Talking Simpsons - Bonus Holiday Podcast: What A Cartoon Movie! - The Incredibles

Episode Date: January 10, 2024

Happy New Year! In case you didn't know, every month we release the premium podcast, What A Cartoon Movie. And, as we take a week off to rest and recharge, we're giving all of our listeners a chance to hear a free sample of this Patreon-exclusive series. So please, enjoy our ultra-long look at Pixar's The Incredibles! And if you'd like to hear 60 more episodes of What A Cartoon Movie—with a new one to come every month—simply head on over to the Talking Simpsons Network and sign up at the $10 level. If you enjoy hearing us talk about cartoons, you'll be glad you did!

Cartoons from present and the past Every week will be an animated bash What a cartoon! What a cartoon! Maybe a short but mostly show-offs We'll talk, we'll analyze, exploring as we go What a cartoon! What a cartoon!

What a cartoon! What a cartoon! What a cartoon! Hello everybody and welcome to What a Cartoon Movie where we ride around in our moms like a boat. I'm your host, your pro monologue pal Bob Mackie and this is an audio exploration of every animated movie ever. Who is here with me today as always? It's Henry Gilbert and I'm still geeking out about it and this month's episode is the incredibles hey lucian hey speedo hey helen bye jack jack i sub you to drop by never heard that before and yes our summer pixar is rolling along we're going back in time 15 years

from toy story 4 and hitting the incredibles which hit all theaters in America, at least, on November 5th, 2004. Yeah, we've covered only Toy Story movies up to this point in our journey through Pixar history. But this time we're covering, you know, there were definitely other non-Toy Story movies before this. But this is kind of a big moment in Pixarar history this moment here it took about 10 years but finally there's a movie with just people yeah that they and they uh resisted that for such a long time there's that it's really the story of brad bird convinces them they can do a story about just people in it and yeah i'm kind of glad this is our first Pixar one that isn't Toy Story. Because this is a favorite of mine.

When it was released in 2004, it felt entirely aimed at me. As not just an animation Pixar fan, but also being a fan of all the superhero things. Which felt special in 2004. Though, you know, now uh paraphrase the film now that every movie is super no movie is super i agree with syndrome yeah he's you're probably agree with your paraphrasing of syndrome syndrome uh did have his dream that like well now that every superhero movie is a suit is every movie even in the fast and furious movies they're just superheroes and that too that

now nothing special like you know it's funny you mentioned that i think i brought this up on another podcast but i remember being in theaters in 2001 this is when superhero movies were dead by the way in case you folks out there don't remember and i was seeing the movie unbreakable because i was a big uh shamalan head at the time he had made one other movie or two but i had seen the sixth sense or whatever and I was like, cool, another one of these. And in the theater I remember thinking, oh neat, I'm seeing a superhero movie, that's pretty cool.

And now that's all we get. But in 2001, I had that feeling, and yes, in 2004, we're after the new Spider-Man movie, of course, but I still had that feeling like, wow, they made a superhero movie, well good for them. But now, I'd never want to see one. Except for the Spider-Verse movie, I'll see that one., wow, they made a superhero movie. Well, good for them. But now I'd never want to see one except for the Spider-Verse movie. I'll see that one.

Yeah, that's still good. It's still good. But, yeah, to think how different things were from 2001 to 2010 with superhero movies that you start with, like, you have the occasional one, but there still was this feeling of like, oh, yeah, Batman and Robin killed it. And then 2002, you get the occasional one, but there still was this feeling of like, oh yeah, Batman and Robin killed it. And then 2002, you get Spider-Man.

And then it just builds from there. Batman begins. And then it's 08 that's really the year because the two biggies are Iron Man and The Dark Knight. And so you have the Oscar-winning, serious, real thing. And then you have the start of the mcu way which is like oh iron why is iron man good for now because he flies he invades arab countries and blows up terrorists so he's he's the hero for now this showed me i can enjoy a superhero movie because

i just watched it again casually and i'm not like crazy about it but I think because of what this movie does I enjoy it for a superhero movie it does not set up three other movies I don't have to have seen two streaming series to understand things it's it kind of ends with a sequel tease that's really just a joke it's in its own vacuum and it's not full of dopey fan service for me yeah although there's there's references there's easter eggs whatever but it's not like oh they did the thing from the one book I like yes they it's i'm not making fun of you in particular henry but i don't like having to bring all of this to a movie i just want to enjoy something in a vacuum sometimes and it feels impossible with a superhero movie at this point in history

in that new spider verse i mean just enjoy it as a movie yes if you're squint if you're like me squinting in every scene that has like 800 spider people in it and you're going like, well, wait, which one's that? Oh, is that from this comic or whatever? It's going to distract you from it. That's for when you've got the Blu-ray at home. That's what it's for. about how in 2004 also like special effects weren't anywhere near where they are now in quote-unquote live action superhero movies uh which are not they're they're cgi movies that have like human cut scenes around them um but but like i'd never seen super speed or super strength or

stretchiness really shown off that well in it and a curse of this movie too is that they put out a fantastic four movie six months after this and they can't compare to this this is what a fantastic four movie should have been but then just the powers are swapped around some but but instead they're like no in this in this case, the superheroes of the Fantastic Four movies, they don't want to be compared to the Incredibles. So they have to change all this bullshit and make them not the characters and what works about it. Oh, I didn't know that.

Wow. Yeah. Then when the 05 movie came out, there were stories that they delayed it like three months to get some extra special effects in there just because they're like, oh, this looks like shit compared to the Incredibles. We need a little more money and then the big difference in the 05 fantastic four is it's far hornier than this like they lean on jessica alba so much i mean also chris evans i want to not say it's not just about multiple scenes where jessica alba is in her underpants because chris evans

gets yeah you see some skin in it though you know there was a horny executive who the second they heard about the invisible woman's powers they're just like we need to get the hottest girl in it and of course she needs to learn how to use her power she's like i guess i have to take off my clothes i can't turn my clothes we're gonna see every second of it on the screen it's so uncomfortable like to see that yeah it's well in Sin City the same year she played the most clothed stripper ever I respect Jessica Alba that she she probably has people in her ear all the time back then saying just do a nude scene it's important for the character like and she she's like you're not paying me enough to get naked and have it be put on Mr. Skin, buddy.

Like, if she wants to do, like, a Playboy pictorial, she can just get the big money for that instead of doing, you know, taking her top off for some cheap movie just because it would be character appropriate. Mr. Skin did not get his eyes on that. I think we were doing our histories a little bit. Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So, yeah, I saw it in theaters with my friends Chris and Nick. They were former guests of the show. And you know what i enjoyed it in the moment and i never really thought about it i had one other incredibles encounter in my life and it was in 2009 and i

remember this it's it's what i remember most about the incredibles is uh on november 1st 2009 i made a tweet that says the highlight of my halloween was calling someone in an incredible's costume a fascist and i'll admit okay i i was a much younger man i was 27 folks that's basically a child and it was at a halloween party at a bar and yes i was a little drunk with my buddy and we saw somebody dressed up like mrs incredible so we went over to talk to her and uh and we we understood what some of the things bradford was saying with this movie and we were like so uh you like the incredible she's like oh yeah i love the movie obviously and then we went on to say like oh so you agree with what it says then about about you know um you know people that are weaker than us and you know what we

should do with them and you know disabilities and we started like really bombarding her with all these questions and she didn't get it. But we were doing a very extended bit, and she just kind of went like, okay, whatever, and she walked away. But I remember being kind of mean to a woman at a bar. She just wanted to wear a stretchy outfit, Bob. Yes, but maybe she remembered

that some movies have ideology. But yeah, that's what I remember, and I apologize to that person. I'm sure she had a lovely night after that. But we were just kind of doing a bit around her about brad bird brad like brad brad bird is aggressively saying this is not ideology in this movie but uh we we may beg to differ here and there but yeah i so yeah i saw it in theaters too made exactly for me and also it was this feeling of you know the promotion of it really got in my head too where they are just like

this is the more grown-up pixar film it's a pg rated pixar film their first one like i actually didn't see finding nemo in theaters that was the first one i i skipped because i was like and it feels kind of kiddy you know it feels like for children and so incredibles felt like the first one that wasn't and this was uh around the same time too of how Miyazaki's movies were getting more shown in theaters slightly more available I think that's when we yeah well 04 is when Howl's Moving Castle came out in Japan we didn't get it for another couple years but and of course too it was the iraq war time as well uh but oh this month in particular oh my lord when was election day help me out here after the election day yes it's three days after bush got re-elected and then we saw this in movie theaters movie yeah now i uh that

actually is getting slightly ahead of it but when people ask bird about the politics and he's very cagey of like you know hey look i listen to npr a lot i but i don't want to say one way or the other people say this i don't want the film to be definable he's very against labels but one person said to him like well isn't this movie about how syndrome like makes up a an enemy that he can then justifiably fight and be famous for. And he's like, yeah, I guess that is kind of a Bush thing.

That's what bad guys do. Yes. Yeah. Uh, boy. Oh boy. Yeah. I remember this year,

uh, because like in July or June, my friend, same friends and I saw bowling, not bowling for Columbine, but Fahrenheit nine 11. Right. And we were like,

well, Oh, Carrie's got it in the bag. This is it. It's over for Bush. And, uh, you know, rude bush and uh you know rude awakening there that was a rough uh a rough week i well also actually you know what i didn't see this release date because it must have been the next week because i remember the last cruise i went on and probably ever will and again i i was 22 but this was a family trip. My dad booked a cruise.

We are going to go the Wednesday after. We are watching the concession speeches and the winning speech from the boat as we're about to take off. And my dad was really enjoying rubbing it in my face. And that was one of those moments like, well well once i don't have to be around this person anymore i'll probably feel a lot better you know henry if someone falls off a boat uh who's to say what happened you know where is this tip back then like uh for me to not listen to it hey you just need to know where the blind spots are with those security cameras uh this was in 2004 the panopticon was not as strong back then no but so i must have seen it the week

after but i also remember loving this dvd like this was when i was really starting to get into the extras on movies i'd been buying the simpsons dvds for a while but this was like oh man look at all the it has two different commentaries on it multiple makings of like it was it was too big for one disc it was a double disc release yeah we were in peak dvd times around this time in terms of special features and i mentioned this on our toy story ones but they brought out the ultimate toy box which is three discs it was toy story one two and just a disc full of extras it was amazing yeah yeah i and of course you know another level to it though was that when i so i see it in 04 i moved to the bay area in june 2006 and i work

at a video store and we were putting on incredibles all the time and i don't know if you noticed it bob but like in the year opening of this was when i first noticed it working there in the opening when mr incredible's driving around his car and you see the map. I swear it is the Berkeley map. Like it is. Huh. It's like there's 42nd Street. There's Adeline. Like we were saying like, wait, this is.

I worked on a thing off of at a place off University Boulevard in Berkeley. And I swear it was the map on the screen. Oh, you know what? I paused thinking it might have been the Bay Area, but I didn't think it was just Berkeley. It looked just like it. And we should let people know Emeryville is like five miles away from here. Not even. Not even. No, like a 10 minute drive tops.

I just saw, tangent, I just saw Spider-Verse 2 at the movie theater in Emeryville. That is literally within half a mile of Pixar. And when the trailer for Elemental comes on before the movie, there's a pocket of big cheers when it starts. And my husband was like, wait, why is that happening? And I said, well, because it's Pixar. That's probably Pixar employees cheering the movie that's about to come out. Also, when I saw WALL Wally there at the very end, as it says in this movie,

made a Pixar in Emeryville. And then I just said out loud, oh, that's here. And then people laughed at me around the other guy. You know, I've seen a lot of movies in Vancouver. I see most movies in Vancouver. And I've been to a few. And we watch the credits because we're good people.

When we get to the special effects crew, people in the theater cheer because all special effects are done in Vancouver. To be away from any unions, perhaps. Well, we've talked about this before, but another reason you outsource things to Canada, for instance, is that price-wise, you don't have to factor in healthcare

for your employees. That alone subsidizes it a lot i now re-watching it it's it's also funny too because we've said it before i see the sequel in 2018 it leaves very little impression on me like i was waiting on that sequel for such a long time when i am pushing myself to remember scenes i can see it but it's like 14 years is such a long time between movies and we talked about it on the toy story 4 podcast and the incredibles 2 not adjusting for inflation is the fourth highest grossing animated movie ever just movie not pixar yeah fourth all animated movies but it's also the number one pixar movie ever too too. That still is incredible to me.

And of course now watching it at the age of Mr. and Mrs. Incredible in the movie, I feel like we could read him as 25 at the start of the movie. And when it says 15 years later, then it's like, okay, then he's 40. It feels a little different now in the midlife crisis perspective. Of course, I don't look around and think like, oh, why? We had that moment like five years ago. We're like, well, what the fuck am I doing? And then now we're living our Mr. Incredible dreams all the time now.

We're superheroes of podcasting, everyone. Also, when I look back to do the research, another funny thing I saw was Brad Bird is talking a ton about how animation just isn't for kids which is every interview with Guillermo del Toro now says the exact same thing but Brad Bird's hitting this hitting this hitting this and I'm thinking okay almost 20 years since this movie came out for Bird to make adult movies like he left animation and when he comes back to animation it's still supposed to appeal to kids you can't not appeal to kids and i was just thinking how they compare themselves like

studio ghibli and studio ghibli also you could not say they aren't commercial like they're if you go to japan and see the amount of totoro merchandise alone there it's like well okay but i feel like there's this thing that you'd never even think of in america where ghibli they make the thing that makes a ton of money and they're like well how about we also now like let's give pompoko a chance you know why don't we just do something a little more grown up or the wind rises but pixar never even when they make a thing that makes a shitload of money they don't get even like one reprieve of like okay yeah this doesn't have to be a billion dollar movie no everything has to be a billion

dollar movie that's what really frustrates me about pixar studio i was on the side of and that was very exciting throughout the aughts i'm gonna hit this a lot throughout this podcast so i apologize if i'll be repetitive but i feel like upon watching this again for the second time in my life I thought like oh this is the direction Pixar was headed in but they were cut off at the pass by being consumed by Disney this is a PG movie does not really color outside those lines but just bumping it up one rating makes me feel like oh but what if it was PG-13 thinking of more things that could happen more things they could do families could still see it together families could still see pg-13 movies but i feel like this is as far as disney would

ever allow them to push it because we see an on-screen suicide attempt we see about 10 people die on the screen there's mentions of like infidelity there's risque content um and comparing it to toy story 4 the villain dies there's violence you know yeah toy story 4 is the we will have conversations to solve conflict movie checking in on mental health the movie yeah i i feel like even the incredibles 2 like characters die and it's still violent but i think they even tone that down a little there yeah it's it's uh when you talk about pg-13 as a rating like the freaking marvel movies are all pg-13 but that's that's the demographic they get to live in and pixar doesn't get to live in that demographic

and when this movie when you compare it to like the one right before finding nemo it's full of stuff that would not have been in finding nemo like but finding nemo also deals with death a whole lot like it's it's about grief and death too of course but this has so much death in it and you're also not worried about will these characters get a divorce like they have moments of the kids in this going like are our parents gonna get a divorce they the word divorce is not said but yeah and also adults are punching and shooting at these children, you know? Yeah. I was reminded that a thing I had not considered with all the shooting and the danger of, like, that this was a bigger part of the Iron Giant story, but that Brad Bird's, like, sister was murdered, like, shot and killed.

Right, yeah. So I wonder if that's part of his, like, especially in of say dash saves his sister from being shot i'm like i wonder if that's uh you know there's there's something in there he's working or but it's it is an interesting movie of where pixar could have gone they could have kept leveling up age-wise and i'm sure brad bird would have liked that, but you just can't. It's not when Disney owns it. You got it. Every movie has to be a machine that prints money. It has to. And that means the widest audience possible.

And I'm sick of every animated movie either being like Toy Story or Shrek. And on the other side, it's like or Sausage Party. It's like it could either be fun pop culture kiddie stuff or like vegetables are coming and shitting. You know, it just there's nothing. There's no happy medium. And I feel like this almost fits into the happy medium. Yeah. When you see in other countries, they it's not they don't have the American thing.

Like, I mean, certainly lots of Japanese animation is specifically marketed to gruesome people, but French animation or Mexican animation like Korea, it gets into a wider range. Even when you think, what won the Oscar last year or this year? It was Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio and one that needed Netflix to do the thing they don't do anymore which is committing to adult animation and two even then you still needed an oscar multiple oscar-winning director to have the drive to do it and even then and it is an adult movie but it has to start with a kid's fairy tale they're like well this is the real this is a a take on a fairy tale so even then it's dusted there's the kernel of kiddiness in the center of it we'll get to it by the end

but i'm curious if the thing brad bird is working on now will be an actual like for real movie for adults kind of thing or not and i don't mean fucked up or r-rated but just you can see it in tone it's not just a checklist of violence or whatever uh but uh but yeah so where where did we leave off with brad bird when we did the iron giant movie podcast a few years ago now maybe let's say five it's great isn't it that's how long that was or four maybe i don't know i think i think it was our christmas 2019 one okay i think it was but uh because christmas 2020 was end of evangelion i remember that but uh but yeah so quick version of brad bird up to that point he was this wunderkind animator who was like a kid that sent in his cartoons to disney uh the nine old men especially Frank and Ollie, took an interest in him. He's one of the first students of CalArts in a certain department.

We'll get to. He works his way up, but he constantly is having friction. He quits Disney before he's even a part of Black Cauldron, really. And he's just in and out trying to get movies made. And then he gets a job on The Simpsons, but leaves the security of that to make Iron Giant. Iron Giant is made for a third of the budget in time, is what he said, or two-thirds of the budget in time that a Disney movie got at that moment. And then by the time the movie's finished, there's been huge executive turnover at warner and his uh the the

movie barely gets released and uh so where where does that leave brad bird after another very frustrating moment where when he finally gets to direct his first feature at the age of 42 who well what's he gonna do and uh so the film is a critical darling but 2d animation seems pretty much dead in or on the way to being dead and definitely mainstream press is saying oh it's over it's over and i mean you look at the 1999 box office toy story 2 murders iron giant like it's like a hundred iron giants and how much money i made i forgot they were uh in the running against each other yeah it's like a hundred iron giants and how much money i made i forgot they were uh in the running against each other yeah it was like i mean you know iron giant came out like august and was gone by september but if you're just looking at the year in general yeah and so you know brad is uh

it's a tough time for him but you know he's very lucky that he he has a certain friend who he first met in a little classroom called a113 i've never seen that number anywhere in my life bird says he's the first guy to put it in something that then became a thing that even people who weren't in that classroom have put it in their movies but uh he says he was the first to put it in uh in family dog in the other short but yes uh in case you don't know a113 is the room in cal arts the school started by disney for training animators in the classic disney style and an entire generation in the 70s late 70s were the first hired to be seen as the next generation to take over from the nine old men and uh john lassiter was a classmate with brad bird in character

animation program uh apparently jerry reese the the director of brave little toaster first student second student john lassiter and brad bird i think is like third or fourth and other people in that class in case you never heard it before include tim burton john musker gary truesdale and henry selleck all future directors like they they were on their way to success and of course we've heard brad bird and lassiter both had their own problems trying to work at Disney in the pre-Eisner days. Both quit the company on and off. Bird even slightly considers getting on the Tron team that Lasseter was working on, but then doesn't. He also considers following Lasseter to Lucasfilm in 1984, but doesn't.

Meanwhile, when Brad Bird is working on that pitch for a animated adaptation of Will Eisner's The Spirit comics, Lasseter helps him with that pitch as well, which sadly doesn't go anywhere. Now let's cut to 1993. Brad Bird is working on a ton of potential films. When he talks about how in the movie how Bob Parr is sitting at his desk and being told you can't do things. That was how he felt all the time because he could get these pitches so far up the chain. And then eventually someone would say, well, but you can't do that. And it would just get shut down, like just a ton of stops and starts.

