Pavement, a once glorious band, had a song called “We Are Underused.” I think about that a lot. I suspect even the most productive of us aren’t using all our potential, whether it’s because of laziness, uncertainty, lack of tools or barriers put in place by ourselves and others. Some people avoid being useful, purely for fear of failing. Others have no idea how to be useful and spend their entire lives searching, always reaching for it like that scratch in the middle of your back.
It takes introspection to realize you are underused. Introspection takes time, and I’ve got a shitload of that. You have to actually look at your life and assess the gap between what you are and what you were meant to be. Anyone who says they’ve achieved everything they ever wanted is a liar, an asshole or both. They’ve either not looked inward, they’ve set the bar way too damn low, or they are high as fuck on cocaine.
Your purpose for being here is not just to watch reruns of Saved by the Bell and eat Tostino’s. Neither is it to make Saved by the Bell or Tostino’s. I, myself, know my best way to help this planet is by doing something other than drinking all the Four Loko before the teenagers get it. However, I know that drinking the Four Loko makes me forget that. It also gives me the squirts and sometimes convinces me I can run faster than cars, or that I know karate and should karate chop my squirts.
Hollywood is almost never introspective. It’s harder to portray true longing than shit blowing up. So superheroes rarely sit around thinking about their value. They start out knowing. The stories are more about how they use their value at a specific moment to stop a silly bad guy who also is pretty fucking sure of himself. Their motivations for doing good are superficial horseshit about dead parents or dying planets. Stuff other than the deepest of human cravings, which is the desire to be needed, the longing to be useful.
That’s why The Incredibles was so fucking great. It was a superhero movie with all the cool trappings of explosions and gadgets, but with Mr. Incredible longing to be useful, to matter in the world, to not be forgotten. He was the writer who can’t find a publisher, the artist who can’t find a gallery, or the sad film critic who sucks so bad he hides behind dirty words. He was everyman, knowing he could do amazing things and finally be fulfilled if how only they’d let him.
The Incredibles 2 picks up right where the first one left off. Literally. It starts at the exact moment the first movie ended. Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) had been unleashed and validated, and the world needed being saved again. He has the help of his wife Elastigirl (Holly Hunter) and his kids with powers (Huck Milner and Sarah Vowell).
The world is still not ready for superheroes, though. At least the bureaucracy isn’t. Too much paperwork and too many expenses involved. Too many people’s lives put at risk when really strong guys start smashing shit.
Tech billionaires named Winston (Bob Odenkirk) and his sister Evelyn (Catherine Keener) concoct a plan to restore the world’s superheroes. Why? Well, sadly it’s the old dead parent cliché, exactly the sort of trite shit I liked the Incredibles for avoiding. It’s an unconvincing bit of this Incredibles 2.
The billionaires’ plan is to use Elastigirl to fight crime before they use Mr Incredible, which leads to a pretty fucking good conflict for a superhero movie. The man has to put his ego aside for the greater good. It’s a particularly timely moment and will probabl draw the ire of all the lonely, impotent trolls on 4Chan and alt-right web sites whose nuts retract into their body cavity every time a woman is given power.
Mr. Incredible is forced into the role of homemaker while his wife wears the superhero pants. Note that these are figurative superhero pants, not the literal ones I see fat dudes wearing at the Walmart at two a.m. made of flannel and covered in chocolate stains — I tell myself it’s chocolate. While Elastigirl stops runaway trains, he helps the kids do math and navigate puberty love. He also is present when the baby Jack-Jack first reveals his superpowers — by fighting a raccoon. This sequence was my favorite part of the movie: funny as fuck, exciting, and with the same thing I look for in porn: a screeching, distressed and rabid mammal.
A villain named Screenslaver starts taking control of screens and hypnotizing people into doing terrible things. Elastigirl must solve the case, which she does a little too easily. I mean, I don’t want to give anything away, but if tech billionaires with vague motives are the main new characters introduced into a story, you can be pretty fucking sure who is going to be behind a bad guy who controls monitors.
The superheroes are gathered and brainwashed with special goggles. The reason is to make them do nasty things and forever ruin their reputations, not elevate them as originally promised. This is stupid since when the movie started superheroes were still being relegated to the dustbin. Why bring them back to prominence just to screw them?
When Elastigirl is brainwashed, Mr. Incredible and the kids must save her. It’s a family adventure and they happily realize their worth. Even the youngest among them wants to be valuable, to be able to use the talents they have.
The great news is that Incredibles 2 mostly looks great. The animation is top notch and the action sequences are more imaginative, crisp, and followable than the cluttered, noisy crap in the live action movies. The design, part rocket-age 60s, part Googy is intact. The movie also features more of Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson) as Mr. Incredible’s friend, and Frozone is pretty fucking cool. Jack-Jack doesn’t speak but he still gets all the best lines and made me laugh where real babies usually make me want to punch them in the face. Edna Mode (Brad Bird) is also back as the curt and talented supersuit designer.
The first two-thirds of the movie touches on a lot of well-tread themes about family, such as parents interfering in their kids’romantic lives and jokes about a father trying to understand his son’s homework. It’s not exactly fresh, but it works because the characters are well-defined and their struggle is identifiable at least. But the last third is cluttered and busy. It’s a lot of action, way too many characters, and little meaning because the villain is so weakly developed and it really is a fight just to save the world, not a fight to validate self-worth. This is when the movie feels the least special and the most conventional, just a spectacle of action to keep us from looking inward for the real meaning.
Incredibles 2 isn’t as deep as the original and it doesn’t resonate with the message of usefulness. It doesn’t need to because the original did that so well. This is all an argument against a sequel. However, the argument for is strong purely on an entertainment basis. The movie is pretty damn fun. Just not necessary. Four Fingers.