 to 11 years old. He keeps the tension high as he asks the questions that no one can answer and expresses the feelings that won’t be resolved. He is full of the energy of the most curious and fearless of boys and relies on others to clean up the mess. His heart is open and burning constantly with the need to effect change. He longs for the chance to test all his Power against the Universe and while he respects his Mother’s authority over him, he cannot conceal his frustration at having to reign in his Power.

Jack Jack. The baby of the family, Jack Jack has displayed none of the signs of having any special Powers. His life consists of being fed, bathed and entertained, and while Helen is clearly a competent Mom, I can’t help think she is invested in his normality as a way of finally being cosmically accepted into the Normal Universe. Jack Jack is one of the happiest babies I’ve ever seen in cartoon form (Reminiscent of Sweet Pea, of Popeye fame), and after all the cartoon babies that have come from the American entertainment industry in recent years, a welcome change for this Mother as well. I too want Jack Jack to be normal. But Jack Jack represents the repression of our fears and exhaustion to the point of complete concealment. We project our need for innocence onto babies, and they perform well -up to a point. But eventually, they blow our cover.

Syndrome. This guy is totally likable! Even his geekiness is appealing. I understood and sympathized with his trouble so I had trouble wishing him harm. I would even go so far as to name his question the most important question of the film. Dash, conceived after Syndrome, echoes his anger and threatens to carry it on into the future if not resolved. The filmmaker's willingness to stretch his audience using goodness mixed in with the villainy of this character is admirable. His defeat is equally challenging. In this generation of Columbine and 9/11, we need to explore the possibility of Bad Guys being more complicated than in the John Wayne days. We must be shown how to resolve without violence and destruction. Ironically, even though this film could be said to glorify or at least trivialize the use of violence, it does not. The writer’s use of iconic names and images dares us to look deeper. And so we should.

KRONOS:
Secret code word holding vast meaning. In Greek mythology, the Titan son of Uranus and Gaia, who killed his Father and attempted to kill his own children by his wife/sister Rheia: Hades, Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Poseidon and Zeus -but was unsuccessful. In the end, the victorious Zeus allowed his previously exiled Father to return and sit with the rest of the Heroes in paradise at the end of the world.

Connection to Faith:
Something that hardly ever gets talked about are the Principalities and Powers. While there is plenty of room for speculation about just exactly what these are in this day and age, I’ve become pretty convinced that they are spiritual beings behind authority systems that humans have set up to serve us, but which we end up serving instead. The intended purposes of these control systems may have been to protect good and prevent evil, but because of the nature of control, good refuses to break the law in order to excel and so ends up being prevented, while evil exploits all the loopholes. I’m sure we can all identify a few things like that in this world. One of which was clearly marked out in this film and I think shines light on the more important Enemy.

The system of Law that was set up to protect the innocent, promote good and prevent evil actually had the opposite effect in this film. My wonderful 12-year-old son asked a question which cut to the heart of it. “Y’know that guy who tried to kill himself at the beginning, if he was so unhappy after breaking his neck and then being saved, why didn’t he just shoot himself or something?� What a great question! If death was the answer for this man, why didn’t he make another attempt? It was still within reach. Because he found something better. Punishing happy people for being happy and having a purpose for their life could be a much more satisfying solution. And you get money on top of it! I understand the mind of the suicidal, so I know that this is a great temptation. It’s sick and twisted and exactly what the judge should have seen through the smokescreen of litigation. But no. Is this real? You bet! And the more we do this, the more money lawyers make, and the more the system is reinforced.

My son wanted to compare fantasies on the car ride home, “Mom, say you’re a Superhero (See how he already assumes I’m not? See that?!) what is your Power?� So I attempt to bring it back to reality and tell him that I’m a writer. “No, Mom. Regular superpowers . . . � In my mind, I’m already defying gravity, so it discouraged me to hear him chuck that idea. He wanted to fantasize. I wanted to live the fantasy. I understand that children need to fantasize in order to try out ideas that are too big for them, just to see how they look. But as an adult, I’m ready to buy the idea, take it home, wear it every day and then actually try to function in it.

I was going to explain how God gives each of us special gifts and abilities and we get to figure out what those are, like opening a present on Christmas morning. Then we get to figure out how to use them without screwing things up, just like Dash and Violet. I was going to tell him that these abilities aren’t the same as regular talents like dancing or running the 100 meter dash, but that sometimes they come out in those ways. That God gave us these gifts as a way of expressing Himself to the people, and that when we used our gifts, it made the love of God obvious to people. I would have concluded by saying that when we use these gifts, we could actually help God to save people from getting trapped in evil systems that made them mean and too tired to do good. Later we would have discussed how Bob was right -that Power was nothing to be ashamed of and that it made us uniquely special, and that the world keeps finding new ways to celebrate mediocrity because it is afraid of Power . . . but he never let me get that far. My kids have become a little wary of sermons coming from Mom, so they’ve learned to head ’em off at the pass. I guess that’s not my gift.