We've heard from people in the business that often you're just paid to make nothing. You're paid to have ideas that don't get made which is can be pretty nice sometimes yeah it's how you can afford to keep living in a nice place in in los angeles because you get paid you know real like six figure or even seven figure development deals to then not make a movie or or you have things like you know say you work for five days pitching on on the mario movie and then they cut you a check for like sixty thousand dollars and they say well we might use two minutes of that but and then you're in the special thanks at the end and your name is alex hirsch is but potentially i'm just saying that's one of the type of things that could happen i i'm not saying that

did happen uh but as he's working on all these things he has an overall deal with turner he's working on that ray gun movie uh the name it's a band's name ray g-u-n-n gun as he's working on that at turner he also in 1993 has this idea it comes from the fact that bird is getting older and he's thinking that i'm now a dad with three kids including he has a new baby named jack jack uh that that's his uh really kid yep okay three kids one of them named jack jack like this this is a very personal movie to uh to brad burn and he's thinking about like one i'm frustrated that i can't make these things work and I want it to be bigger but also he's thinking how do I balance work and family if I want to be a great dad can I be a great director

too can I be as committed to directing as I am to raising my kids like he he doesn't want to be an absent father you know and and also I I should mention that at least as far as i've seen brad bird still married to the same woman he married in 1988 so oh how refreshing there's bob parr real life has not been divorced but so as he's working on it he imagined oh it's like if a superhero was basically a high school quarterback who now is reaching 40 and he's got a little softer and he's like man what could have been you know and so he starts exploring it from there and of course he saw it too as a 2d movie and he's working on some of his original designs and uh when he's working on it one of the very first guys he's working in with is tony fusile uh who would be the uh an animator on the film up to the end like he brad bird when he likes his guys he sticks with them i think he uh also did

character designs yes yeah he he worked on the character design so he's not lead character designer but yeah he he really helped a ton on the concepting page and and drew it and he's basically like second or third in command on the movie uh fusilli is but it's not just about superheroes of course this is a love letter to the period that is highly influential to the animators of bird's age 60s futurism this dream of like you know the the dream of the jetsonsons, the dreams of the Marvel Age of Comics, James Bond movies, like all of this like Silver Age futurism they imagined. You know, one reason that this didn't feel as novel as it did in 2004 is because Venture Brothers just beat it to the punch with the Space Age parody stuff. Right. The Impossibles. Right. Yeah. Mr. Impossible. I think it was that fall even like 2004 fall

that's when they did their first season yeah that's right yeah it lines up perfectly the man so not just the fantastic four parody but the idea of living in like the 1960s that version of the world and you're in like the the crappy version of it like it should have been this like it's the you're right the venture brothers creators they're tapping into the same thing as this of like birds describes this by name and one of the bonus features i watch but he says like we were promised flying cars and now you're living in this world and it's like shitty and it's this this general thought of like disappointment at a promise unfulfilled which venture brothers is that times a hundred

like everybody is just miserable and and wishes they had the life they dreamed of as a kid and a lot of this is also spy stuff i feel like it's equal parts spy stuff and superheroes and so was venture brothers honestly yeah like secret organizations and intel and there's even jokes about monologuing in the venture brothers first season that you see in this one. Of course, yeah, it's a big coincidence, but they both arrived at the same point around the same time. Syndrome and Monarch aren't unsimilar. Also, they both have a hot girlfriend as well who runs the show. Yeah, no, this totally pulls from the same place.

I think the Venture Brothers guys are like a 10 years younger than bird like birds 42 and uh when iron giant comes out the venture brothers guys i think were in their late 20s early 30s when uh when venture brothers started i think so but uh but yes you're totally right on the spy thing this is such a james bond love letter two of the classic like connery bonds yeah especially the soundtrack and looking at the timeline a casino royale the big bond reboot was in 2006 so they made this i feel like in response to bond movies kind of being in the shitter yeah in the early aughts yeah they uh bond was also it was just like how batman people were like can there even be batman and around the same time both were like okay here's the new grounded post 9-11 james bond he hunts terrorists and tortures

people more directly it's a james bond for now we love it folks and also he's pulling from all the same stuff bruce tim and his team were into for batman the animated series like this is if mr incredible and batman were on screen together you wouldn't think they look like totally dissimilar like they are they are of similar animation styles and i mean it makes sense too because bruce tim didn't go to cal arts but they're trained in the same style they were all in the same like circles they're all the same type of dudes and highly influential to them both was the Fleischer animated Superman shorts like an interview with Bird said like we look to the Fleischer shorts a ton for how to animate uh action in this because he said that was the last time he felt that you'd see a superhero thing that

actually had like a real budget behind it like feature budget but so he's thinking on this on and off but you know iron giant takes precedent ray gun does and then it gets canceled and so he's working on iron giant which wasn't even his original pitch it comes out and then warner animation functionally like just shuts down features like yeah theatrical features no more and we're not hearing your whatever your next thing is and so bird is talking with pixar of course because laster had been wanting bird to join pixar bird when pixar took off uh post toy story bird was so deep in with warner brothers he couldn't just join pixar he probably would have if he was free and so lassiter and him were talking a ton it was

apparently began in earnest during the uh bugs life release and then grew from there and the big pitch was this superhero project like well can this happen they tell this very funny story on the blu-ray round table that is clearly them talking around saying the name michael eisner but they are telling a story that they'd go to the pitch meeting and an unnamed head of disney at the time is just tearing it apart he hates the pitch he thinks this should be live action it's not how we do with the other pixar films well kids even like this and he's just ripping it to shreds yeah i i was reading the uh you know the context of the release and where disney is where pixar is there's a lot of public arguments between eisner and Jobs around this time just like with Toy Story 3 right

yes yeah I I would bet that then Eisner trashing this probably is to just like maybe it's him and again I don't know it's Eisner but I'm sure it's Eisner but I would bet it could be him just jockeying for like a power play of like oh you come to me with this like new pitch from this guy you want to hire to Pixar well well f you i don't think this is any good you're not getting any pitch past me today and brad bird in this 2011 roundtable he says that it really was lassiter who vouched for him like basically lassiter not exactly like a blank check but lassiter did have the ability to vouch for Bird and like I think we should go through with this and I think too that everybody else who was in that room

were telling the story they said that they felt it was almost like they were testing Brad Bird of like you're famously a temperamental guy so the head of Disney is going to shit on your movie and say it can't be done are you going to just explode in angererbird and get yourself fired right here? But apparently Bird kept his cool and just said, well, John, what do you think?

And John kind of covered for it. And they say that Lasseter did a lot of intermediary stuff with covering for them on the Disney side of things for for this movie which is also funny because the movie made disney so much money so so so much money it was a massive hit it was a huge huge hit in the box office and in merchandise like gigantic in merch like uh but yeah so bird says lassiter insulated them from a lot of that stuff and so on may 4th 2000 he was officially announced that bird had signed a multi-film contract with disney and pixar so they were off to the races so yeah lassiter really wanted bird to work at pixar wait sorry what year was the multi-deal uh contract

signed sorry oh sorry it was may 4th 2000 and in the past 23 years he's made two movies oh you forget right oh yeah i forgot yeah he's the i guess he stepped in and it's officially his yeah it's three okay three so those three but though i think definitely after ratatouille he was able to basically get like the tom cruise clause he's like look tom cruise wants to meet a direct admission impossible give me a break guys and so and then of course I would bet another of those multi-films transfers over to Tomorrowland which was was a Disney thing that's something else too I told that story that pre-incredibles he had all these canceled movies that doesn't stop after Incredibles like he still has many pitches i think too he all he's told stories

that make it sound like he interviewed to direct the force awakens but then turned it down because of all the control he's like i could to play in this sandbox i gotta work with too many people yeah honestly it'd be hard to say if that'd be a better movie probably in a vacuum but who knows what would happen after that i think it would have been a better singular movie but yeah jj abrams back then knew how to work with the uh with the executives more like he he's well i mean he's a film executive himself like he's not gonna fight them on it uh but yet so for lassiter it was defined at the time that they wanted to do this unprecedented move because pixar he was worried might get in a rut that they wanted to do this unprecedented move because Pixar he was worried might get in a rut that they had discovered their formula and they weren't going to try anything new

you know but instead he said that Brad Bird would instead be this like uncontrollable agent well not uncontrollable but like a new person in it that would join the team. And also, like you know, all the directors mostly who got to be directors up to that point and even after were like longtime Pixar people who worked their way up the ladder. They don't hire an outside guy and say, and you get to direct a Pixar film. Like, not only that, but Brad Bird. Iron Giant had CGI elements in it.

Obviously, the Iron Giant is cgi but it is a it was a 2d film bird had only worked in two dimensions before that he didn't know like cgi he had to basically in the process of making the film he learns what the pipeline of production is on a cgi film but probably added a ton of friction and difficulty for it Brad Bird would say it himself he's a bored rule breaker and here he enters Pixar and it's a thing he doesn't know and he is constantly meeting tech people who say well but you can't do that you can't do that and they'd say well I don't like hearing i can't let's find out okay come on we could we could and he's always pushing up against it yeah i mean pixar films were growing in terms

of what they were doing and the stories they were attempting to tell but the first four up to this point were just always framed in it's the secret life of blank and this broke them out of that before they went back to that with cars and everything's i mean that i i don't know elemental or i think that's the name of the elements movie it could be good it could be but it feels like another thing i'm like what if this was a job like what if this thing had a job you know though i and the the effects in it look amazing yeah i like that part but it does feel like uh ai generated premise for for a Pixar movie. Or what Cartman is awesome-o would pitch. Yeah. It's like Fire has a job and a dad who's disappointed in them or something.

You just look around like, what do the books do when we go to sleep? What if my Spider-Man comic talked and was like, I'm sorry to be entrapped in this box here. What if Daffy duck went to all the covers that'd be fun what if that oh man what if my what if my how are the duck stuffed animal fell in love with my stitch stuffed animal well now you're just pitching toy story 5 yeah i guess yeah these are just disney owns all of those characters so you're good okay what if my mystery science theater box sets they all started arguing with each other what if that let's talk to shout factory about this uh but yeah so bird joins it and that uh he you know

doesn't want the company to get complacent laster is pushing him and he is a very passionate director even in the disney press footage they are cutting around him swearing there's there's some stuff in the in the 04 doc that i'm like this is more warts than all that i've i've watched disney making of features that they put on disney plus in the last few years these are more warts than they show in in disney features now i think they assume like oh only nerds will see these and now they're just very easy to watch by anybody i think too well also i think with pixar that after the lassiter stuff that there was a feeling that this is a real bro culture and so then you have all this footage of like basically

it is a lot of there there are some women who work on the film and and non-white guys but if you're looking at the board meetings and who's yelling at each other about what to do in a scene it's just a bunch of white guys like shouting over each other and i couldn't understand that people felt there wasn't a lot of space for conversation if you didn't want to scream at everybody else at a boardroom meeting but i'll say to bird i don't want to make bird just seem like he's a guy who whined all the time was a dick like there's lots of scenes of him complimenting people like he loves artistic achievement when he can see like we really pushed ourself and he pushes himself

very hard too i don't want to say that the bullshit thing people say like hey i push myself as hard as anybody but he does push himself really hard he's very giving with compliments and if there's anybody he hates it is a non-artistic producer or an executive saying this costs too much money and don't do that like personally i'm okay with him having more ire for those people than i am for like an artist under him who says it's impossible to make mr incredible's arm move this way yeah like i feel like bird listens more to that. And also there's some funny stuff. I showed it to you. In the process of making a movie, you have to stamp things with approval.

Like, it's a literal, at least in Pixar then, it was a literal stamp. And they're custom stamps. They're custom stamps made for the movie. And they made, for each project, they made custom stamps that were basically him is like this little goblin in a hat going like, I don't like this. Like, do it. No. The saying was, do we like this? Like, which is his way of saying, I know we approved it, but do we like this?

Also for other movies, they did caricature other directors for their own personal stamps. Yeah. Yeah. They is that great in the waking Sleeping Beauty? All the funny caricatures they're drawing all the time i mean especially the ones making fun of i said it jeffrey katzenberg but and also there's uh also that oh four documentary they there's a fun but slightly dark scene of a guy he has a guitar and is making up like a comedy acoustic guitar song. And he says, I call this song the 800 pound gorilla.

And it's just about thou. There's this gorilla who doesn't listen and smashes things all around the place. And he's like, and he's the director of the movie. It's 800 pound gorilla. But so there's a lot of things that cause pain points in the production. But a big, the first one was, so Brad Bird writes the script script. Like it, it starts with a written script. Well, of course was, so Brad Bird writes the script script. Like it, it starts with a written script. Well,

of course he pitches it, then writes the full script. And this is like the first Pixar movie that is written and directed by credit, like sole writer credit, sole director credit. And you heard it on the Simpsons commentaries where right after he wins the Oscar, the Simpsons writers like, I didn't know Brad Bird could write. It's like, yeah, you thought he was just a little cartoon boy not a good writer like you guys

now they have to respect him only because he got an award they haven't gotten yet well james l brooke got but the rest of it so after the script brad bird then puts together a story reel and this is a little technical but basically the way pixar up to that point had done storyboards and making animatics they do the storyboards in a general sense like they're not committing to full layouts or lighting or shots but what bird did uh on iron giant he spent the most money on the story reel and they committed to like, no, this is how we're lighting the scene. This is where the camera is going to be. Once we're done with these storyboards, we're not doing a ton of extra layout.

This is deciding it now. And that was partially to streamline Iron Giant's production. So and you should view Incredibles is basically Brad Bird picked up most of the guys he could from Iron Giant, took them and moved them to Pixar and they worked on the Incredibles is basically Brad Bird picked up most of the guys he could from Iron Giant took them and moved them to Pixar and they worked on the Incredibles and so he wants to continue that thing now here's why you why Pixar had not been doing that with their storyboards if you're doing a 2d film and you do a storyboard especially Brad Bird knows well I know how this will be drawn and the execution of it but if you commit to a look in a storyboard in two-dimensional drawings,

and then you go to the tech people and say, well, the camera should be here and the lighting should be this and these many items should be around it, that's when the people who actually control computers say, the computer can't do that and you shouldn't have committed to this shot beforehand and so you can see how that immediately becomes a big problem but bird's like no we can do this we can make it

he is also in i'll say too he's very nice to the tech team like he is so complimentary tech team because they're doing the shit he could never do and it feels like well computers should do everything right but this was getting off the ground in what, 2001? 2000? Yes, yeah, yeah. They start production on it in 2000. He talks about how an entire year on the movie was

just building all of the things that they will then animate it in. Like, that year will just be that. And also, he has this funny story of saying that it's like fighting hell in uh in in 2001 where the you know it says well can you make this thing dirty and hell says dave i don't want you to do that you can't make this item dirty can this be asymmetrical i don't think so hell or i don't think so dave Can't do it. And he said that the machine just wants you to make stories about naked cubes that just move towards one another.

It doesn't want to do people and clothes. Cube story. That's basically that video game Thomas Was Alone. Oh, yeah, that's right. So that's a big one. That's a problem. But they really do want this story reel to be great. I also found a funny story that Miyazaki visits the studio during the American release of Spirited Away.

And he comes there and they show him like the incredible story reel. This is what Miyazaki says through a translator. I think it is a very adventurous thing you are trying to do in an american film like that is such a like miyazaki like okay well how'd you feel about it he's trying to remain very objective though to me it reads like you know i if you read tone into it to me i think he's like well you americans don't ever try stuff like this like so i guess this is pretty good for like crappy american movies not like my movies well i'm sure he didn't even have the cultural like uh touchstone of these superheroes really i yeah yeah i mean he's you know i mean you know about american superheroes but yes no not not

really the same i would think but also you know they do go through the film in the story reel and shorten scenes like there's that's where all the deleted scenes are from on the dvds like you basically have the animatic of it and then they decided nah we shouldn't do that like there's a really great one in the movie it just goes from like the wedding 15 years later but they have like a five years later scene in it where bob and helen are having a barbecue and Bob accidentally cuts. Well, he hits a knife into his hand. It doesn't cut him, but he has to act like he got horribly cut because a knife went into his hand.

And then she then says like, man, you're going to have to wear a fake cast for the next like six months to keep up this lie like this sucks like it it was there's a lot of fun scenes in it that they had to cut for time you know i like that because i feel like this movie is like 15 or 20 minutes too long and my favorite parts of it we're seeing them try to uh you know assimilate into the real world or the the human world but then it's like more than half the movie's the island and that's not as interesting to me i like i like the watchman babies version of the incredibles more they are a doctor knows island far too long yeah i should say on the watchman thing and when we get into the movie i can just say like oh this scene is straight out of watchman this one like it's there is so much from watchman in the movie he says he's not a real comic guy like he bradbert

said he's not a mega comic guy he said people came to him afterwards with like oh that's from this comic right or that's from this and he's like i don't read comics that much though i say as a guy who was going to make a adaptation of the spirit and was an adult man in the 80s i am certainly red watchman he he said he'd heard of watchman before he's like well the only one i've heard of before was a watchman but this has so many watchman moments and but obviously what's brad burr gonna say in an interview oh yeah i stole this from the watchman like no he's not gonna say that try and stop me but but you're right yes i think the best parts of the movie too aren't you know the james bond dr nose island stuff it's something brad bird really

wanted and it was about the mix of the man mundane and the spectacular like that's that's really great which also is why we love venture brothers too also another a few other interesting changes bob parr's original powers weren't just like a strong tough guy he also had like laser eyes and they apparently cut it kind of quickly because they're like wait if his laser eyes like this solves he shouldn't have a problem with all of these things if he's got laser eyes so they cut that they also had a funny idea that at least it was a funny drawing of every member of the team can fly except for the dad who's following driving behind them in like a station wagon

in a pretty funny show i like that it's sort of like when someone can't fly in dragon ball they're just sort of carrying them around right yeah uh that's why everybody has to get like leveled up to flight in that show and syndrome was really just an act one villain who like blows up the pars house accidentally and causes them to have to move the main villain was some old guy named zurich uh who had like dated helen in the past and but was secretly like 200 years old and had similarly syndromes plot and then it was lassiter who's credited for saying like this syndrome guy is way more interesting. Just make him the villain at the end of the movie. And then, of course, the biggest thing that Brad Bird didn't like being told and that he was told in many, many meetings is there's a reason that Pixar before 2004 did not really have major characters that are humans in the movies because it's very hard to do yeah and going back to this after

watching the 2019 pixar film it feels like even though this was very good for the time they are quite not ready for humans there are certain things you expect now with the modern eye that simply aren't there that's the most dated stuff and it is like the humans especially the humans that aren't the main characters like yeah they they are just distracting and they're like kind of blandness but this this was uh one of their like biggest not not exactly cheats but basically that when they're gonna have a bunch of extras running around they said well then there's a character called universal man that just is like basically one action figure like okay and we can make tiny changes to this guy and then he can be like 10 guys in a shot or whatever and same with universal woman or that's

why all the um all the henchmen look the same i mean it's humorous to see as well but all the henchmen are the same because they don't want to build a bunch of different henchmen that's why there's the same boss fight in this movie about seven times exactly yeah it all it comes what is this skyward sword come on it does i mean it comes from the same cost saving place too so to try to make it less expensive he was told like really doesn't need to be humans like also if you if you look at compare things at the time in 2001 outcomes monsters incers Inc and Shrek Monsters Inc was a big deal because Boo's on screen the whole time but because she's a little kid it can kind of fudge some things with her as far as accuracy goes and also a big thing for them was I believe at some point they decided Boo's character has to have ponytails because her hair will go too crazy like they don't really understand hair

enough yet and I mean while you compare it to shrek humans and shrek look like freaks like more freakish than an ogre they're like melted sims yes they and they're and they're just very bland well if you go back to our toy story one podcast i remember being in the theater and sort of understanding the limitations of the form even though i was 13 but then knowing that sid would be a major character that was impressive like wow you're showing us a human being on the screen rendered with this technology i thought i was just going to be looking at toys it helped that sid is supposed to be a weird kid i think yeah and then of course they level up after that with like al in al's toy barn but actually bird uses that as an example of what they didn't want to do

because with Al in Toy Story 2, they want to show off, like, look at the individual hairs on his face. You can even see the pores in HD. And Bird's like, no, we want more stylized than that, especially if we're going to do this in a big way. And also the characters, Bird loved his stylized characters.

Like, he wanted to keep those kind of upa shapes in in 3d i i think that if you go into this movie not understanding the intent it might look a little flat and cheap to you because we're used to pixar movies being like oh every corner is scuffed and there's dust on on this and we made sure there's a realistic wear and tear on every item around you in this it feels like they're more trying to emulate the 2D world that Bird came from. But as a result, if you're used to the really lived-in world of Pixar movies, it can feel a little flat and cheap. Yeah, yeah. Man, compare it to Toy Story 4 where, like, I would bet dust particles that fly up in Toy Story 4 take more computing power than the entire Incredibles movie has.