Scripture:

The Authority Structures that humanity set up were created to do the work that a general public with integrity should already have been doing. If we had integrity, then we wouldn’t need them. This is what Paul was talking about in Romans 12 and 13. If we were to rephrase 12:9-13 the way things actually go on in this world it would look something like this:

Love must allow the Law to have authority. Tolerate what is evil, let go of what is good. Be suspicious of one another in communal cynicism. Honor yourselves above one another. Never express zeal, but forfeit your spiritual fervor, requiring the Lord to straighten things out. Be jaded in hope, vengeful in affliction, apathetic in prayer. Beg from God’s people whether in need or not. Practice making excuses.

But Paul didn’t put it that way. He was trying to set the pieces on the board so that we could offer the P & P’s a checkmate. How are we doin’

Social commentary:

Syndrome represents one of the most important questions underneath so many ancient and modern conflicts. Am I special? or Am I ‘‘good�? The question was originally spoken as a statement by Dash. ‘‘If everyone is special, that’s another way of saying, ‘‘ ‘No one is special’.� Then it was later repeated by Syndrome as this statement, “Everyone can be Super! And when everyone’s Super, no one will be.� Every individual and every people group will eventually ask this question of the authorities, in their context. Throughout history, the question has precipitated the most ferocious and critical power struggles. Husband vs. Wife, Father vs. Son, Mother vs. Daughter, Cain vs. Abel, Jew vs. Gentile, Christian vs. Jew, Muslim vs. Christian, East vs. West, Catholic vs. Protestant, and so on. The one who is appointed Judge is the ‘‘Master,� and the one asking the question is the ‘‘beggar.� Struggles ensue over who will be Judge. The very Identity and value of the ‘‘beggar� is in the ‘‘Master’s� hands.

In the past, the Western Church has sat in the position of Judge -the ultimate power broker for the World. We came by this privilege not by earning it, but through the same questionable power tactics that Secular World Leaders have used down through the ages. It’s easier now to look back and judge ourselves for this because we have nothing left to lose. Our influence has been successfully denied and our voice largely removed from Western society. We have abused our Power over the Identity and Value of other people, and it’s high time we owned up to that and paid the piper. I believe we should stand up and directly answer to the twisted anger that has come in our general direction partly as a result of the bad judgments we’ve laid down through the centuries, before the collateral damage swallows up the whole world. Going beyond that, we need to take the lead toward a better answer to this question.

What is a better answer? It cannot be that we must mindlessly equalize everyone the way Helen did while driving Dash home in the car, “Everyone is special.� It’s easy to see through that. There are systems set up to deliver just that kind of message to our children in the controlled environments of our schools, because of the vacuum of adequate parenting. Can the government meet this kind of need for our children? This is a sacred time for Parenting, and I wish there were more ceremony for this in Western Culture. How long will it be before the P & P’s make it impossible to empower and bless our children the way we should, while leaving room for abuse to go on unhindered? Did Mother Teresa have a grip on how to treat people when she loved each individual who died in her arms as if they were the only person to ever take up that sacred space? Maybe. But what about the living? What about those with a bright future, full of potential to change the world? What will the Church do when the next people group asks if they have value or are ‘‘good�? What will we do when we hold the weight of their Glory in our hands? What will be the consequence if we treat that privilege too lightly?

Almighty Father who dost give
The gift of life to all who live
Look down on all earth’s sin and strife
And lift us to a nobler life
Lift up our hearts, O King of Kings
To brighter hopes and kinder things
To visions of a larger Good
And Holy dreams of Brotherhood
The world is weary of its pain
Of selfish greed and fruitless gain
Of tarnished honor falsely strong
And all its ancient deeds of wrong
Hear Thou the prayer Thy servants pray
Up rising from all lands today
And o’er the vanquished powers of sin
O bring Thy great salvation in!
~John Masterman (1867-1933)

Parental Advisory:
I’m guessing that American animation (do you think the word ‘Americanimation’ will catch on? . . . me neither) will be progressively going in the direction of adult themes due to the influence and popularity of Manga and Anime, so be aware that just because it’s a cartoon, doesn’t mean you won’t have to do your homework and be ready to field some more involved questions.

“Dad, is Syndrome going to be okay?�

“Mom, what was that French guy saying?�

Score Comments:
Gorgeous heroic moments. Did all the heavy lifting of bearing Bob’s great emotions toward us when Bob couldn’t speak for himself.

Links
—Overview
—Trailers, Photos
—About this Film pdf
—Spiritual Connections