Like, just to make make that dust fly around and you know when their hair gets wet it feels like did i just make this in dark souls yeah yeah but that that was that was impressive for the time though just like wow they not only made hair but they made it wet but now you're like wow we've come so far look at look at merida the entire movie is just like look at the fucking hair on this lady they were so proud of that hair yeah no this this hair for the time he was like especially for violet because he's like look the point of violet character wise all their hair is part of their character the fact that mr incredible is balding is important like he needs to be losing his hair it needs to be

less fluffy but violet's the big one of like she needs a dra losing his hair he needs to be uh less fluffy but violet's the big one of like she needs a drape of hair hanging over her face to be the stereotype she needs to be the girl in high school who's hiding behind her hair because she like lacks confidence you know she's a very big stereotype her the goal and her goal in this movie is to impress a boy yes yeah and she finally does it finally by being By being herself and not hiding her pretty face. I feel like Bird is saying, this is a speech he gave to his daughter. I do recall in Incredibles 2,

I think they dealt with this a little better. But look, I told you in the boardrooms on the story team, there are not any women in that meeting. I didn't see any women in those meetings i mean it does take place in this version of the 60s or a very 60s looking a presence but the ideology and the like philosophy of everyone is very white boomer straights very very yes yeah uh well and another thing that uh gave bird inspiration was he did see the jerry's game short and he's like oh this is a more stylized human this is kind of what i'd want to do and also there was

an incredibly telling quote he had about how for now about how when they made finding nemo he had he was working there while they were working on finding nemo of course and he says that they watched a ton of nature documentaries and went on like trips to coral reefs and stuff. But what they didn't want to do is make it look exact in detail to nature. They wanted things that accurately expressed the emotion felt when they were seeing the animals, but not have it be exact. So you're saying the Lion King 2019 got it wrong. Well, you know know i guess in a business sense it got it right because it was much more successful than even finding nemo but

i was especially thinking that after like i'm not watching that little mermaid movie but i'm sure the actress is great but that looks like shit like all the special effects and it looked like shit the the animals look like the actual real disgusting sea life. Sebastian the crab is just a fucking ugly crab. There's no. I heard there's not even a hot crustacean band in that movie. What the fuck? Yeah.

Man. Hey, this is just what Twitter tells me. That's terrible. See, I mean, I guess it'll be included in Disney Plus. This is the slop moviegoers want. Just show me what the thing looks like. I felt shame of seeing stylized characters i need to see it look real like i'm watching a nature documentary with singing crabs

in it like blech but so anyway though yes that gave him this kind of permission to work with the characters in in uh and and have them be stylized but yeah the the hair thing they he was told by the tech team this is all pretty much theoretical until about the last year of production where they got it to where it is in the released film and they also he tells these funny stories of how he when they were working on it he didn't know how the system works you may be seeing these you know temp videos of like here's how they test it out and basically uh this is video game talk but like a t-post character will fly through the screen and only the face will move and they also won't have their clothes on

they'll just be like a a beige body and he's like well wait why is there like the the pants standing in front of them and completely fell out and they would he would just be told no no don't look at that that's not going to be in the final movie and he's like what am i supposed to look at he said eventually he saw the matrix code it was like oh this is how you're supposed to view this okay it was a ton of learning uh for him uh but a big thing for him though was he brought in his iron a producer from iron giant john walker him and john walker are buddies they work together on more movies afterwards there are some scenes on those making ofs where they are shouting at each other like john walker is trying to be nice and uh and happy in it and bird's like no we can't cut that it's the heart of the movie and

john walker's like we don't have the time to finish this we need two more months and brad bird's like we can't cut this short no way like so john walker is a producer on it also the head of the the supervising technical director rick sayer he's more of the good cop in these things but he still is saying things like brad I don't know if we can do that. A big one was during the Jack-Jack attack on Syndrome at the end of the movie, he transforms into a bunch of other things. Brad Bird wanted him to turn into a pile of goo

that splotches around. And he said, we literally can't do it. He can't be living goo. We're just not there yet. And it'll take us two months to even try to make it and we have to get to the release date and walker's telling him and then walker this is such a telling scene walker says i'm just trying to get this over the finish line brad and brad bird responds and i'm trying to get us into first place wow that's perfect comeback it's he'd probably because

i would bet brad bird has heard that 800 times so there's a ton of back and forth uh sayer also has a funny bit to of saying well actually everybody agrees that one internal prank they played on brad bird is that and really every male character in the movie looks a little like Brad Bird. Syndrome is really supposed to look like Brad Bird. But his like little face. His little face, his rosy cheeks, his boyish face. Bird had to be told that like

two years into production and they're like you know that's you and he's like what the hair's not mine at all. And then he said well it's too late to change it. we can't completely change the face now so you got me guys you got me it sounds like brad bird by the time incredibles 2 rolled around had a lot of experience in this world because that movie was ahead of production to the point where it skipped its place in line with toy story 4 he is much more used to it now for

sure no also another technical thing not really considered when you watch a movie if you don't know the behind the scenes is that in toy story they go places but your limited number of locations in this movie there are multiple offices there are multiple buildings and then there is a huge island full of stuff too like just the number of places that needed to be built like is is crazy for this movie and so uh that the set team had a ton of stuff to do too also top level guys in it tony facility who i talked about too and also teddy newton he was the the supervising animator of the whole thing and uh another big name is mark andrews who is story supervisor on it and i dare say in the footage that they put on the bonus features he is more

passionate than even brad bird is in some meetings like in some meetings brad bird is like i'm like well mark let's listen to this person like he got out birded there is one where mark andrews i think they are talking about cutting some scene and mark is like then then we're just going to short change everything and then it's just going to be like oh who even cares it'll be like this and then he acts out basically like he lifts up one leg like he's a dog and then does like a fart noise and then wipes his feet like he's so basically he's like yeah we're just like shitting on the ground walking away from him like he was these animators always act things out at meetings they're so trained in act outs mark andrews is

very passionate and but yeah if you silly newton and andrews they're like the three they're called the three caballeros of the production and they're also shown hosting a margarita party as well while working on it. There's just so many Hawaiian shirts at Pixar. It makes sense. Oh, God. And also, while I'm being also in those Lasseter stories, looseness with alcohol is definitely part of Lasseter's problem.

I think they changed that part of their company culture. Hopefully so, yeah. I think for years after, Andrews is one of the top guys on the pixar story team he's also famous infamous for he's the guy who when they took brave away from brenda chapman he's the guy who directed it but it won the oscar that year and they had to accept it together as well i would have liked to have seen that if they hadn't like chickened out on brenda chapman's vision i would have really loved to have seen that like it's i mean that's one of those things where you look at pixar's history you're like oh so brad bird gets to like

disagree with people and be this singular auteur who gets to write and direct his movie but if brenda chapman has a vision for it you know it's not good enough for me i think we need to hand this to somebody else you think about who makes these choices and of course uh andrews lately though he just was director of a netflix series i had not heard of called super giant robot brothers yeah i just saw that and i thought what it's another of those things that like netflix released in 2022 with no no ads and unless you're super online in the animation industry you'd have no clue it existed and also he's a gendy tartakovsky guy oh okay he did storyboards on primal for for instance but i do want to shout out at least one top level woman

of the few that were involved in it but uh effects supervisor sandra karpman uh worked very hard on overseeing the unprecedented number of effects shots in the movies, which means like fire, water, anything that like explodes. Apparently 781 effects shots in the entire movie. I believe it. And yes, oh, I did have a good quote here too of, is the film Randian? Here's the response I found from an 05 interview with Brad Bird when asked about it. Well, it's bothered me that people have appropriated some of this stuff and said that it's right wing or whatever.

It's certainly not my view of it. Some people say that the thing of celebrating mediocrity or whatever is like Ayn Rand. And I liked Ayn Rand for about six months when I was 22. But you start to realize she has zero sense of humor and that sometimes compromise can be a good thing and something that makes something better rather than worse. You know, my own thoughts about this are I feel like Brad Bird internalized

a lot of Randy and stuff and made it personal and made it about him and didn't think about the wider implications for the rest of the world. And when it comes up in movies like this, you do think about those implications and for the rest of the world and when it comes up in movies like this you do think about those implications and it comes up as really sour and bitter and ugly and i was honestly expecting more of that in here so when the few times it pops up it's really noticeable and it feels like well this is points that are being made in a

different movie like this does not feel like the overall point of this movie it's like where king of the hill all of a sudden has like people take advantage of this movie it's like where king of the hill all of a sudden has like people take advantage of the disability claims yeah like wait what it's just like weird axe grinding that takes you out of a story you were enjoying where you know complaining about participation trophies and all that other shit you're like and then there's things in the movie that actually disagree with that well like where bob was working at an insurance place and he's being paid to deny claims a randy in person would say, well, that woman should have worked harder. And, you know, maybe she could have pulled herself up by her bootstraps and could have afforded better care.

But this is what she deserves in life. Yeah, that's there are these moments of compassion in it where they're like, well, wait, you should have you should care about these people and help them. them like he i think it is true that probably uh in in a lot of ways politically uh brad bird who's a big npr listener like he's he has more liberal bona fides yeah yeah that's why there's some casting in this movie that's that's npr based and he's done multiple npr appearances i don't think he is like he's not rand paul like he's he like that but yes I think especially when it comes to artistic vision and feeling like I am an artistic guy who's being held

down by a system that doesn't want exceptionalism I can see how if you're as he said 22 and you read the fountain head then that is inspiring to you like oh this guy couldn't build his building so tall because of all the rules yeah and i'm sure that uh this is just speculation by the way i'm sure that being

a rich hollywood liberal he also thinks like what we really need are just some very smart conservatives who aren't crazy we need a strong republican party to make our country better not that he wants them to be in power but he's like oh they just suddenly went crazy i feel like if you're that kind of npr listener, that's what you think. He probably sees himself as like the, I would say a small C conservative. I mean, the Trump, it probably helped him a lot that two came out during the Trump administration because then he could, unlike where back then he's like, look, I'm not for Kerry or Bush or whatever.

Stop asking me in 2018 for a guy like him it's very easy to say donald trump is an aberration and wrong and for our country and you can be much more full-throated in a disagreement with him than you could be about w bush if he did agree or disagree with w bush you didn't want to say one way or the other just writing bradbury political fanfic at this point but uh yeah there's ugly, I would say conservative stuff in this movie that doesn't really fit. But I feel like it's just him making these ideas very personal, not thinking about like how they affect other people. Yeah.

And it's really hard not to extrapolate. The big one that hit me wasn't just all the like complaining about the trophies or this celebration of mediocrity shit or if everyone's special no one is thing the thing that gets me now watching it in today's current political climate is the idea that in their job superheroes cause so much damage as to be needing to be outlawed because it costs people too much the numbers they say in this are not even close to one year worth of settlements for bad police misconduct like as in false arrest excessive force all that kind of stuff like it's in the billions that it's like and this is just major cities like

this the the three billion dollars number i i see thrown around a lot is just a survey of america like 25 major american cities this is not all of america and so when i see numbers like that i'm like then no i uh the the superheroes would just keep getting to do it like yeah yeah i really feel like the iranian stuff in this is more naive than hateful no for sure yeah i i think so too i think bird is i feel like incredibles 2 stepped away from it some and it had there were a few lines in it where at the very least violet got to say something like oh that actually sounds like a liberal thing of like it's show what we're going to trust what the government tells us about this or something i was like oh that's cute but it really didn't help him that his 2015 movie is basically atlas shrugged about

like gulch gulch oh happens tomorrowland tomorrowland yeah like the plot in atlas shrugged and i've not read the full book who how could you possibly read it and not go crazy? Yeah. But I've read sections that are like, oh, yeah. Then John Gulch just speaks for like 80 pages explaining why he left society because of the leeches and everything. And, yeah, I mean, I don't think Brad Bird agrees with the idea that like the easy extrapolation from especially atlas shrugged of the greatest in our society aren't creative people it's the people who own companies and they need to have fewer rules put on them for what they own but i'm sure we'll get more into it when we do the movie but yeah so uh let's talk about the cast real quick i like that like in

iron giant these are famous people i wouldn't say they're unknowns except for a couple but they did not cast for fame like on a dreamworks movie like he he did want voices that were good for the voices and that starts with craig t nelson in the lead who you know not unfamous but in the year 2004 coach had been off the air for a while at that point yeah and hey i was a big coach viewer i thought he was very funny and he's great in this movie and i thought that was an inspired choice a very curveball choice for this main character it's it's perfect because he can play he can play like a strong angry guy but he also has the comedy chops like he can be a funny dude. He's great.

And he was great in the sequel, too. And then you have amazing actress Holly Hunter. She is so good. She's still acting up a ton in stuff to these days. She played Helen, but she's also more of a character actress, I think, too. But she's so great. This is her first voice role? It was.

It was. She's never done it before. Now, when I think about her recent roles, I know she's been in this is her first voice role it was okay she's never done it before now when i think about her recent roles i know she's been a lot of great like indie films or smaller films but i think of her as uh for that jar of piss handed to her by lex luther in the batman v superman i keep forgetting that's real it's because she says t, like, uh, don't, you don't give me a jar of piss and call it my granny's iced tea. And then she sees a jar of piss on her desk. I declare. Well,

then she explodes. Like, okay. She explodes. Well, it explodes her. Well, uh,

Lex Luthor blows up the Capitol. I thought it was like a rigged jar of piss. Uh, no, they hit it in a, um in a guy's wheelchair, basically. What the fuck? To explain the movie is we could be here all day. That is a more Randian superhero movie than this one.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. In this one, Mr. Incredible really wants to help people. In that movie, Superman andman are fucking sick at helping people who are just like they they view them as like vermin who don't deserve it yes for dash you've got child actor spencer fox who pretty much didn't do much after this but he grew up to be a rock musician he has his own little band how nice but he does bring a lot of like real kid energy to dash there's there's little moments where he like giggles and i'm like oh that just sounds like a kid that's it's very

natural and then of course uh there's sarah vowel who had never done voiceover before but brad bird being an npr head uh-huh fell in love with her voice and thought she would be perfect for violet i can say this because i've read three of her books a very long time ago because when you're uh young and liberal and in college in the early a very long time ago because when you're young and liberal and in college in the early aughts there are certain things you have to read like Sarah Vowell and David Sedaris and David Rakoff and

Michael Moore all of those people. Al Franken all of these smug cutesy books and she's a writer of smug cutesy books. Yes. Although I do say like she knows a lot about history but there's a certain npr tone especially from that time that i think i read the books thinking this is how smart people sound but i don't ever want to sound like that and i hope you don't think i sound smart but uh

yeah she committed the greatest crime irritating me with popular writing you've never read the partly cloudy patriot oh no i did pass the cannoli yeah uh assassin's vacation was good i like that one that was my favorite of them i so i had heard her on npr before this but i didn't listen to her audiobooks until after seeing the movie well it's also this kind of one-two punch like uh she's in this movie and then the next year i believe is when the audiobook version of john hodgman's uh areas of my expertise book comes out yeah yeah she's in that and so i was like oh well this john hodgman guy's so funny unfortunately john hodgman kind of fell into that territory i think he does he was funnier than that stuff but then he kind of just he became one

of those people it's where the money goes. And he's, I guess the word I'm looking for is commentator. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I hate them. Uh,

a whole generation of these commentators. I, well, you know why I hate them and I'm getting fired up here. It's because for, I think like the first, at least five years of podcasting, every podcaster was like,

well, I really want to be like This American Life. And like one guy did it. He lasted five episodes because it's a lot of work. And honestly, nobody cares enough to make that profitable. Oh, yeah. I remember that guy worked really hard on that video game podcast. It seemed like it really hurt him to do,

or like it was draining for him. And it was very good, but that is not how to make anything viable in the world of podcasting. Only if you're supported by the government can you do it and no one's giving us a big fat paycheck i'm turning into bob incredible over here well also if you're uh also it helps being you know a tax write-off from donations like from bill and melinda gates as well yeah yeah i mean i i listened to a lot of this american life i eventually got sick of it but I felt like that was what every podcaster was aspiring to when I first started doing this, and it sickened me.

One, and we can also blame This American Life for Serial as well. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, I liked Assassination Vacation was my favorite of the three I listened to. I liked other ones, okay. The one about Hawaii's history was kind of interesting and I do remember she made this I think about this one a lot of this good point of like

some British guy some British friend of hers asked like oh as an American what's who's the most hated like British general from the Revolutionary War and she makes a point like we don't know that shit like nobody knows who the British generals were we don't know that shit. Nobody knows who the British generals were. We don't care.

I do think she has a good voice. She was also an adult woman then. She's like 10, 15 years older than us but she's playing a kid. She does have kind of a childlike voice or a teenage girl's voice and also on the DVD you can see they did animation test

footage for Violet that is from uh one of her MPR pieces where she's recorded firing like an old cannon like she wanted to like fire like an 1812 kind of cannon so she fires it and then it's like whoa and her reaction to it they animate that with with Violet it's kind of fun well then uh we we might have known sarah vowel some okay but one actor we were big fans of this time well i guess this is three years removed from the end uh the brief end of the view is universe yeah we thought it was over but it came back two times yes uh as kevin smith would call him skateboardings jason lee that is what he called it and yes folks he escaped from scientology he's safe now

he's not in scientology anymore good for him he's probably not hanging out with uh giovanni rabisi anymore too bad for him but yes jason lee plays syndrome they even have a joke at the very start just to let you know they know this is why they cast him mystery or incredible says what's your name like bucky brody buddy buddy like he says brody oh yeah he does say brody you're right yeah which that's why he got caught like basically he's just like five percent more evil than brody is brody and mall rats is an evil character but syndrome is like five percent more evil i think he brings a lot of great energy to the role when you compare it to how tired and uh he is in the chipmunks movies it's like oh yeah back when jason lee

had like energy and excitement in his life this is the the my name is earl era right for him uh yes yeah my name is earl is also pumping tons of money into uh into scientology as well has that been confirmed well i mean multiple Scientologists worked all over it. I just know Ethan Supley and Jason Lee worked on it. I think, well, also, it's the whole thing about karma, and it does feel a little bit like going clear. When you know the principles of

going clear, it does seem kind of similar. But at the very least, if Jason Lee and Ethan Supley each made millions of dollars on it, and then they then funneled that they just gave millions to scientology as they always do in that regard by name is a real funded science absolutely you know i'm glad he made it out i don't know how but now now he's no longer a scientologist and ethan supley is jacked he is huge you saw him and i barely recognized him in

his cameo in clerks 3 oh Oh, yeah, that was him. Yeah, he's no longer the large non-sailboat seeing guy. Kevin Smith must be this intermediary between the guys who, you know, Kevin Smith can still talk to Jason Lee. Supplee can't talk to Jason Lee, though, but he can talk to Kevin Smith. Maybe he sends messages between them. Who knows? But, yes, he still does voiceover work to this day.

And we bear bears. Jason Lee does. He's still acting. He's got a great voice. It was a good choice. Again, an inspired choice. These are all very inspired. He is so fucking good.

His syndrome. I love it. And then also in a major moment for Pixar, not to say that no African-American or black actors worked on a Pixar movie before this but none were in actual like well he's like sixth build in the movie but still Samuel L Jackson is in it playing Frozone it is pretty much they said like well it will do your Samuel L Jackson thing just you know do that yeah I mean it is uh breaking the glass ceiling for black people in Pixar movies. It's also the most obvious choice from this era.

But hey, somebody had to do it and it was him. And Frozone just looks like him. Yeah, yeah. As well. So they have a lot of fun animating him, especially like, where is my super suit? And he's fun he's fun and I mean it certainly added more edge to the movie that a guy mainly famous at the time for r-rated movies is a major character in it and you just feel like he's just on the verge of saying motherfucker at any time that's what I

feel like it just feels like those are edited out and now he is so it's he's he's a marvel man he's been nick fury for friggin 14 15 years now yeah uh and still is still is he's about to be nick fury in uh secret invasion disney plus event what the fuck is this did they ever make a nick fury movie this is basically the most connective tissue sorry to interrupt no Is he just connective tissue? Sorry to interrupt. No, no, he is connective tissue, but so in the Captain Marvel movie, he is pretty much like the third most important character and he is in more of it than just like two scenes, but Secret Invasion is the first movie that is really,

or not movie, but it is the first story that he is like the main guy in. Yeah. You see, this is why I like The Incredibles because you just told me about a streaming series featuring a character who was in a whole bunch of these movies that I don't even know about, and apparently it's important. I mean, you certainly have to watch all of the previous Marvel movies that involve the Skrulls.

So Captain Marvel, Spider-Man, Far From Home. You've seen the second Tom Holland Spider-Man movie, right? No. The one- Only one in three. Oh, boy. Well, if you were to skip one, that's the one to skip. But it's basically Spider-Man is James Bond now.

That's the movie. You see, I didn't need to do homework to watch The Incredibles. And so that's who plays Frozone in the movie. We have the late character actress, Elizabeth Pena, as Mirage. Oh, late. Yeah, sadly. She has been gone i believe since 2015 and uh but yeah also interesting that she she had brad bird history she is in batteries not included which brad bird is one of the screenwriters for okay wow wow okay and uh then

of course bird himself famously voiced edna mode, which he tells when he came up with the character of Edna Mode. I mean, obviously, she has similarities to Edith Head for sure. Edith Head being? Oh, sorry. A famous costume designer from like the 60s. It seems like a hateful caricature of her. A little bit. Played by a man.

Yeah. He still did her in the sequel. I wonder if he's a little iffy now. I don't know. But I will he still did her in the sequel i wonder it feels a little iffy now i don't know but he's i will say he's fun in the role oh he's he's great in the role he does so say not just edith head but also a big one for him was when he worked on the simpsons bet middler came in and he said she is this tiny woman who had the biggest energy in the room. And he wanted to put that into Edna mode as well. That was a big thing for him.

But he didn't try to cast her in this. You know, apparently Lily Tomlin was somebody they courted a lot and she did not want to do it. They couldn't get her. He never said, I'll get you for this, Midler. By get you for this, I mean I'll get you for this role. I'll get you for this, Midler! And by get you for this, I mean I'll get you for this role. I'll get you for this role, Midler. And filling out a lot of the staff, or a lot of the other voice roles are staff, as is tradition in Pixar movies, including Agent Rick Dicker.

That's D-I-C-K-E-R, Dicker. He's voiced by the late Pixar legend Bud Lucky. Oh, yeah, and then I saw that his short, Boundin', is the short before this movie. Yeah, it's almost a little distracting to hear him like, oh, I just, Bud Lucky has such a specific voice to hear it in Bounding as the only voice, and then hear him as Rick Dicker in the movie. It was slightly distracting. And also, in Pixar tradition, shawn and john ratzenberger

both have key roles in the film too uh and lastly uh along with the cast we have the music the soundtrack i think is great the score is fantastic it's michael giaccino uh as the composer it's his first pixar movie but not his last originally they actually wanted to hire one of the living composers who worked on classic james bond movies but the guy basically said i don't want to just repeat what i did 40 years ago which is what brad burn wanted so giacino's like okay i'll just make a great james bond theme and i love the jazzy theme i'm glad they didn't go with Randy Newman again. That really energized this, not having the... I'm a superhero.

You stretch too far and are you strong? Yeah, they're not even metaphors. Just literally stretching on the screen. So Giacchino, he would write many more memorable scores for tons of movies. Though when I hear this and then I think about, I hate to bring it back to the MCU, Bob, but the Marvel Studios fanfare is his theme as well. And you can totally hear the Incredibles in that Marvel Studios fanfare. Is that when you see all of the comic pages

flipping by? We're talking about a later one. Well, it's the later one where it's scans over the word Marvel Studios and then it's clips from the movie and it goes Okay, that's him? Yeah, that's him. And apparently Feige liked him so much that Giacchino's like, you know, I could direct live action.

So another special you don't need to watch, Bob, but I liked it as a Marvel fan, was the Werewolf by Night Disney's Plus special. He directed that as well. Really? And it's actually pretty experimental by MCU standards that it's all in black and white and pretty bloody and violent you know what's funny is i'm looking at his uh discography or his composography whatever you want to call it he he did the music for disney sky high which was the next year and i was reading reviews of of incredibles on uh letterbox and lots of people like that movie as well oh okay i didn't give i always heard it good, but I never gave it a chance because I was 23 when it came out.

It was marketed heavily as a kid's movie. There were just many sky-high mentions in Letterboxd Incredibles reviews for some reason. Interesting. And so, yes, production was right up to the wire. They had to be very careful planning out their resources and making cuts that even Brad Bird is like, fine, fine, we can do it. It ultimately came together as a testament to the skill of everyone involved, how hard everybody worked. There were multiple people in interviews who said they were thankful that Brad Bird kind of kicked him in the butt to move forward on this stuff and go to new heights. They said that they thought like they would have thought their first film starring humans would have been in like 2007

or 8 not not 2004 so this really leveled them up there and yeah came out three days after george bush was re-elected it is a huge hit makes 631 million at the box office and it also tons of critical praise the next year at the Oscars it beats Shrek 2 and Shark Tale for the best animated feature Oscar. Oh it won that Oscar it did yeah. Very cool. So Brad Bird Oscar winner that's when the Simpsons people had to finally respect

him. Well now we can let you in the room and of course now right afterwards perfectly timed DVD release comes out and they can put on the sticker Oscar winning film and it's full of special features and two right afterwards perfectly timed dvd release comes out and they can put on the sticker oscar winning film and it's full of special features and two shorts jack jack attack which basically is the deleted scenes of jack jack and his babysitter uh and it's a cute adventure but my favorite on it is mr incredible and pals which is a very cheap clutch cargo parody

intentionally cheap of like it's an in-universe cartoon starring Mr. Incredible and Frozone and Frozone's pissed that it's called and Pals and then also a white guy is voicing him he's very mad about that too there's like commentary on these yes there's in-character commentary

from Mr. Incredible and Frozone on it by by the real actors i thought so apparently roger ebert liked this movie as well oh of course he would of course three and a half out of four ah come on he liked finding me one more actually ah man i guess you know he likes the he likes the heart he that has more heart to than this movie i guess but uh it had this movie has a butt but if had boobs in it he'd give this another star you're right an extra half star elastic girl needs to be a little top heavier right yeah it's though it's also funny in this movie that it's about like oh man she thinks her butt looks too big which is you know a ma a white mom fear of uh back then and now it's

like that butt ain't big enough yeah Yeah, yeah. Actually, that scene caught me off guard because I was like, what's the expression she's making on her face? Her butt looks great. I rewound like, oh, for a while,

having a big butt was bad. She let herself go. Having this big butt is a bad thing and she does not like it. Now, I feel like there's like 80 Twitter accounts just called like,

Thick Mrs. Incredible. There was like an absolute, I wish I could find the picture. I took a picture of it at Toys R Us in 2018 because that's when the Incredibles 2 toys were coming out. And it was a toy of Mrs. Incredible on a motorcycle and her ass is just enormous on this toy. You know, one of my favorite things in Incredibles 2 is that it is kind of a role reversal of that. This is Mr. Incredible's movie, and she is kind of supporting his story in his midlife crisis. They swap it around for the sequel where this is about Elastigirl going back to work, and Mr. Incredible has to be the dad at home and hold down the house.

It is about those kind of gender norms and expectations and in an interesting way uh and and brad bird was ready to engage with that stuff but yeah so uh they also expand on that in the 2011 blu-ray with a ton of other extras disney plus has some deleted scenes but i would say the blu-ray which is relatively cheap now because uh physical media is uh is pretty cheap the blu-ray is totally worth cheap now because uh physical media is uh is pretty cheap the blu-ray is totally worth it for all those extras if you're looking for them it is they did not cheap out on those one thing i will say i had some vague memories of this but i'm looking at uh family dog the classic brad bird short the characters are almost kind of like well not one

for one but they have very similar body types except for the little girl but the mom's got a big butt the dad looks like mr incredible in a way uh so he is i mean it was still also drawing from that like nuclear family of the 50s idea too oh interesting i forgot i just think about that dog i don't think about the other characters in it and so after the movie comes out bird soon moves over to the trouble production of a movie about a cooking rat but for years afterwards there are rumors and teases that he'll do a sequel especially since it ends on a friggin cliffhanger not really but and and there were a video i remember a video game was like this video game picks up right from the end of the movie and you're fighting the underminer in the video game wow to bring us back to the mythical year of the uh you know mid-aughts i remember

that when ratatouille was announced people assumed it would fail because it had a french name oh yeah anti-french sentiment was very high when it was announced in like 2005 or whatever so they're like wow what a mistake that was i remember that now you're bringing that back yeah i i saw that movie in a berkeley theater with my visiting mom and dad and the the part of the movie is about how the dad thinks what the son his son is into is stupid and i kept looking at my dad during the movie like do you see like but i should have put a chef's hat on and started stirring something in a pot like but it's one of those classic stories of like you take your parents to the dad apologizes movie and it means nothing to them like they don't think about it like that was a dumb cartoon it's the meme of the guy looking at the gundam and saying well what a cool robot and then going over his head is the thing that says political commentary or war is evil or whatever.

Except in this time it's like, please apologize dad. But yeah, so it'll be 14 years before Brad Bird returns to both animation and the series. And it picks up right where the first movie left

off as well. And I do wonder for kids, what does a child who watches these back to back on disney plus like it must look night and day to you that but how can that how can this movie compare visually to the sequel if you're just a dumb kid who doesn't know the context yeah even just seeing a screenshot of the sequel as the credits started rolling i was like wow that does look different 14 years really did pass yeah but hey we'll probably talk about it in some other

future podcast maybe 14 years from now but those are all stories for another day but so that is the history of the Incredibles when we come back we'll challenge our own mediocrity to talk about the Incredibles. ¶¶ In four days... Honey!

Where's my super suit? Why do you need to know? Time Magazine says The Incredibles explodes into the year's wittiest adventure. Disney presents a Pixar film. It's two thumbs up for The Incredibles. Rated PG. Starts Friday. Where is my super suit? It was a totally amazing battle.

My dad was like, boom, boom, boom, boom. But Cinderella was like, kaboom. So I used my super speed. But then my sister Violet's like, Dash, save me. Baboom. So I zip it and... Baboom! And that's how I beat Cinderella.

Really? Is that how it happened? At McDonald's, you can get an incredible happy meal with one of eight toys from The Incredibles, a new Disney presentation of a Pixar film. Hey, no Ford films! I love it! Now, a look inside the secret files of Go! Go! The Incredibles. Walt Disney Pictures presents a Pixar Animation Studios film.

Accessing profiles. Superhero profiles. Dash. Superpowers. Speed. Acceleration. Reflexing. Weakness.

Young lady, you are in charge until I get back. Authority. What? Here we go! He doesn't always behave. Would you get that, Mom? We all get cool outfits. Ha-ha!

The Dash likes. But he'd make any parent proud. I got it! That's my boy! Yee-haw! Dash is in trouble? Either he's in trouble, or he's gone. To access more profiles of The Incredibles, you can grab a parent and go online.

I love our family. Stop running in the house! What are you going to do? Hey, no force fields! This is human. That's fine. I mean, I can break through walls, I just can't. That's fine. I mean, I can break through walls. I just can't. That's fine.

I gotta get this. So, Mr. Incredible, do you have a secret identity? Every superhero has a secret identity. I don't know a single one who doesn't. Who wants the pressure of being super all the time? Of course I have a secret identity. Can you see me in this at the, um, at the, at the supermarket? Come on.

I would want to go shopping as Elastigirl, you know what I mean? Super ladies, they're always trying to tell you their secret identity. Think it'll strengthen the relationship or something like that. I said, girl, I don't want to know about your mild-mannered alter ego or anything like that. I mean, you tell me you're a super-mega-ultra-lightning babe, that's all right with me. I'm good. I'm good. No matter how many times you save the world,

it always manages to get back in jeopardy again. I mean, sometimes I just want it to stay saved, you know, for a little bit. I feel like the maid. I just cleaned up this mess. Can we keep it clean for ten minutes? You get to that point. Please.

Don't get up yet. Sometimes I think I just like the simple life, you know, relax a little and raise a family. Settle down, are you kidding? I'm at the top of my game. I'm right up there with the big dogs. Girls, come on. Leave the saving of the world to the men i don't think so i don't think so

and you just heard the iconic incredibles theme taking us in from the break and uh we this is recorded a longer span in between than we usually do so I don't fully remember everything we said in the last time there's been a lot of podcasts in between you know I'm happy they didn't get Randy Newman to do the soundtrack because I'm sure over the credits you hear like they're incredible the superheroes it's the very first things Brad Bird says in the 2004 commentary is they intentionally broke the tradition up to that point of having the Randy Newman score that starts it out like the over the Pixar thing that they had original orchestration. Because he's like, I just didn't want the Randy Newman score setting the tone for this movie. I needed it to be this. And yeah,

there's, there's a lot. I want to say that 2011 Blu-ray, it's one of the last times they made Blu-rays with like quality and a budget and like physical media that Disney gave a shit about. That was quite an era. It's, it's really great.

Cause they, so they take all the great stuff that's on the DVDs, including two different DVD commentaries and a ton of making ofs and deleted scenes and all that. And then they made like three hours of new stuff on it, including a really cool thing called Path to Pixar Story Artists of just story artists, including ones who worked on this movie. Basically like doing a job fair speech about how do you become a story artist and and it was really nice like a tribute to the an under talked about group of creators at pixar there are some of the extras on disney plus like deleted scenes and whatnot but not the extent that they're on the blu-ray and then they even have uh what seems like a disney mandated interactive entertainment element

to it that they're like we have to put that on the back that it needs to have an interactive of like basically not really game but it's a it's a little kind of like powerpoint presentation about how the island no manasan is because get it no man is an island oh oh okay uh but you know what i didn't get it originally but now i'm like oh that's very clever i'll admit only when doing this research did i notice that it was like oh no man is saying is no man is an okay that's really good you know i thought it was just them giving it the name of a middle eastern country sort of like anything that ends in stan i thought that was their version of that but no it's a very good pun pun. But the interactive element is basically that they, in universe,

explain that the island got repossessed by the government and then sold to a tourist company, and so it is redeveloped as a robot-run island vacation that's relaxing people, and it's like a vacation guide. Oh, and also, for the first time in HD, they have the teaser trailer for the movie that they made, which is original animation that isn't in the movie. Which when I watched it, it all came flooding back of Mr. Incredible being told like time to suit up again. And it's just him struggling to get the belt over his big old gut.

And then the belt buckle flies off. Oh, so it's a teaser trailer. Yes. Okay. And you'll note, if you watch it in the HD detail, you can see it's the older design of Mr. Incredible, where he's a little more bald than he is in the movie. I think apparently Disney didn't want him to be that bald.

People hate bald men. And then they bought Homer Simpson. Also, how many times watching this were you thinking mr incredible's a lot like homer simpson i was thinking it a few times yeah i mean brad worked on the simpsons and uh this is a very 1960s family which is the roots of the simpsons as well so uh mr incredible uh he can get together in homer camp though and yeah yeah he he actually can go through like an arc of growth and stuff and and uh last thing i'll say that's a fun thing to watch on the

dvd and blu-ray if you don't have it is the mr incredible and pals cartoon oh yeah that was uh i think that was even on the old dvd because i remember people talking about that extra a lot it's it's a lot of fun because it is hardcore animation junkies making fun of the very earliest tv animation that was as cheap as possible like there's a great bit where mr incredible is watching frozone freeze something and he says you're you're creating a new bridge out of ice it's amazing but they don't show it it's just just a picture of Mr. Incredible saying it. And also they have in-character commentary from Mr. Incredible and Frozone over it. And it's funny because Samuel L. Jackson in-character says that he thinks the guy voicing him is a white guy and it's pissing him off. But I can say that the actor who's portraying him uh michael asbury is black but he just the way they have him play it

is like he's supposed to be written like got stuffy white dudes in the 60s told him to say like that's hip brother like that kind of stuff so it's uh and also it's full of like rabidly pro-america anti-communist stuff in it too it's really it's it's a really funny uh parody of old cartoons those things used to be funny but now uh we're just getting that kind of propaganda again yeah yeah it's just uh no this is for real like you can't again this 2004 i guess in the early aughts when they were making this they could still feel a little bit of the end of history vibes of like oh remember when that ultra nationalism stuff of america that's funny but now when someone's mean to you online you can just say oh that's a russian bot you're all russian bots just like the

evil uh lightning bug lady who's in that mr incredible and pals cartoon well you know uh i feel like maybe i was a little harsh on this movie with the history segment i do stand by my 3.5 star review upon a second viewing i did warm up to it a bit but i still have the same issue and that the islands uh sequence takes a little too long but then uh spoilers we're doing bugs life next by the way so you're gonna hear that at the end of the podcast i'm telling you now that's a similar problem except it's more exaggerated in that uh with uh this movie i feel like the third act should just be the island but it's half the movie in a bug's life the third act is like the back two-thirds of the movie where flick goes to the city and then finds a circus

trip and then comes back to an island and we're there for like another hour oh man really yeah i did not remember i in my memory if you'd ask me when does he go to the city and recruit the guys i'd say oh it's got to be like a direct center of the movie right no no no he brings them back to ant island at the beginning of act two and then it's really meandering so i feel like this can be a common problem in these pixar movies where the third act often occupies too much territory and i get a little bored i do think they spend too much time on this island i wish they did but i still stand by what i said about sarah bell i don't like her writing uh well yeah you know there is a cute but it's too cute also on the dvd now i'm going back to dvd on the dvd and the blu-ray as well they have the 2004 essay she did about making

the movie and it is a very npr style essay about like but i mean it is cute i thought it was cute but now it is so like twee and it so takes me back to like being a very smug and satisfied liberal in the year 2005 yeah yeah again it's harmless but after we recorded that podcast i thought oh my god was i was i too mean but then i investigated her i hired a detective no i i read some essays and i thought well i i was on the nose about this and again not for me her writing had a place in time and now i look back and it's kind of embarrassing but ultimately she's a harmless figure she's an npr liberal very rich she writes her little essays they're very cute and people like them but they personally grade on me as someone who bought three

of her books it's nuts that she gets uh well hey i'm happy there's a lot more useless people out there who make uh more money than her so i can't even be mad at like uh yeah i and hey craig t nelson has worse politics than sarah vowel oh yes that's true uh which that i mean the the conservatism i think comes through a little in the character well i i have a lot of political thoughts it's it's also uh i'll do my best to recount the the best deleted scenes that are on the dvd but there are blu-ray but there are a lot uh there's basically like 30 minutes of stuff that brad bird really wanted in it but this is already the at that time by far the longest pixar film and all they were doing was trying to get him to like, you got to decrease these minutes. Like each minute is like millions of dollars.

Now up to this point, only Incredibles 2 and Cars of the first Cars are longer by a minute or two than this movie. Yeah, Cars is a long one. It's two hours. I mean, that shows you how indulgent Lasseter is. One of the biggest changes, though, I'd say the second biggest change of all the lead scenes but it's right at the start so I'll say it now which is originally the intro was not the two camera testimonial documentary stuff or the flashback it's a whole new scene where they are newly undercover but you're meeting them like they're just regular people and violet's a baby and it's them at a uh at a barbecue trying to fit in and i'm kind of glad they cut it because basically bradburn had this thing where helen is being

judged by a career woman for being a homemaker and she has a real speech about like how important it is to be a parent as well and how she shouldn't be judged for being a stay at home parent. And it is directly pulled from his wife choosing to be a stay at home parent while giving up her career while Brad Bird pursues his career. Like she was a film editor before they had kids. Okay. Yeah.

I wasn't really sure who his wife was, but I know they've been married for a long time and I'm sure she gives him a ton of like help in uh and it's uh in story stuff so i would say for the people who already were saying that this movie is a conservative uh tribute to the power of the traditional family if that scene had been in there of helen telling off some smug satisfied career woman of like i'm not giving her the best years of my life for some little puke machine then then they'd really think that this is a conservative movie some crotch spawn but there is a funny joke where bob uh i kept writing down mr incredible my notes because like i can't keep writing bob it feels i kept writing bob because mr incredible took too long to type uh but he accidentally like chops his he hits a knife

into his fingers and then he has to pretend he cut his fingers off and they're gonna have to get reattached so that's interesting and that's where syndrome is the opening movie villain he's like the bomb voyage and is quickly dispatched in the first six or seven minutes and when he was showing that scene to the the story group the tell the the famous pixar story group they were like this guy's way better than your boring main villain like the syndrome should be the villain of this movie yeah i, I still wanted more. See, I kind of like that idea for the cut opening because I really wanted more of the family trying to integrate into society. That was the most interesting part of the movie for me. So when they leave that behind, the action scenes are very cool, of course, but the main attraction for me is the first half of the movie.

And I kind of like that idea more, although the opening is interesting and I do like the look back to the past or whatever year that is. Yeah, it's fun to see the just the 15 years ago of when basically they're having all the comic book style adventures that you imagine them to have. And then real life gets in the way and ruins it. Like this is about this is about your 20s ending it's also about like oh marriage and family ended this chapter in their lives and they both had to give up so much stuff it's also funny too that it starts with these like to camera doc testimonial things this is before the u.s office became not to say there had never been mockumentaries before that they weren't even like very popular in 2004 but this was before the u.s office really became

a big deal i think it premiered in 04 right i think it was 05 i think it was like mid-season replacement in 05 so it's just around the corner so so this was fresher than it feels now when you see this now you're like oh another office thing yeah i think it's actually brave for them to open this movie like this because it's intentionally made to have bad audio and video so this is the first thing you see in the new pixar movie and if you're not an educated film goer not very media literate you might think this looks like shit sounds bad it's the camera's operated poorly and it's in a very small aspect ratio and rainy yeah i mean it's it's fun to just hear the them get interviewed And there's a little edge to it. A lot of this feels like Brad Bird trying to get up to the line of what's edgy enough for Pixar.

Especially with the Frozone character, I think. And it felt to me like he had so much control over this movie that I could definitely tell the one moment where it felt like this was a studio note he had to follow. And we'll get to it, but I'll tell you up front. It's the fact that the remote control controls the robot. Three characters say it, and he has a flashback to how it operates. I feel like test screening folks did not understand that. And Disney was like, you have to say it three times. No one understands what's happening in this last scene here.

We had dumb fucking kids in this theater. Tell them dumbasses what's going on. Also, don't you miss when they had special Pixar animation of the Disney logo at the start? Like, wasn't that nice? Yeah, yeah. And again, I just watched A Bug's Life and I really missed their little fanfare they made just for the Disney logo. Yeah. I totally miss it.

But now they want to obscure like who made what. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we're also, by the the way we're recording this this morning when it came out that the new the new marvel series on disney plus like literally uses a ai art for its opening oh shit i didn't know this yes yeah the for the secret invasion show they they were up front about it like we went with an ai art company because it looks weird like aliens and and lots of animation professionals

rightly are calling this out as bullshit like i saw i saw mike rionda who's a like he's a big cheese in in animation he he straight up tweeted this is bullshit marvel disney you've got all the money in the world pay a fucking art you can pay an artist to make a weird drawing you don't have to use ai art well we recently saw that uh maybe a few weeks ago disney laid off a lot of head pixar people like higher up pixar people oh i miss that like galen sussman who saved toy story 2 oh right right right right uh you know this is a problem of mine that's i don't need to explain it she should not have been laid off no no i disagree with that. But go back to our Toy Story 2 podcast. But Bob, I saw Twitter replies telling you that you wanted her to be fired and you thought she sucked.

I sent an email to Disney. Yeah, no, I mean. And then we're on the brink of also Elemental being their biggest bomb right now and Pixar not being having the prestige they once had even just a few years ago. I think it technically had a smaller opening day weekend than Toy Story. Definitely not adjusted for inflation. Toy Story's opening weekend was like $29 million, and then it grew very quickly.

It had a very long tail. This one was like $29 million as well, which that's not good in 2023. With every movie being all or nothing, especially when the movies have 200 million dollar budgets if you're under 100 million i feel like that is considered an abject failure like the flash yes oh man the flash too i was also thinking about uh how crappy the flash looks compared to this movie too uh with the dash scenes but yeah no the thing with

elemental as well i think that and look we're we're part of the problem we didn't watch it i don't plan to watch i say advertise a better movie to me and i'll be interested it just looked like romeo and juliet but with a pixar secret world of things stapled to it and it's just like what if a thing had a job it's just it's a joke it feels like a parody of a pixar movie but also i'm part of the problem because I'm thinking to myself I'm not that jazzed about this and I know it'll be on Disney plus soon enough so why even bother that them putting Turning Red and Soul directly onto Disney plus and I get it was partially the lockdown but them skipping theaters and that taught parents especially, why am I spending $70 to get tickets for my whole family to go see a movie when instead I can just wait for it to be on Disney Plus

and my dumb kid doesn't know the difference? With how short-sighted the company was, though, that's when they were getting the most sign-ups ever. And they thought, like, you know, if these trends continue, hey! But then they realized there's a maximum amount of people that will sign up for this. And also we are undercutting anything that happens in theaters because we've trained our audience to understand that. Just wait for the Disney Plus release.

And then the one they put in the movie theaters is Lightyear, which then, you know, the reviews are like me. And then now the reviews for this are me. And also it's terrible timing that it's up against across the Spider-verse which gets glowing reviews for it it being a good cgi movie and i'm sure mario is now in its 20th week and still in theaters i'm sure it didn't leave theaters yet right uh you know i bet it is still in there though even though it's on blu-ray now that's right yeah i was gonna say i thought i saw ads for being on demand now too which sorry we're recording this on a day there was a Nintendo Direct but isn't that crazy that like once the movie is fully through its

like theatrical cycle that's when they announce like four new Mario games why did they do that I guess I mean I really can't think of a reason other than they couldn't announce it until now

but now everyone loves Mario again I mean or maybe this is just identifying people have always loved Mario so why not announce games now when people are at their most Mario loving peak of their lives I am so fucking jazzed for wonder I that it looks like they finally

decided to have fun in a 2D Mario game again isn Isn't that cool? Yeah, it looks really good. And by the way, there are several theaters around us that are showing the Mario movie still. Holy cow, man. Yeah. If I had kids, I would try to convince them to see Elemental before seeing Mario movie again for a second time. But they'd probably want to see Mario again for a second time.

We'd split up. They can take care of themselves. Yeah. But yes. Okay. see Mario again for a second time we'd split up they can take care of themselves yeah uh but uh but yes okay the way this movie starts though we have the Disney logo you know and Incredibles 2 I just re-watched it it also felt like Bird trying to break the mold he really hates fitting into molds you may know this yes and he breaks the mold in that one, too, where it's not the same fucking Disney intro that everything has. They actually did a, like, stylistic 2D Incredible style version of the Disney Castle bullshit opener.

Like, it's an original one. It's really good. And we have a little testimonial. And a thing to note with these characters is that they all say the opposite of where they're going to go like these are this is the folly of youth you hear frozone say he's a ladies man he doesn't want to settle down and now he's you know i got a very strong-willed wife who keeps him who's always off screen and and then you've got uh mr incredible saying oh i want to you know start a family or whatever and then you got elastigirl saying oh give this up to the men at the height of my career

no way and then they're going to change those positions after the government shutdown so it's it's a clever way to set up your characters i also think uh we see the logo after this this uh testimonial stuff it's very 1960s but also very 2000s core oh yeah at the same time yeah i agree yeah the the orange is the that's very 2004 and so much of like syndromes business is also very 2000 core too it's also funny to know how they're always battling with fabric in this movie. Like this is them showing off fabric. One of the first things in it is the very specialized motion and realistic fabric work of clipping a little lav mic onto your super suit and have it like work like real fabric. Yeah.

I forgot this movie is all about, you know about hair and fabric because these are humans. I mean, go back to Toy Story 1, the last time we saw humans, and I guess 2. They're doing stuff with hair, but it's not nearly as high-tech as what's going on here. And with the Elastigirl stuff, I do think it's important to people who view this only through the stuff that's conservative about it, especially when it comes to the traditional family and all that i think it's very important to show that like elastigirl is his equal like she is more strong will than him she is smarter in active ways she's a better detective she's better than being a superhero she can fly a plane she can fly a plane like i like that she is very much you know in your face of no i'm the best fucking superhero i'm elastigirl man like i like that she is very much you know in your face of no i'm the best fucking superhero

i'm elastigirl man like i'm not giving this up and and holly hunter is so i think she's maybe the best actor in this whole movie like and it's full of great actors like samuel jackson is also great but they told him can you just you know do the thing you do and all the other movies he's like sure just be Just be yourself. And he's a comic nerd too, so I'm sure he just loved doing it. I mean, Craig T. Nelson and Holly Hunter are not voice actors, so you get some different kind of performances than you would expect. I mean, Pixar is really good at hiring nonstandard people for their movies.

It's also funny that they held back from doing anything like a poltergeist reference in this when he is other than coach. That's his most famous role as as the dad and poltergeist, which is also a bit of a commentary on the same era of by a guy of similar age as Brad Bird. And Brad Bird has his own past relationship working with Steven Spielberg. And Spielberg, I think you're still pals. Or at least, you know, they work together. But yes, when this opens, it then explodes into the big action set piece. This is also where it feels, this is more of a James Bond movie than a superhero movie.

Like, that's really what it is. It's a tribute to James Bond more than superhero. Absolutely. I think we identified that up front where uh this is not just about uh the silver age it's also about bond while bond is kind of on a break right now him and his tux in his transforming car that may as well be an aston martin like that he is james bond in this sequence it's an incredibly bond sequence oh forgive me if i'm repeating myself in the history section i I didn't mention this.

A funny thing with the character of Elastigirl, they name her, and I believe Bird said he did not know this. That's the name of a somewhat obscure DC Comics character from the 60s. So instead of changing it, they negotiated with Warner that they could call her Elastigirl,

but they couldn't sell toys called elastigirl so she's elastigirl in the movie and at least in 2004 they couldn't sell toys of her with elastigirl i am not sure if that remained the same for merch going forward afterwards could they sell the toys but a caller misses incredible yeah yeah okay i don't know if she can be in costume for toys in a flashback elastigirl costume for the second movie i definitely saw weird figures of her okay and a motorcycle with her giant ass i remember that her her dump truck motorcycle yes we're gonna be talking a lot about elastigirl's butt in this at certain points i think but but yeah so mr incredible transforms in his cool james bond

car it's also the batmobile it's kind of both of those things and yeah brad bird was like 10 when the batman show came on so it means a whole lot to him and then here's one of these moments where only if you are a local like us do these moments hit you the map comes up it is full of streets that if you live in the bay area especially the east bay you're like wait i know that street i know like i saw shell mound street i'm like i have driven by the pixar office uh in emeryville on shell mound streets like yeah in fact my street is on this map i'm not going to tell you where on that street it's a very long street you'll never find me

but also the robbery is on san pablo which is a big street in the bay area you drive down long enough to get to emeryville we have probably you and i have probably been on san pablo street hundreds of times in our time living here yeah that's where the pizza shop i used to go to all the time was oh yes that was a good pizza shop yeah yeah now it's uh saying when i first moved here i had rented a U-Haul with my then roommate. We rented it on San Pablo, and that was a good... I've had lots of memories of San Pablo. So seeing the movie and them saying, like, I see that map and hear them say San Pablo,

I was like, wait a minute. This made me realize this is probably the first movie they made at Emeryville because they were in Richmond, California us also uh until the year 2000 and then they moved to richmond from san rafael is it called san rafael or san i think it's san rafael yeah i'm pretty sure they were there until 1990 that's where they started so uh i think this is the first one they made outside of the richmond office and that means that brad bird had to move up here for that too, like he was living here. I'm glad we're doing this. This is like one of the last movies we're doing before the big move

and we're no longer in the Bay Area to properly appreciate all these local references. They also have a fun mention of saying that they worked very hard on designing the transforming Incredicar and it's only in this scene. It never comes back. It's funny because you see the damn Omnidrone a billion times and also the rocket that launches it. You see that a bunch, two different versions of it, but this car only once. And this looks way cooler than those things.

The Omnidrone is meant to be boring in design, and it's also a walking eye, as Dr. Venture would say. Oh, so that's like in johnny quest right it definitely to me looks like the a spin on the johnny quest walking eye yeah yeah i mean the walking eye is more like a daddy long legs with like the the hit the arms come out from the top and then downward but it still is a black ball with legs sticking out of it just like the army that was parodied in venture brothers yes okay like like we said this movie came out right after the end of the first season of venture brothers it's crazy the timing between these two riffing on the same thing the the impossibles episode is so much of this too yeah i uh and so he's chasing after the robbers but he also stops to help a sweet old lady get a cat out of a tree.

And this is classic Brad Bird comedic timing of upping the tension of him trying to shake the cat out of the tree while he sees the robbers driving up to him. I love it. It's so funny. Lots of quick cuts during action scenes between different things happening. It's great. And this is when he saves the day and everybody loves him i uh on our first clip here i have it start with what i think is a very funny delivery by the uh by the one of the cops here thank you mr incredible you've done it again yeah you're the best no i'm just here to tell

attention all units we have a tour bus robbery. Tour bus robbery. I've still got time. Officers, ma'am. Squeaker. Cool, ready for takeoff. What the? Who are you supposed to be? Well, I'm Incrediboy.

What? No. You're that kid from the fan club. Bro- Bro-Brody. Buddy. Buddy. My name is Incrediboy.

Look, I've been nice. I've stood for photos. Signed every scrap of paper you pushed at me. But this is... No, no, no. You don't have to worry about training me. I know all your moves, your crime-fighting style favorite catchphrases, everything. I'm your number one fan.

Hey! Hey, wait! It's the timing on his, like, I'm your number one fan. When they just shot out of his ejector seat. It's good. I mean, they have to establish this character early in the movie. But I really wanted the breakup between him and Mr. Incredible to be more important and more intense. He sort of just, like, go home.

And then, like, he leads him into a cop car after the event and i feel like that one moment should not have pushed you over the edge i mean they try to establish a history in a very short conversation but i feel like oh i wish there was a bigger moment that split up these two you you see the flashback of later of him destroying his collection but yeah if you saw it in real time it would have more of an effect but then it wouldn't be the twist reveal like this this is also how it began the whole pixar expectation of the secret villain or the big there's always like a middle of the movie twist uh reveal of something like that and i guess really it started with Toy Story 2 with Stinky Pete. Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I love that his greatest nemesis is a fanboy and his anti-fanboy who's his

biggest fan. And I had a feeling it was, I didn't look up ahead of time who was all the actors in it. I don't think I knew Jason Lee was in it. I hear the voice and they do pitch it up so you might not know but when he said brody i knew yeah i knew well jason lee is a very identifiable voice i don't think i knew this ahead of time either even as a i i was in vscu fan rehab at the time so i think i really feel like i was out by 2004 all right oh four is is oh four when that uh the jersey girl

came out oh three is Jersey Girl. Yeah. I kind of punched out at the Kevin Smith factory after Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. My second viewing in a theater. He tells you to clock out. He's like, hey, books closed. Get out of here. Also, I'm going to note many times where this is similar to Watchmen.

This isn't exactly similar to Watchmen but in alan moore uh in his run on a miracle man or marvel man if you live in england a thing of the spurned sidekick who turns evil that is a major part of that story as well so okay yeah but uh but yeah i i like that he plows off and also that bob that bob. Incredible, is a workaholic. He's on his wedding day and he's like, I got time for that. I got time for that. It's a fun way to explain the tuxedo. You're right.

It lets him be a cool James Bond type and then explain like, well, why is this guy? He wouldn't normally be wearing a tuxedo. We then have a quick scene of him catching a guy with a bunch of purses, who I assume is the tour bus robber, because that's why he'd have a bunch of purses, because he robbed them all at once. He brought them up to a rooftop for some reason. You know, the private place to look at it.

But I like the line of, you can learn a lot about a woman on the contents of her purse, but maybe that's not what you had in mind. And then, oh, what a great entrance by El girl punching out the guy stretching in and we have we have a little bit of the battle of the sexes here of of her saying like what about ladies first well what about uh i thought what about equality or whatever but this is also this is one of the sexiest pixar movies like these are sexual beings, these two characters. Oh, yeah, they're pitching each other's asses.

Yeah. They're chasing each other around the house. You can say lots about things in movies from 2004. They're like, well, they wouldn't do that now. I definitely feel like Disney would not let these characters be this overtly sexual in a Pixar movie now. No way, no way. Even in, well, I mean, mean hey maybe i'm wrong in an elemental you know which is a movie about falling in love and dating there's full penetration

maybe maybe that fire penis i'm sorry he's water penis and the fire girl does like fire cow girl on top of the guy who knows but well now i now i gotta see it but uh but yes they during their foreplay basically they knock out the guy who's distracting them because as you find out later this isn't a meet cute between them this is a this is a game between two people who have been been screwing the whole time you know i was looking into it i was thinking when did one piece debut on american tv because uh uh elastigirl has many monkey d luffy powers it was that september oh so kids are like i like this rotten dub where can i see more stretchy people and you have the incredibles get a bite of gum gum yeah the no it's yo ho ho he took a bite of gum that's right there you go uh you know i'm thinking

about this i'm always thinking about stretchy people because yeah in general well i've always wanted there to be a good fantastic four movie and there never has been and well hey uh what if john krasinski was mr fantastic well only if he's ripped into pieces in front of my eyes and then his head explodes only then but this is always a problem with reed richards uh mr fantastic even in that john krasinski cameo and mother uh multiverse of madness mom and mom if you have a real person stretch like that it just it looks weird and i wonder how they're gonna do it in a way that doesn't look weird in the one piece live action i've seen the preview and it looks bad because you just can't do it. I mean, there's got to be a way, but no one has cracked the code.

That's why it was drawn and animated because they really can only work that way. But everything's got to be live action for the prestige. And yeah, I guess we'll see. Eventually they're going to give it a shot with the room. If the rumors are true, we'll soon be seeing adam driver stretching all over the place in the same way but i doubt i'll ever see anything look as good as it looks when elastigirl leaves for her previous engagement get it because she's engaged him to be married the way she little her little hop and then zip off uh in about with her big old stretch that's so cool slinking her way across buildings

is nice it's she's using her powers in also a way of like hey check out my butt while i'm walking away except it's like she's stretching everywhere and he's like is this the uh you should be more flexible conversation yes which comes up later yeah i like that too it's uh me more zips around him flexible and yeah more more sexually charged scenes between these two man you know again this is they've got brody in this movie and this scene is getting me thinking about super sex scenes just like brody talks all about in in mall rats i mean what is it like to have sex with if your partner can be any shape well what is that i think there's a porn hub tab for this uh how much how much

incredibles porn do you think there is no one send us any but honestly i don't want to see it just seeing her stretch it just activated the brains of so many perverts oh yeah yeah so so yes he locks up the guy it's now nighttime we see frozone fly by they they credit uh mock kobayashi for being so great with the ice effects on this. And yeah, his ice effects look great. I have to say this a million times, but in 2004, there's Spider-Man 2. And that's about as good as superhero movies look. And even that, I would say, only has like 10 minutes in it that actually feel like I'm

watching what I always dreamed seeing in comic books in this movie that came like months later every second that I'm seeing superhero motion I'm like this is what I always dreamed in comic books it doesn't feel special at all anymore now but I'm remembering how special it felt in 2004 I guess it was the first realization of superhero action uh conveyed in a you know engaging way in a way that convinced you it was actually happening the way he's like flinging his ice slide in front of him it's like he's basically got you know like ice extra on his hands and he has to like shoot it out like it's really there's a real thought to the motion you know yeah and well also speaking of thought to the motion when he sees the guy trying to kill himself

the way he like kind of shimmies to get in position like okay get ready get ready now and and to jump at him that's just a great little thing i i just love that and you're right bob i saw you say this on twitter a pixar film with just a suicide attempt did it that's crazy we're not exploring who this person is and why they're trying to take their own life it's just and then he's mad afterwards well you're supposed to think like yeah i guess you're not supposed to feel bad about this suicidal man because he's a dick who ruins all the fun who with his evil lawsuits suing people over this movie's about tort reform if anything it absolutely is Every time I see them complain that, like, you shouldn't sue superheroes, he was saving you. That I'm just like, this sounds like the reasons you're not supposed to sue the police for all the violence they cause.

I can't stop thinking about it. But also I can't stop thinking, though, about every time I see a villain, rarely in this movie, like Bomb of Voyage who appears, my thought is like, well, so what happened to all the supervillains? If you make all the superheroes go away, like what about the villains? But then I thought, oh, that's such a fucking Randian thought they're putting in my head of just like, if you hold back, John Galt, then only the parasites will take over. I wonder how much I was supposed to be thinking that. I never thought about the villains in this world.

I wish they would have explained that. Maybe they were were just jailed because they're already breaking the laws like well in the intro to incredibles 2 they make a little bit more example of that basically a care the cops complain about them for fighting a supervillain because they say he robbed a bank in the banks insured it would have caused way less property damage if you didn't stop him like that's basically that's whatever i that's whenever i walk by if there's a protest in a bank's windows get shattered i think well they were insured and you know how much money they make yeah and then you google the bank and you look how far they go back and say oh nazi involvement okay i won't feel bad at all i never feel bad about smash windows at a bank no uh but yeah he he saves the guy he has a cute line of well with counseling you'll

i think you'll come to forgive me and this is where we meet uh yes bomb voyage originally called bomb perignon oh hey you know that's good too uh but uh dom perignon did not give approval to that joke they didn't think it was funny i guess you would need permission it's like a copyrighted term just like the uh the toblerones that were in chicken run that they had to get a special thank to the toblerones for the uh the chalks oh yeah because i guess the packaging was probably copyrighted or something or whatever they didn't actually say toblerone on them but maybe they needed permission anyhow i think they probably animated thinking they didn't and then they found out like no if we don't want to have a giant lawsuit best to just get their approvals

and and if you watch ratatouille in uh bon voyage has a little cameo as a street mime in it they brought him back but i looked this up too if you watch it in not quebecois french but in the regular french dub pretty much in every other language like if you watch it in japanese apparently it's just these lines set in french with subtitles it works that way but not in the french version because one they wanted to recast it with a famous french actor to do voiceover and then second the branding of it in french is not les incrable it is les instructible indestructibles that's so they can't reuse the dialogue because he calls it monsieur incroyable in it i i know i'm saying this incroyable incredible uh you're at you're making up new vowel sounds look i took spanish in in high school i i i

i'm not kidding. Speaking of Venture Brothers, this feels like such a Venture Brothers scene. Like, Bob Voyage and him are having their whole banter, and then a psychic shows up, and Bob's like, who's this guy? This is ruining our whole thing. And note, if you pause for just a second, when Buddy is looking at his reflection in the vaulted door, it looks a little like syndrome. His head turns into syndrome. Yeah, I saw that.

I was wondering what they were going for with that reflection. Yeah, it's just a little wink. Because I guess his hair isn't standing up as a little kid, right? No, not yet. Okay. And you know what? He's right. He's like, I can fly.

Can you fly? Fly home, Buddy. I work alone. I also like that Mr. Incredible is a normal guy who's like, I don't want to hang around a child all day. Like, I don't want to fucking sidekick. It's creepy. This is weird.

Though, okay, if we extend this metaphor in the Randian direction, that like, there are the gods who are given these natural abilities and that we're holding back and we should stop doing that then is buddy like a parasite who is he a wonderful striver who makes his own suits for himself or is he a parasite trying to steal their valor by acting like a super even though he doesn't really have powers like i'm i'm just curious where that metaphor goes i don't know if brad burr was thinking about it that deeply but i was reading some uh letterboxd reviews and one of them pointed out that oh if there are people in the world that have these powers doesn't that doesn't that make the rest of us disabled in a way like is that a

disability to be a quote-unquote normal able-bodied person if you're not a superhero and i was like oh that's an interesting point yeah that is they're not going to explore that in this but yeah right yeah i why is also thinking about this with the, there's the, I don't want to talk about the flash movie too much, but this is based on the flash comics. But I was thinking this, that a key part of flashes origin now,

which has only been a retcon from the last like decade or so his father is framed for the murder of his mother, which spurs him to become a, uh, honestly a cop. Like somehow seeing his dad get arrested falsely by the cops made him want to be a cop to make sure the right people get arrested. He's like a police scientist, right? He's not arresting people.

He's a CSI guy. Okay, yeah. But the way his mom is murdered in the comics is that a supervillain went back in time and murdered his dad to or murdered his mom to frame his dad and i was just thinking like well this actually went to trial then couldn't anybody who ever was arrested for murder be like oh well we live in a world where time travel just is causes murders then a time traveler did this murder too i didn't do it that would complicate every trial every criminal trial in a world where time travel is just real then you're like well i guess we have to free everybody from jail now one question about the flash is it established that it all takes place within the

server verse uh no but you do get a little take there there are some server verse moments in it that feel like it's not exactly server verse but there are planets that look just like the server verse that algae rhythm controls yeah i guess one final thing scott gardner had a great tweet and i think it was something along the lines of what if we made a movie starring every batman let's call it the flash yes yes well because they realize like ah shit this person uh ezra miller they suck they they're a bad person and also not even that great in this movie. We just have to make this a Batman movie instead. And it sucks.

And also the last 15 minutes of it are an insult to life. They are a cruel insult to just the dignity of life. And yet you gave it two stars. Well, there's some cool flash stuff in it. There's a little there's a little bit of cool stuff but you know what i should bring that back down to one and a half i think i i also think you as a keaton bat fan i don't think you'll give a shit about any of the stuff there's like oh i'm not seeing it even if you watch it like for free or just the keaton

scenes i think there's maybe 30 seconds in it where michael keaton actually feels like he's being the batman we all loved as a kid. It's not like a CGI version of him bouncing around. Yes, it's a rubber. Like, yeah, there's like, oh, look at this rubber Batman bounce around. All right, look, there's nothing. We're sorry. We're very sorry.

So, yes, they buddy says he's going to fly to get the cops. This is when Bomb Viage throws a bomb that gets stuck to his cape in a very realistic way. That was probably incredibly hard to animate this is also classic of the plot of the movie mr incredible's trying to save him but he thinks he's holding him back but he would be dead but instead he blames mr incredible everybody's blaming the gods of this world who are just trying to help us how dare they hold them back it's also setting up his cape will be his undoing in the end too that's yeah you're right and he dies like sherry bobbins and so then mr incredible falls the train tracks get blown up

this train looks like the bart doesn't it like a little bit yeah at least the gray and blue pattern on it it looks like the part yeah i just i wish the the breaking point between buddy and then society would be bigger than these two events they don't feel big enough for me to have all of this have fallout that changes superheroes drastically uh yeah for it to be a twist they have to make it less obvious though so it can't be a a big cool moment or a more impactful moment of oh he feels true but like if he actually got arrested and got his rocket boots taken away that'd be a bigger moment i guess instead he gets like tattled on to his mom but also yeah him stopping the train like this straight out of fleischer

superman oh absolutely yeah it's it's their credit to the fleischer superman and i love that little wince on his face when it's about to hit him he's like this is gonna hurt love that so many little moments that just are great in this and then Mr. Incredible he has to run off I also love it has become a meme now when he points at Buddy be like you're not affiliated with me I've seen that in

a lot of replies on Twitter there's one big meme we'll get to towards the end of the movie oh yes right it's the shut the fuck up meme. That's right. But it's such a tender moment between Mr. and Mrs. Incredible. But when it plays out, I'm just thinking that he's telling her, shut the fuck up, please. Just shut the fuck up.

I want to use that not affiliated with me thing for folks. I'm telling you this if you follow me on Twitter. If I retweet something and you at me in the original and reply that tries to correct the original at least fucking take my ad off of this you're embarrassing me i hate that so he heads to the church uh we see that they are having a very christian ceremony this also feels like more of the like the traditionalism in the movie coming through yeah although this wedding is attended by like five people yes yeah you're right i don't know if it's a statement on their popularity but i think it's just like well we can't we can't fill this church with people where this is the first time we're

doing this many people since it's a lot of superheroes in costume i like to think it's a secret identities only kind of meeting maybe uh edna mode is there and uh the handler guy i always forget his name rick dicker yeah rick dicker how can you forget rick dicker and cd next to them is gazer beam yeah yeah that's right who'll be very important later but uh and this is though when mr incredible he's told like hey you got to be more than mr incredible which is his whole problem he's he wants to still be mr incredible not dad this is when he tempts fate by saying in a movie, what could happen?

As long as we both shall live, no matter what happens. Hey, come on. We're superheroes. What could happen? In a stunning turn of events, a superhero is being sued for saving someone who apparently didn't want to be saved. The plaintiff, Oliver Sansweet, who was foiled in his attempted suicide by Mr. Incredible,

has filed suit against the famed superhero in Superior Court. Mr. Sansweet didn't ask to be saved. Mr. Sansweet didn't want to be saved. And the injury received from Mr. Incredible's actions, so-called, causes him daily pain. Hey, I saved your life. You didn't save my life, you ruined my death. That's what you did. Listen, you have no fear of the comet at this time. Five days later, another suit was filed by the victims of the L train accident. Incredible's court losses cost the government millions and opened the floodgates for dozens of superhero lawsuits the world over. It is time for their secret identity to become their only identity time for them to join us or go away and she has a real diane feinstein vibe to me that uh that politician there but yeah in better shape oh uh yeah i guess i'm thinking like 2004 diane

feinstein maybe but we were talking earlier about how uh the government doesn't care about wasting money no and i was just reading the other day that uh i looked this up again there was like a three billion dollar accounting error when it came to sending things to the ukraine uh just like oh yeah three billion gone who cares and more tanks okay type type type went somewhere i don't know yeah no i've heard this before the like the The Pentagon has these audits over and over again of like, that's a lot of missing money. And they're like, well, well, like, yeah. And then on top of that, there's also cop overtime is a huge part of every budget. Like everything.

I know it's the drill tweet. But seriously, the reason we don't have anything nice in america or like programs that could help people is it literally all just buys guns to shoot you like it's every hour a person to hold that gun and i it's not intentional but i do enjoy how uh there's this newsreel scene about the government doesn't want to spend all this money and then it moves to a scene in which someone's health insurance claim is denied yes yes yeah that this feels like two sides of the of a political coin here which makes you know brad bird an unpredictable iconoclast but this stuff about the parasites who want to blame the protectors for saving them and also he says this on the

commentary extra clear so i'm not putting words in his mouth it being about spurious lawsuits that take down the fantastic, like the mundane bringing down the fantastic, that was a huge part for Bird. Like he really wanted it to be the lawsuits that stopped it. Like that was a big part of it. And so you have this of just like, these people shouldn't just be suing the heroes.

They're helping him, which it's not a far step from that to be like you shouldn't sue the cops or whatever. But then on the other side of it they show that for-profit insurance is like one of the most evil things in the world yeah but but also that lawyer there's broad and then there's that lawyer like so cold the action so cold well uh dash is a very jewish teacher later, too. Bernie. Yeah, isn't it weird that two of the most evil dudes are like, what? Wallace Shawn isn't not Jewish, right? I mean. I don't know.

He's short and bald, so we should despise him. Yes, yeah. He's a short, weak, bald man. Just like the real Wallace Shawn. Who also, in real life, is a big time socialist too yeah that's true uh let's see here yes he is also jewish wow so now we started a whole new conspiracy theory about this film uh this is this blonde haired blue eyed guy directing this movie yeah who this aryan family being taken down by a cadre of Jews all around them in every part of the government.

He's more anti-lawyer. Yes. I know. Guys, I'm kidding. I'm not saying Brad Bird is not anti-Semitic. I'm not saying that. But yeah, so this is the bit where everybody starts saying this is them ripping off Watchmen. And there are five major moments that I'm like, oh, this is them ripping off watchmen and there are like there are five major moments that

i'm like oh this is watchmen like again like this is a scene from watchmen but this is a scene from watchmen like in watchmen it becomes illegal to be a superhero because there are protests by the the the public saying this shouldn't exist but this is why i love alan moore as a storyteller more than brad bird he takes what i think is the much more realistic version of things of like if the government shut it down and made it so there couldn't be superheroes anymore what the u.s government would then do is make them all super secret agents who murder on the government's behalf and help them colonize vietnam and they're like contractors right yes military contractors yeah yeah like the super villain the superhero the comedian just becomes like a mass murderer black ops guy who

like is killing people everywhere around the world that's totally yeah i didn't think of that in this post-war this this feels like i mean there's cell phones and crap in this movie but it feels like it's a 50s 60s pastiche and it, yeah, the government would definitely use these guys to overthrow, you know, leaders of countries and prop up their own dudes, you know, in like Latin America and stuff. Yeah, they say a huge point of the Watchmen comics is that if superheroes appeared in the 60s and they had, you know, atomic powers like Dr. Manhattan has, there is no way that the government wouldn't hire them to win vietnam

and colin like they kill everybody they they they are able to conquer vietnam and it is an american colony like it's the superheroes are fascist like if you really want to break it down yeah they're they're a fascist idea and i and alamore understood that and a problem with with the book is that some people think that the book's about how rorschach is right and rorschach is an extreme libertarian so some people might think like oh this is a libertarian thing rorschach sucks like he's the the only reason he's right is because he is so stubborn that in one moment where it's like oh he's actually right about this one thing like libertarians can be right about like three things ever that it makes

him look like he's right the whole time if you're stupid but he sucks rorschach sucks yeah i don't want to be russia libertarians are right usually about three things yeah and in rorschach's case it was we can't lie to the people that make them think that they've been invaded but yeah also that oh cost the government millions like that is such a centrist lib take of like taxpayer they say taxpayer dollars a whole lot in this movie i think we we recently had to talk about the deficit with the debt ceiling and everything right right i'm sick of it it's not real people who care about it are disingenuous and you shouldn't care about it they never want to cut back money on anything that involves uh the military so they don't mean it none of them mean it like and and yes currently police brutality costs the government billions but

you never hear those people talk about like well we we gotta at least cops shouldn't get away with murder all the time because it costs us billions of dollars. You'd never hear a deficit hawk say that. So, yes, they are forced into hiding. There's headlines even like X-ray vision peeping Tom. That's a Simpsons headline there. And so we then cut to 15 years later and, yes, I think it's really good that it feels like Mr. Incredible said, well, I still want to help people. Give me a job that helps people they're like well insurance helps people doesn't it and it turns out like no actually it destroys

people like that's that's really what health insurance is for or life insurance whatever uh insurance policy he's helping this this little old lady with and what a great design on that little old lady it's great and i love his on that little old lady. It's great. And I love his office. It's so cramped, but if you look at the other offices, his is the one that has a giant pillar in the middle of it,

the support pillar for the building, so it's even smaller than everyone else's office. You're right. He got the shittiest office in the place and he's the biggest dude. And he even has a high voltage box attached to it too. Oh yeah, it's really dangerous isn't

it he's if he wasn't super he'd be getting background radiation all the time that yeah and i mean you can assume that at some point before wallace sean's character like sent him down to a worse place and uh in this area but also now that i'm about to move i've been thinking about this oh you're not moved in until your last box is empty I think I still have like two boxes from my last move I'm just going to get rid of those boxes are they going to be a mystery what's in them or do you know well one of my hopes

is that that lost Sam and Max book is one of those boxes I'm hoping where that's going to be part of my investigation while searching through my books in a couple weeks here to to lighten the load. And then we get to see cute little Jack-Jack who's getting washed in the sink. And I love how Helen stops him from eating the soap very nonchalantly.

Like she's not even looking, going like, no, no. She's just like, because this is the third kid. She's on autopilot now. It's full instinct at this point. And then we get to see how he still helps people by telling this woman the exact ways to pierce the bureaucracy, as well. Sean will later say in it. It inspired me to do similar things when I worked at Blockbuster. I was like, wait, I could just tell them like, hey, you didn't hear it from me, but ask for this from my manager and you'll get this back for free or whatever. I always enjoy when people want to help you.

They break from the script and say, listen, just email this person or just call this number. Oh, it really, it goes a long way with a person. And I try to never get mad at the purveyor of the misery of bureaucracy of every business in America. Because I know they're getting like shit on by too so i don't want to yell at them and be like this sucks like you're supposed to help me they can't do anything yeah i but yes isn't it always great when they say like look i know like i know but i bet they can't even say that as much now because they're probably thinking they're getting recorded all of the time and all of these jobs are going to be just taken over by ai in uh let's say five

years or a week i okay that is so funny you say that when looking for an apartment recently i was getting these emails that were very annoying from a like an address with a real woman's name attached to it and then i talked to one of the reps in person to be like hey this thing keeps emailing me to say this one isn't available but you told me it's available and they said oh well she's actually automated and just telling you this and i was like she's not real sir it's like i was replying to this person like it's a real person like i i felt i've i was kind of shocked that even i i felt for that kind of thing it's funny because we I mean this is slightly off topic but we've had these AI

phone people for a while but it used to be obvious and I think in the future it won't be as obvious because clearly it's a pre-recorded thing like how can I help you today say whatever you want and you say okay I want help with this let me get right on that and you hear like typing noises but it's not no it's not even when typing it's just a typing sound effect it's like

you're not fooling me but in the future this will be fooling me you, but it's not even when typing. It's just a typing sound effect. It's like, you're not fooling me, but in the future, this will be fooling me. You're right. It's only going to get more. I mean, well, for this here, for this insurance thing, this feels old school that this woman can go in person to talk to a person about it. Yeah. You're not even allowed to see the people in the lowest rungs anymore. It's like sometimes when you wait through every option on the phone line, you're like, which one is, let me talk to someone. I know.

I had this the last time one of these things annoyed me, is that you go through all these systems of just saying, I had to talk to two different things in an online chat bot to say, what button do I press on this phone line to talk to a human and they said okay uh it's this one i said are you a human they said yes i'm real and i said but that's what the fake thing would say in this chat box wouldn't it like it would say that i will say my last comment is a customer service in canada much much better i've had to do a lot of Canadian calls people answer the phone it's a person it's a human yeah a man named Gord probably and it's not like uh oh our

lines are very busy try calling back later it's it's you always get somebody and it's amazing I'm not saying it's across the board amazing but I've noticed with Canada I always get through that feels uh night and day with the United States. There's two versions of the worst people that Bird hates in his life. And now we discover they're both very Jewish-feeling characters. But the Wallace Shawn boss is, on the commentary, he calls out directly an early director he worked under who kept telling him, color inside the lines, don't get too creative. Which, knowing behind the scenes that he quit fox and the hound i am almost certain it's one of the directors on fox and the hound he's complaining about and

then bernie represents every teacher who told him like hey now now now that's not how you take the test or like you read ahead mr bird everybody's holding him back you can see why rand bullshit was was uh interesting to him yeah yeah it appeals to everybody at a certain age when they're feeling those feelings and is it funny while sean is playing like instead of like the most nervous wuss in the group like he does with t-rex that erects that now he is playing a two foot tall boss who is constantly screaming at this giant man and bossing him around yeah this is a very successful translation of a 2d design to this 3d character model i'll say yeah he's one

of the most creative designs in the whole thing yeah and uh so then we cut to helen meeting with dash and uh bernie his teacher who is mad that he is always pranking and showing off. Bernie is voiced by the production designer Lou Romano, who would go on to star as Linguini, the human controlled by the rat in Ratatouille. Oh, wait a minute. That's not even a professional voice actor in Ratatouille. Yeah, he's the main, well, I mean, it's Pat Noswalt's the main character,

but he's like the second most important character in the movie. Yeah, it's crazy. He plays Linguine in it which uh that's very silly his name's linguine in that movie but i don't like that character at all i'm sorry we'll revisit that movie but i have issues with it i like that he was good at being a waiter right there out of nowhere at the end of the movie i thought that was like oh that's nice but yeah no i mean he's just he's just the cipher to be controlled by a rat like he's a man with rats in his hair uh i'm stealing a joke from recent doughboys but they joked about like uh what if what if he has to get in his pubes to control him anyway the doughboys are funny i'm just stealing a joke dash is fucking with him all the time but

he can't get caught because he's too fast he's basically a blonde hogarth from iron giant like they're the same character aren't they same like weird teeth i do like the weird teeth in this movie no one has a perfect smile maybe mrs incredible does but i like the jagged teeth in a lot of these characters i kept noticing moments where it's like brad bird intentionally to test the artistic ability of the machine and the people controlling the machine constantly putting asymmetry into it and yeah the the the teeth on all these characters are so off like that's it's it's just so great they're also like the way Violet kind of has bags under her eyes yeah I did notice that yeah and which they kept in too

they did not uh cute her up too much in that way. He gets away with it, though, even though Bernie reveals that he filmed it because it's an old VHS surveillance tape. It can't go at 60 frames per second and catch Dash in action. When they drive home, we get one of the many very on-the-nose messages of this movie. Bernie. Don't Bernie me! This little rat is guilty!

A little rat? You and your son can go now, Mrs. Parr. I'm sorry for the trouble. You're letting him go again? He's guilty! You can see it on his smug little face! Guilty! I say guilty! Guilty! Guilty! No!

Dash, this is the third time this year you've been sent to the office. We need to find a better outlet. A more constructive outlet. Maybe I could, if you'd let me go out for sports. Honey, you know why we can't do that. But I promise I'll slow up. I'll only be the best by a tiny bit. Dash old Robert Parr, you are an incredibly competitive boy.

And a bit of a show-off. The last thing you need is temptation. You always say, do your best, but you don't really mean it. Why can't I do the best that I can do? Right now, honey, the world just wants us to fit in. And to fit in, we just gotta be like everybody else. But Dad always said our powers are nothing to be ashamed of. Our powers made us special.

Everyone's special, Dash. Which is another way of saying no one is. Boom. You know, I thought it was supposed to be not something to be taken seriously or literally because the villain says it, but then one of the heroes says it. Yeah, I mean, I guess it's a kid saying it, but I think Brad Bird fully believes that. He's like hey look if you some people are more special than others listen up snowflakes and if you say oh everybody's special

and it's like well no one is i i do think everybody's special in their own way yeah i think that's kind of true but the way helen is saying it it's like it's like a mantra she's forced to repeat she's like everybody's special like we've been through this it doesn't feel like something that she believes oh yeah no it sounds like she's she's just going through the motions well she's forced to repeat she's like everybody's special like we've been through this it doesn't feel like something that she believes oh yeah no it sounds like she's she's just going through the motions well she's she is in deep denial i love later in the movie when she has to identify herself as elastigirl like she makes a face like elastigirl him being called dashel by the way that's got to be a dashel hammett reference right yeah yeah definitely some some famous person i actually it's uh what the hell's his name uh harry anderson the guy from night court dead now son is named dashiell oh okay yeah you know his his daughter who's a

great funny person on podcasts and writing eva anderson that also feels like being given like a name from 1932 yeah maybe named after like ava gardner i know she goes i think you say her name eva but maybe uh she was named after ava gardner the old actress cut to violet uh there was a bit in it where they cut that violet instead she's introduced by being at home uh and not wanting to go to school and she's describing how she's ugly and unpopular and all her friends are geeks and that she doesn't have curves in any of the right places and all that there's i i kind of like this more as a realistic thing of like she tries to be invisible at school and doesn't like being there and then

literally goes invisible when she needs to but i think violet does have a character and i think it's i think it was a good cat i think sarah vowel does bring more to this than than some other actors would but on a certain level this is a dad telling their daughters not to hide their pretty faces like that's her r it does feel like a dad's perspective of what a teenage girl is like and i hate to bring this up but you and i just did a podcast about the uh rotten very failed primetime cartoon game over right and it feels like well this is what a teenage girl is they're annoying they complain a lot they're over dramatic they have wrong priorities they try to guilt their parents over things they wear things that

don't flatter their bodies that are developing it's it's a shame it's a damn shame you're such a pretty girl yeah i mean well they would probably think they're at least being like this isn't as retrograde as the bit in game over where the dad is like you better not date my daughter like these i think there is a little moment of it incredible in incredibles 2 but mr incredible doesn't there's no moment where he's like what you'd like a boy you shouldn't like a boy or whatever. There's none of that crap. We see Tony Ridinger, who's voiced by Brad Bird's son, Michael Bird. Oh, all right. You might think he looks bland here, but he looked much blander originally, and he got a late redesign.

They have a bit in general. They talk about how they had Universal Man, who they would then basically sculpt around to be bystanders, just to mass-produce bystanders. Kind of like a me. Yeah, exactly. But they look too obvious, and they stand out. And apparently late in the game, John Lasseter also said, this Tony character, he doesn't look like he's on the same level of specificity as Violet,

and he needs to. So screw it. Spend the money and resources. F fully redesign the guy to look more specific but then when he turns to face her violet turns invisible that he even kind of likes her but she wouldn't know she doesn't have the confidence this this poor girl then she runs off into the car then we see mr incredible in his tiny little car they they cut a scene where he helps the cops during this sequence while he's in the car i like to to stop a criminal but when he does the cops don't even thank him they actually like almost arrest him for he's going like hey no no problem at all

like he did in the past and now the cops are like we got a problem here we're gonna we do we gotta take you in and i i feel like it would if that scene was in the movie there'd be even more like weird politics to it like people be like oh wait they he's talking about how cops are like scary jerks like which in most pixar movies as we just saw in toy story 4 cops are nice friendly people who you should be you know honest with and if they're mad it means they don't understand your situation you should explain explain it to them. They'll understand. Wave your hands around a bunch. Yeah, they'll understand eventually. He gets home in his tiny little car.

He smashes it and freaks out about it after slipping on a skateboard. I was like, this is the most Homer moment in the whole movie of this guy, especially tripping on the skateboard. And a little boy on a trike sees him pick his little car up over his head. boy's name is rusty mcallister that's the character's name and he's also voiced by one of brad bird's sons nicholas oh okay uh and though his youngest son jack jack i don't believe had a voice in the first movie uh who though he's the name of jack jack and uh we cut to dinner there's another bit i love i love helen making the face like that is very observed mom or parent acting of just like like she's trying to mouth like if you move your mouth like mine baby you'll eat the food it's also showing off the tech too

like look at how we can deform the character's faces and also we can move food around and into a baby's mouth that probably was very complex yeah actually the sucking in and out of like goopy food in his mouth i was thinking the same thing of him needlessly well not needlessly but intentionally challenging the animators because no one would notice if they all had the same thing on their plate and you could just say like well yeah mom made the same dinner for everybody it's what moms do but in this case they intentionally make it leftover night so every plate has to be different i was confused about that until mom said it's leftover night because dash needs help cutting his steak and then violet has meatloaf and i'm like why do they all have different food

i i totally think it was a mind fuck by brad bird to be like nope every plate has to be different food it's leftover night guys it's important to the plot they've never rented all that food before they said they even had a fight uh while producing it because the continuity for the right amount of like food on every plate it can shift from shot to shot especially when the the entire table gets picked up and jostled around and they had to they had long meetings like no there's supposed to be gravy here no there's not like that's on that plate some would say that that's maybe brad bird just intentionally causing strife when he could have just said they all have the same thing on their plate who cares but brad purr cares and he would know and he's got to make him do it i also like that bob is very uh mr incredible see

you could say bob if i'm gonna say i feel bad as i start to say bob's a real asshole in the scene bob is very disengaged right now and this see that i didn't want to say that that sounds weird but is this is this when he just is focusing on reading a newspaper yeah and then that comes up later when he leaves okay yeah and he's being just the the parent there's so many great reaction shots of helms where she's like so you gotta engage he's like oh yeah it's that's great no it's not great bob what oh right it's not great no like and then he's excited to hear that dash is using his powers that's why he got in trouble yeah i love he's excited to hear that dash is using his powers that's why

he got in trouble yeah i love he's like wow you must have been really booking it and she's having to say like we're not trying to encourage this bob and he's like i'm not encouraging it i'm just asking a question and even then when he leaves the room after breaking the plate and the table uh he then just says like absent-mindedly kids listen to your mother and just look on her face she's like oh great thanks a lot buddy right first a car now i gotta pay to fix a car what happened to the car here i'm getting a new plate so how about you vi how's school nothing to report you've hardly touched your food i'm not hungry for meatloaf. Well, it is leftover night.

We have steak, pasta. What are you hungry for? Tony Ridinger. Shut up. Well, you are. I said shut up, you little insect. Well, she is. Do not shout at the table.

Honey? Pits! Listen to your mother. She'd eat if we were having Tony Loaf. That's it! Stop! Stop! We're gonna be toast!

Stop coming in the house! No, no, no! You sit down! Crap! No! No force fields! You started it! You sit down!

You sit down! So, here's another Watchmen bit. He sees in the newspaper, like newspaper like oh this guy's dead like like gazer the gazer beam guy went missing or something yeah what it is secret identity went missing this is just like how the central mystery of the story is the death of the comedian and several characters learn it from the newspaper so it's a similar similar situation of it but though then when they say he's like a longtime advocate for superhero rights that was like oh this is putting a political

light on it in a different way too like this is like he's like a gay rights activist or like a an african-american rights activist like a civil rights attorney it almost makes him sound like they then have a big fight after he's all like you want me to intervene i'll intervene also violet gets pissed off because he says like he's he'd want tony loaf shut up like this this is fun did this remind you any of your this is an older sister and a younger brother this reminds you of any dinners there were no family meals like this because of this reason probably no one's getting along but this was when we see that she has uh force field powers too yes okay because she makes him bump into them and that's this is also yeah the the the big fight

they have of uh you know the next time she throws out her force field it's to protect him the first time it's to smack him in the face for him to run into they get a ding dong on the door they all get the way they zip back into place. Very funny shot. They have to pretend to be normal. But then they see it's Lucius coming in. And that's when they realize, like, oh, it's another super guy. So they all use their superpowers in front of them just to let you, the audience, know, oh, he's a fellow super. Though I feel like that's also why they cast Samuel L. Jackson.

Because the second year's voice, you're like, oh, that's Frozo. That's from earlier because it's the incredibly distinct voice of Samuel L. Jackson because the second year his voice you're like oh that's Frozo that's from earlier because it's the incredibly distinct voice of Samuel L. Jackson ice of you to drop by he's told never heard that one before and then also I love him and Dash have a little game where Dash spits out water and he turns it into an icicle and tries to catch it before it breaks on the ground it's a lot of fun and then the guys go off to bowling night but not so much uh well meanwhile violet and dasher saying they wish they were normal they've that also feels like bird commenting like oh this this this world of mediocrity is making people with gifts think that they should they wish they didn't have gifts that's the way bob parr puts it of just like the way we celebrate mediocrity like

same i i think that's just brad bird like word for word in the movie what i took away from this is that dash wishes he could shit his pants that's the freedom any child yeah because uh i think violet's like jack's the only normal one here and he's not even toilet trained and then dash goes lucky oh i mean about this the normal thing that's a good it's a poop joke they get in a pixar movie but then like i know that jack jack isn't normal so i'm like well the movie's making a mistake this is a cinema sin uh yeah ding they they all these fools think he's a normal kid yeah they every time i hear jack jack i can't not think of the running gag on podcast the ride where they always say in full the snack cart stand at pixar pier in disneyland which is jack jack's cookie num nums oh really where you yes it's uh it's a

themed cookie stand named after him that reminds me uh we didn't mention this there's the fucking incredicoaster right did we talk about this yeah i know we didn't know there's like a story but it just shouted at you while you're riding a roller coaster so i'm like i don't know what's happening but i think you're trying to get jack back a jack jack back or something yeah he's lost in the roller coaster i think the best story integration is that the launcher basically they took a roller coaster that already existed california screaming okay and then shoved the incredibles on it and then said like no it's the incredible coaster but it starts as a launch from the ground and its dash is running alongside you theoretically you don't actually see i mean just hear it and you hear incredibles music

throughout the ride right yeah yeah i think if i didn't love the incredibles i'd probably never ride it because it is my limit oh me too what i can take on a roller coaster and honestly it is past my limit though we've said this for some reason the drops on guardians of the galaxy i have gotten totally used to and can do that like multiple times a trip but that incredible coaster once a day is the best i could do with the incredible coaster i go upside down and i'm fine just, I can't deal with all the drops. I feel like it's just torture. Yeah, it's more torture than thrill.

Are you going to drop? No, not this time, but this time you are. But you're getting to hear the hit songs of the 70s, Bob. Doesn't that comfort you? Those are so hard to hear anywhere else. You could never hear I Want You Back by the Jackson 5 anywhere else. Then comes a scene that is just brad bird writing a tarantino scene into his film like just oh yeah absolutely yeah not just that it's samuel

jackson delivering it but like it's literally two guys in the front seat of a car talking which is the iconic royale with cheese line for a scene from pulp fiction yeah and it's like them talking about pop culture stuff in within their own world yeah it's it's insider lingo from their world i i i have the whole clip here because i think samuel jackson is is so funny in this and this is a really great delivery i hate that these this kind of lines have been ruined for me a little now because this is just mcu style humor of guys like pointing out like um monologuing much like yeah this was funny here though they were first at bat to be fair it was 20 years ago though venture brothers did jokes about distracted monologues before this i mean

they were writing at the same time but it came out a year earlier. Yeah. Or yeah, at least a year earlier, but yes, a Frozone. It tells us about monologuing. So now I'm in deep trouble. I mean, one more joke to this death ray and I'm an epitaph. Somehow I managed to find cover. And what does Baron Von Ruthless do? He starts monologuing.

He starts monologuing. And he starts like this prepared speech about how feeble I am compared to him. How inevitable my defeat is. Oh How the world will soon be his. Yada, yada, yada. Yeah, right. Llammering. I mean, the guy has me on a platter and he won't shut up. Norman 3, Municipal. We have 2356. 2356. What is that? Robbery?

This is just sad. Yeah. Robbery. You want to catch a robber? No. Tell you the truth truth i'd rather go bowling look what if we actually did what our wives think we're doing just to shake things up he's not alone the fat guy's still with him they're just talking that's the introduction of barrage there just call him the fat guy but yeah she doesn't know who he is because later on the computer we see that uh frozone has been um found in the computer but uh helen has not yeah their investigation of frozone is how they discover bob and then uh and then approach him but that's also yeah why syndrome has such a funny surprise scene later uh because they their investigation didn't go any

deeper but yeah so here's another major bit from watchman and i'll just approach it now in watchman though this doesn't happen to the supers in it well i guess it does happen to the supervillain malik but there's huge spoilers for watchman if you've never read it but there's there is a secret plan started by ozymandias where he recruits people from around the world to a secret island to a plan that they don't know that they're helping him build a fake alien to trick the world. Which here they are ultimately tricking superheroes to go to an island that also will kill them. That's what happens in Watchmen 2. To help them build a fake monster that will trick

the world that's syndrome's plan also and even the lush island is all the same too uh though again the difference is syndrome is not as successful as ozymandias ozymandias wins at the the end of the of the book or does he that's the question we'll all ask ourselves for years to come. What about Watchmen 2? Keep on watching. I made that up. It's real. Well, I mean, there's multiple Watchmen sequels. Okay, well, yeah, of course.

The Damon Lindelof show, it answers what happened to that. Oh, that's right. There was the HBO show. Yes, which I'll give him credit for. He put so many details in that of like, no, this is directly a sequel to the comic book. Everything is accurate for the comic book. And if you don't have the comic book memorized like Henry Gilbert does, some things will make little sense unless you do have it memorized. I think that was a right before COVID TV show.

So that wiped my memory clean that you know uh that that watchman show cheers to its portrayal of a lot of african-american history that is rarely talked about in mainstreaming things cheers to that jeers to it saying but there are good cops though guys there were racist cops but there's good cops now too i remember all the discourse yep in late 2019 and uh who would have thought that damon lindelhoff would have like bad politics and i have a feeling there were good writers on it who knew what the right vision for this was and then lindelhoff still in charge and you can only push him so far in it from his shitty politics but he worked with brad bird onland. Holy cow. He was the co-writer. That's right. Ugh.

Man, now I'm hating him even more. He made Brad Bird's one flop. The only bird movie I haven't watched. Iron Giant was a flop, a big flop. Oh, wait, actually, yeah, that was a way bigger flop. It's beloved, though, but nobody likes Tomorrowland. Nats. Except the one person who's going to comment.

Yeah, I said, hey, we see you and we hear you. Yeah. So, yeah, he was also reminded of Gazerbeam that he couldn't give it up either, which explains why he got recruited by Syndrome. They bust into the burning building. This looks so good, too. Like, the Flash has an entire sequence in a giant exploding burning building. It's more expensive than this and technically more like

good you know or like there's more technical uh ability shown off in it but it doesn't have half the like feeling of tension of these guys yelling as it's all falling apart around them i can't remember much fire in pixar movies before this because there's Toy Story 1 and 2. No one's on fire in those. Bugs Life, I just watched it. No fire. Monsters, Inc., I don't remember there being fire in that movie. Yeah, they wood chipper the door

so they don't burn the door. Yeah, I think there's pretty much no fire in that either. And Finding Nemo is the opposite of fire. It's a bunch of water. You're not going to find fire anywhere in that movie. Speaking of no water, there's no water in the air. What's your excuse? Run out of muscle? Like muscle like great great fun back and forth with the guys and

then again little like little thing here where where mr incredible has like three people over one shoulder and one guy in his other hand and then he tosses the fourth guy on top of it and then motions with his hands like okay follow me like great little character animation there's so many little great character animation bits in this they crash through the wall they save everybody but they also end up in a jewelry store they look like incompetent bad guys i'm sure it did i was probably just too innocent and dumb back then. This has much more weight to it now when I watch it of the nervous cop pointing the gun specifically at Frozone. Oh, yeah. He's about to kill him. Yeah, one element I noticed the second time is that the cop did fire his gun.

Because in the frozen cop statue, the ice around him, the bullet is part of it. It's extending from his gun. Yeah, Frozone was going to be another, like, casual's uh lucious it was uh but i love his exchange it's cool he's like i know i know freeze and then freeze them they they called a copsicle on the commentary uh in support you still see the guy blinking inside so you know he's not dead yeah it's not like the first episode of rick and morty oh right yes yeah and this is much more of the comic book cartoony thing of like oh if you free someone solid they don't instantly suffocate yeah uh but yeah they he's frozen if i'm rick dicker or any government agent i'd be like well look we only know one guy who could freeze a police officer so frozen you're

arrested you you went out and did super stuff but part of the fun for them is they're almost getting caught and so Mirage then on the phone convinces Syndrome to switch their target from Frozone to Bob Apar in the original script their name were the Smith family it's so much smarter to make it par because that's a boring name and also you know par average like it's like it's a golf term for for average oh yeah i like that it's also a very mid-century name because i'm thinking of jack par yes yeah yeah it also does feel very like 60s era for sure yeah uh they talk about how the the great animation of him chomping down on the huge chunk of cake yeah it's so good and that uh they had it's one of the easter eggs on the dvds

the animator david holmes it filmed himself eating it like four different ways and just he's for real eating a big hunk of cake just to to get it right to get exactly terrible research that is and i love throughout the rest of the scene he's like wiping the chocolate off his face it's really well done and uh but this is when again i'm thinking what pixar movie would show mommy and daddy fight like this now you know like this they want you to think the parents are going to get a divorce i i feel like you wouldn't see this in movies now and they want helen to think that bob are going to get a divorce. I feel like you wouldn't see this in movies now. And they want Helen to think that Bob is cheating on her for a large chunk of the movie.

For sure. Yes. It's so great. But this is when Bob and Helen have a fight. Is this rubble? It was just a little workout. Just stay loose. You know how I feel about that, Bob.

Darn you. We can't blow cover again. The building was coming down anyway. What? You knocked down a building? It was on fire, structurally unsound. It was coming down anyway. Tell me you haven't been listening to the police scanner again.

Look, I performed a public service. You act like that's a bad thing. It is a bad thing, Bob. Uprooting our family again so you can relive the glory days is a very bad thing. Reliving the glory days is better than acting like they didn't happen. Yes, they happened. But this, our family, is what's happening now, Bob. And you are missing this.

I can't believe you don't want to go to your own son's graduation. It's not a graduation. He is moving from the fourth grade to the fifth grade. It's a ceremony. It's psychotic. They keep creating new ways to celebrate mediocrity. But if someone is genuinely exceptional, then they... This is not about you, Bob. It's psychotic. They keep creating new ways to celebrate mediocrity, but if someone is genuinely exceptional... This is not about you, Bob.

This is about Dash. You want to do something for Dash? Then let him actually compete. Let him go out for sports. I will not be made the enemy here. You know why we can't do that. Because it'd be great! This is not about you!

Ooh, brutal mom and dad fight. Yeah, the kids all saw it like so helen's on the verge of being an ag but she's right about all of these things like it clearly when they say they've been there for three years earlier in the movie that means that mr incredible already screwed up and made them have to move already when he talks to dicker again uh he tells him we can't relocate again so yeah i figure that bob keeps fucking up like this he keeps deciding to like ah you know what i'm gonna cheat on my family with super heroics and i mean i i say this as a kid who the second move to a new city like i i handled it okay the first time but when we moved to florida it really made it like it messed me up i had to

reset again with a bunch of new friends and new kids like i understand why violet is probably feeling a little shy because why even make new friends your dad keeps making you move over and over again we talked about this uh celebrating mediocrity thing in the first segment but i feel like one thing that these whiners don't understand you know the people that are like you know um what's what's what's the word i'm thinking of like the every kid gets a trophy yeah but like participation awards and stuff participation trophies yeah when you're a kid you know it's that it means nothing you know it means nothing and it's just a waste of time but sometimes those things could be nice souvenirs of you doing a thing like i remember um

i did soccer for one year and i like never did sports and i got the participation trophy and i knew like this is meaningless but it was a nice memento of like oh i actually did sports for a year and it was fun you know and i kept it around for a while but i didn't think i actually achieved something but it was like a souvenir so i think kids are more perceptive about these things than you think they are yeah i think bird and complainers like this don't get that like and also now all the kids he's complaining about from 2004 are adults now and i've seen numerous of that generation get on you know social media and say we didn't ask for the trophies you handed them to us like you're blaming us for getting

all these trophies yes exactly and also like i don't know getting out of fourth grade into fifth grade why not pat them on the back give the kids uh give the kids a little credit and also we also learned during the pandemic just how kind of useless school is traditional schooling right and how you don't really learn that much necessary information because in fourth grade if you spend an hour doing a little graduation ceremony, you're just eating up time that is going to be spent on what? You're going to watch Shrek 3 again? It's the end of school year anyway.

It's like at a certain point, I've been a teacher not of kids but of college students. There's a certain point where you're like, I just need to eat up a day. So let's find activities, and this is what they're doing. And also, speaking of things that remind me of Watchmen, this is the core couple in Watchmen of laurie jupiter and dan dryberg laurie wants to stay in the closet and it's killing dan to be in the closet and it is much more overtly sexual though in this movie too once he can be a superhero again basically his dick starts working again which is exactly what happens to dan dryberg in the comic two of watchmen so it's uh it's another moment that that feels similar but well once he worked on his fupa he could find his penis again

uh so that's a technical term by the way yes yeah now you're now you're making me envision more things i i didn things I wasn't before. Hey, there's a tab you can look up and you'll see what it looks like. But yeah, so this was actually a big fight. This fight was a big fight for Brad Bird because Pixar bosses, some of them did not like this argument scene because if you've seen this in presentation or just hear it it sounds like mr incredible might just punch helen in this like he's or just there's so much

like anger in it and he's this huge guy going over her and saying like god does he be great and yelling at her they felt it was too intense and it seems, and especially they wanted to lighten it. And Bird really didn't want to lose this scene. And he said he figured out how to keep it. He said he didn't change a line of it, but he changed in the storyboard the little bit when she says, this is not about you, and she grows bigger than him. Yeah, yeah. He said that was how he got to keep it in, by changing.

It does completely change the feel of the scene yeah yeah i did mark that in my notes as an important part of the scene where it's like this is not a man towering over a woman she's actually strong she won't be like imposed upon by him which i mean yes if she didn't have powers too and could show like oh you wanna you wanna tower over me then i'm gonna tower over you and tell you like shut the fuck up this is not this is about our family not you like that's what she's trying to tell him and he doesn't care like and and having a scene for kids in the audience having a scene where the kids see their parents in these characters like i don't know it probably did make some kids uncomfortable like oh

this is how my mom and dad fight kind of moment uh and yeah again i this thing about like the stability of their marriage i miss that over because we just did toy story 4 and it's all just about like check-ins on mental health and all that it's there's there's no like uh love uh relationship tension no no and like the parents are just they get along perfectly uh andy's mom will never find a husband. Yeah, she's a she she might have been like, I'm done with this. I had my I had whoever got me the genetic material for this child, Andy, and I'm not going to have any more kids or any more and any more love in my life. So then we cut to Wallace Shawn's horrible office after they all decide to go to bed

and then this is again uh bob being like talked down to by middle managers this i mean we've been in these situations this is very relatable yeah i think it's funny that brad bird i think relates to it in a randian way of like there's i know in the fountainhead i've watched the movie a long time ago there's basically this character of wallace sean who's telling has whole speech instead of about a clock it's about how like you know the tall uh was it the tall weeds that grow tallest they're the first to get cut down everything should stay at the same level kind of speech i think this it's like that yeah oh sorry there's a lot of little brad bird gags uh sprinkled throughout that i i don't know if they're somebody else's

gags they could be but they they're just these little tiny moments that really make me think he added them like when uh what's mr mr huff before bob comes in he's sharpening pencils and like laying them out perfectly on his desk counter so they align themselves with the lines when bob sits down his sheer like girth shakes the floor and it moves one of the pencils and he he pushes it back in line he instantly like jumps to it yeah that's so good and he's oh sorry god oh and the paper that he's like oh the paper is slightly askew yeah like very anal retentive i like those little moments and there's i mean there's there's lots of little moments like this in the in the in the movie one later one i could think of is when uh the the enemies are like popping champagne in the van at the end of the movie like the fact that he catches

the cork and he's in the van with them yeah that feels like a brad bird touch like these look but just knowing enough about his work just these little tiny touches really really uh make me happy to see yeah i think you're right he he doesn't call those uh in the commentary neither of those come out specifically but i i think you're right too i and also i love i love that this evil middle manager is also he's basically like another evil teacher in brad bird's life he's like why what to be specific bob like he's he's torturing this guy. A company is like an enormous clock. Is like an enormous clock. Yes, precisely. It only works if all the little cogs mesh together.

Now, a clock needs to be clean, well lubricated, and wound tight. The best clocks have jewel movements, cogs that fit, that cooperate by design. I'm being metaphorical, Bob. You know what I mean by cooperative cogs? Bob? Bob? Look at me when I'm talking to you, Parr! That man out there, he needs help.

Do not change the subject, Bob. We're discussing your actions. He is getting mugged. Well, let's hope we don't cover him. I'll be right back. Stop right now, or you're fired! Close the door. Get over here now.

I'm not happy, Bob. Not happy. he got away good thing too you were this close to losing your uh it's it's scenes like this that always make me go insane though because it makes me think like why do we have health insurance

nobody else does we have to have private health insurance it's proven to work everywhere, and it doesn't make any sense. And it is, just as the boss says, our job is to make our shareholders wealthier, and that's it. And Bob is like, oh, does that mean we're not allowed to help the customers? He's like, legally, I have to say no to that. I love how mad he is. He's like, the law requires me to answer no. It's funny, too, if you view Brad Bird as more of a libertarian, he's complaining about like, you know, over bureaucracy.

I could definitely see Wallace Shawn as an actor. He's chewing into this more from the socialist side of like, yeah, this is the evil capitalist who makes everything bad. This guy's like what about our stockholders like we got to keep us in the red i don't care about helping every sally sob story god he's so good at this like the way he says they're piercing the bureaucracy i'd also enjoy they really like show you close-ups of his body like his little tiny fingers twiddling oh god and his little like wingtip shoes tapping and everything the way they interlock too when

he's doing his clock analogy like yeah they're so the the fingers spin around like it's like a clock and then they interlock together like god these are all like little yeah we make fun of brad bird for some things but like these are the brad bird touches of like why do we make this more interesting the line itself is good but what if there's some fun business going on with the hands and it is like it's an extra challenge to do but it makes it better it makes it more visually interesting to look at and speaking of that too so when the mugging happens which every time i watched it i'm like this isn't funny. This is a guy like whoever gets mugged gets really beat up. Like they're in trouble.

It's not like a silly crime. Like, oh, he got hit with a pie. Oh no. Instead he's like, he's shoved up against a dumpster and kicked on the ground until he stops moving and he can get his wallet stolen from him.

And the way while Sean says, well, let's hope we don't cover him. So when he is called to the carpet literally and like he's points at the carpet and says come here bob that's when brad bird decides he goes into mr incredible mode and so the camera angles get much more dynamic they were entirely flat for all the insurance company scenes but now they get to a dynamic again because he's gone into super mode and he's gonna beat the shit out of this guy even at the time i thought this really reminds me of when homer punched mr burns in the face oh yeah yeah he he worked on and bird worked on that one and in his you know executive consultant

kept past he wasn't like the director and god i love i mean the way he throws him it's very satisfying it definitely is the thing that would break every bone in his body and he's right to sue oh yeah and when he well he grabs him by the neck first and his head deforms in a very funny way it looks like they're they were basing it off a 2d drawing but they're showing like we can do this with 3d graphics we can make fun uh wild takes and sight gags with faces the face can deform for a while take it it's not wrong and and also the way the after he throws him through the wall it's such a funny reveal you think you're just gonna see one hole in the wall and you just saw him throw him through one wall oh yeah and then as it keeps going you're like no this is like four walls he threw him through uh points

off though for uh-oh that i every time i hear an uh-oh now in movies i'm like oh bob's not happy i think there are three of them in this movie it is distracting yeah it's uh yeah i you know that's a point you know brad bird shouldn't have been oscar nominee for this script after all so yeah bud lucky then comes in as rick dicker explaining why everything is gone wrong and him quitting his job it's like i'm fired you think bud lucky was just supposed to be a temp voice but they're like nah he's great he's it was distracting so bud lucky in case you don't know we can do this in some other podcast and go really into it but he was a super animation veteran that joined pixar around when monsters inc was working on i know it's when david silverman worked with him a ton like when

when bud lucky passed away david silverman was sharing things of like oh man i learned so much from bud working on monsters inc with him they just love his voice so they made him the star of bat like he directs bounding and he is every voice in it which was the short before this and originally they they uh bradburn almost wanted bud lucky to introduce the short of bounding because he knew that it would be distracting in the theater like wait that's the very specific voice i just heard in the short before this movie but it it works fine yeah he's he's chuckles the clown in toy story 3 i'm reading that he was briefly eeyore oh i didn't know that one yeah in the in the 2011 winnie the pooh movie just called winnie the pooh oh okay but that's that's taking jobs from peter collin though

and then that guy's still alive to get his job. I was just seeing, he's been used in a lot of social media ads for the new Transformers movie. Him doing interviews, and I love that Peter Cullen still dyes his hair jet black. He's not fooling anyone. And with like, he still has his pencil mustache, too. I love Peter Cullen.

He's my dad. He's my TV dad of uh he's my tv dad if anybody's a tv dad uh bud lucky though i remember we were he came up in something and i was looking into what he did he did a ton of like those sesame street interstitial songs if you want to hear one of his best ones look up the alligator king and he's singing the whole thing and doing the voice of the king and everything it's great it's very sweet that's a classic yeah yeah you get to watch all of his teeth break the alligator king of course and so rick dicker then is talking about taxpayer dollars which again i i'll just point people i'm not gonna get into all of it but

listeners we i always say listen to the citations needed podcast but look up the one called news brief the transactional dog whistle politics of the term taxpayer and you'll never hear the words like taxpayer dollars the same ever again like it is they fully on that podcast deconstruct how it is a right-wing talking point like for one thing when you say taxpayer dollars were wasted on this it first of all frames thing as and obviously you're worth much more as a citizen if you pay taxes don't pay taxes if say yes there's many rich people who don't pay their fair share that's not who they're talking about they're talking about below poverty line people who don't have to pay taxes because they don't

make enough money uh the right wing framing of that makes them worth space less than uh a taxpayer so anyway listen to that podcast about it but uh so yeah money money money money we hear about and he does a little one-off line for erase memories which if you watch the jack jack attack short you see him do it live to uh takari after the uh babysitting incident okay honestly i'm glad they didn't put it in the movie it's not the men in black style flash thing but it's not not that it's basically like a device that they put a little dart on your brain a suction cup on your brain and then it erases your memory i feel like the government should not have the ability to erase people's memory no i was a little

creeped out when i he said mind erasure well you're supposed to like Rick Dicker, though, so it's okay. He's the one good agent. But, yeah, so he then tells Bob that he can't help him anymore and that he's going to leave him out of this. And so now he just doesn't have a job and can't get a new one. What's he going to do? As he gets home, there's also, I love love the like, so what are you waiting for? I don't know.

Something amazing, I guess. Me too, kid. It's a big payoff at the end of the movie when this kid finally sees the tossed car. That's great storytelling. It's a kid of three acts. He sees him smash the car up. He then doesn't see him do anything. And then at the very end, it is the perfect like button on

the the big final action sequence of the movie and so they head into his man cave which is more like a man's grave and uh this is when you see on the walls of the room tons of pixar style detail and hd posit look at all of them you can including seeing a shatner style like album that mr incredible released at one point oh cool and uh i also love when he pulls out the guidebook like full of rules all these rules from the bureaucracy holding us back he just tears it in half like it's nothing it's uh it's it's fun i guess the one thing we missed is that when he goes to see his boss that's when mirage sneaks into his office and puts the ipad into a manila envelope do you think they had like internal like because this is an apple company apple related company like it's so similar to an ipad which ipads came way

later not way later but they do they did come five years four or five years i feel like they knew this was the future we just weren't there yet're like, oh, this would be a cool piece of nearly bleeding edge tech to put in the movie. This is something I saw pointed out on Twitter. But in the Deep Space Nine, in that era of Star Trek, they basically create iPads for that world, too. And you look back and like, wow, they were right about the iPad. But in that world, they still treat it like basically electronic paper. They're like, well, this thing I hand you can only show this document. And they hand them like 70 iPads.

It's like single-use iPads, yeah. And, yes, this is when he's being given basically his Mission Impossible-style mission. And this is such great comedy. Like, this also feels like a Simpson thing of like he's being told you're only going to say this once and he's like oh shit a pen paper well god this doesn't write like so funny I love it but he is lied to by Mirage when she says she's a top secret part of the government this is sort of explaining why Bob goes along with this and doesn't question like are we the baddies at any point during this

because he's like he just believes and he's desperate but Mirage presents this as okay to do with the government and the mission at this point is we are developing this Omnidroid but it went out of control and you have to stop it and he's being paid triple

his current annual salary which this is about how important it is to go freelance. Stop working for the man. Take your skills online. So Mirage is like Patreon. You know, Syndrome is a patron of him, I guess, in a way. And I love how she says, like, the supers aren't gone, Mr. Incredible. We're still around like and and when she stops talking the full turnaround he does and like the

glow of the golden glow of the glory days as he looks around that's a great shot that's a really and his suit is kind of framed uh you know in front of him or like in the same shot as him yeah that he's seeing the suit he used to have it that suit the hobo suit it does feel retro like but every time i see it i'm like man that that's not half as good as his mr incredible suit like i it's just too many lines and detail on it i really do prefer the bold iconic two colors one icon in the center it's it's such a great design they have new darker suits in the second movie i mean there's more texture to it and stuff okay but they're essentially the same.

Different color. You know, okay, I think the colors are different, but the design is pretty similar. Okay. Yeah. And then, of course, Mission Impossible style, the message explodes, which sets off all of the sprinklers and fucks up all of their books. They also, they stack all the chairs on top of the dining table which has one part of the movie where i thought like wait is that a poltergeist reference you

know all the chairs on top of the dining table i i'm i'm not sure you know why were they on the dining table in this movie i guess because they're cleaning the water off of the floor from okay that makes sense yeah yeah but i just assume that's the one part where i thought it would be that but or a bolter guys reference but again very interesting bit here of character acting mr incredible you see him choose to lie to helen like helen's like and how's the job going and he's just about to tell her he lost his job and instead he's like uh yeah i gotta and he when he lies and says he's he's being sent on a conference she questions it for a second and he's like do you believe me and then when she does believe me he's like yeah yeah yeah as as he launches into the i lost my job

speech she immediately gets upset so he he like course corrects in the middle of that it's uh it's a realistic way he lies though it's it's to get you a little on his side and so yeah he gets on to the plane this is when he's given his full speech on how he's gonna fight this thing and the robot learns as you fight it and you said it before bob the omni droid is so boring looking the thing he fights here is just a smaller version of the thing he's going to fight at the end of the movie. Yeah, it feels like there are maybe, even in minor encounters, a total of four or five with this thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It repeats a lot. I do like him, for the audience's sake, just simplifying it.

He's like, okay, so don't destroy it. It's going to learn from me. You got to do it fast. See ya. He just cuts to the chase and another very simpsons comedy joke of him getting his big fat gut stuck in the the chute yeah and how he can't actually pull himself out of the pod he's got to smash it apart from the inside oh that's so great god i love his and then very great character acting on how he like has to stretch around after busting out like because he hasn't exercised in a while and he's about to throw his back out because he's you know he's an

fat guy he's an old fat guy we see that he's out of breath trotting through the jungle i feel like he goes through this jungle a little too long yeah i mean this could be a shorter movie ultimately uh but not according to brad bird i'll cut to the chase. The droid finds him. They engage in a fight. He throws rocks at it, and then it throws rocks back at him to show that it's learning. He even tries to vault over it, and it predicts where he's going to fall, so he smashes it down. You even see a little trickle of blood on his arm, which felt special for Pixar, too. Then they end up in a volcano when i saw the

volcano i also was thinking like oh yeah remember the thq video game that sold a billion copies that came out around the same time the developers had to be so happy to know that there was lava in this game a movie so they could put it in the game basically one enemy you fight yeah then they're all robots yeah i yeah i never i mean ever played i never had a reason to but i wonder if it's like just mediocre you know not bad but just mediocre that's that that's what i recall hearing i i mean it was a couple years after it that's when cars came out and it like printed money for thq they made like eight cars they still went out of business it's because they bet on original ip yeah they've uh original IP. Which, I get it. They're like, why are we making all these licensed games?

Let's bet on original IP. But by the time their original IP came out, it was too late, pretty much. And honestly, Darksiders. I liked the first Darksiders. I liked every Darksiders after it less. I didn't even like the first one. I'm sorry. Yay.

You know, it's a fine, it's a fine mature Zelda. Yeah. It's totally fine. The designs were very McFarlane, right? I mean, yeah, it's Edge Lord. It's pure Edge Lord. Yeah. That's maybe I have more affection for the Joe Mad art style.

Oh, right. Than you do. I'm wondering if the video game is one of those ones that secretly sold a ton of copies because you find out that things like going back to A Bug's Life, the PS1 A Bug's Life game sold a tremendous amount of copies. It became a greatest hit. Doesn't it? I mean, that just feels so retro to talk about how, remember when the entire world of video games was built around high selling kid movie adaptations? And this came out like, yeah, this game came out in 2004.

And then by the end of the decade, thanks to Steve Jobs's invention, personal inventing of the iPhone, it killed that market. All the kid games just are an app now. And so the wiki does say that it was according to the ndp npd group which monitors that are monitored that stuff back then it was one of the highest selling movie based video games of the year 57 million dollars in profit the gba version alone sold a million copies wow so yes it sold very very well cool uh but yeah so the fight continues in the volcano we get some more dad comedy of a guy thrown out his back and then being cracked back into place while being stretched i mean his little shuffle is he's like shuffling

around the lava like that's so cool or it's it's very funny and then he hides under it jumps on the inside and then that's when he learns the thing that will be flashed back to very heavily yes that he can pierce itself in those moments and then once he finally gets it to stab its own heart that's when he hops out and walks away like a cool guy and we see syndrome in uh in silhouette to explain what's happening here and this is when bob has a flirty dinner james bond style with mirage which i mean nothing happens and they're very distant from each other but i do feel like he should he should apologize a little to helen for that yeah the scene isn't like oh bob is kind of naive and mirage thinks he's flirting he's actually flirting this is like a slightly an emotional affair he's having with

this younger attractive woman for sure this is like oh this is like office wife territory oh yeah oh that term makes me want to puke right that's my office husband's like no you just want to fuck him yeah same with office wife and you know what start a polycule then if that's what you're into now but uh or leave your legal wife or husband then just have a you'd be probably happier then if uh and you get rid of your dumb kids and just fuck the person you work with uh but yes this is when uh the the i like their little james bond sexy exchange here. Am I overdressed? Actually, you look rather dashing.

I take it our host is... I'm sorry. He won't be dining with us tonight. He hopes you'll understand. Of course. I do usually make it a point to know who I'm working for. He prefers a certain amount of anonymity. Surely you of all people understand that. I was just wondering, of all the places to settle down, why live... With a volcano, he's attracted to power. So am I.

It's a weakness we share. Seems a bit unstable. I prefer to think of it as misunderstood. Aren't we all? Volcanic soil is among the most fertile on earth everything at the table was drawn right here how does it compare everything's delicious i'm talking about using the word fertile right and also she's saying like how does this compare she's made like did i make better dinner than your wife? What do you think of that?

She's got a great design. She's like real thin, but she's got a big oval head. Yeah, she is real sexy and powerful. She's attracted to men with power, and it's a weakness we share. That is very clever James Bond tete-a-tete writing there. She will later learn what real power is, and that's when she falls out of love with Syndrome. But yeah, he's... I think one thing that makes this not as bad

is that they are very far apart at the table. It's like a Citizen Kane breakfast here. It feels like, though, she is mentally playing footsie with him. And then consider that in the very next scene, the second he comes home, Bob is raring to go once he gets home. You feel like the second he got back to his room after the dinner with her, he's like, okay, just beat off a couple times. Let's say take a cold shower and then move on. Him and Helen then have such an overtly rekindled love life here. Like they're pinching each other's butts to be like, hey, you know what?

Our sex life had died a little bit here, but I'm starting to feel like fucking you again. They won't let you see the actual butt pinch. It's implied, but you understand it. It's a joke for the adults. Yeah. And then, I mean, this is all a whole midlife crisis thing. He buys himself a new car. it's a joke for the adults yeah and then i mean this is all a whole midlife crisis thing he buys himself a new car he starts to get obsessed with getting in shape and being healthier

the way he he works out is going to the train yard and lifting trains i love when he's on his back and he's rolling the train car with his feet it's great oh and then he has to flip it back into place and just wave at the train that comes by. Yeah. And the music for the whole sequence is great, too. It's some of my favorite music in it. And yeah, every time he's about to leave, she pulls him back in. She's like, no, where are you going, mister? They're about to have a fourth kid if they keep this up.

By the way, that's something also dark i forgot to mention that's in the deleted opening in that version syndrome catches them when violet was just born he sees that the baby is born and he says hey you know that you're not allowed to have kids if you're a super okay which i was like boy that has darker implications there too doesn't it's like population control honestly if the government was serious about this they would sterilize these people because you're making more of the problem we're trying to stop is what is what's happening here yeah yeah i mean hey look if you're saying they should all be locked up on an island all the time maybe maybe they should be i don't know i like the this was a

thought experiment i've heard talked about in comic books before that we all know we like Batman and Batman's fun to watch. But if you lived in the real world where Batman did all the things that Batman does, but you read about in the paper, you wouldn't like Batman. That's just like what? So a guy just shows up and beats the shit out of people and tells the cops to arrest him. Like, I don't trust this guy. You'd want him locked up

too probably. We have a long sexy montage that also allows them to change Mr. Incredible's design to a thinner bulky man and get rid of the fat guy design. Here's another little bit that apparently

was a lot of trouble but Brad Bird really wanted it bob puts his hand through the hole in his suit to say like oh man there's a hole in it that it was one of the most complex things in the movie and took apparently like two months of work for the animators to do well we learned in the toy story 3 podcast the most complicated thing that they did was render a garbage bag right oh that's right same deal like yeah the way it stretches in that this and they're bemoaning it over and over again on the commentary of like because if we do it right you don't even know we worked hard on it like but brad bird said that the tech team was like can't you just show him off

screen saying like oh look there's a hole in this and he's Brad Bird's like no you have to show it make it work and so he's gonna leave he knows he needs it fixed and there's also another little nice moment where Helen kind of admires his body when he walks away she's like she's checking out the buns folks she's she should not feel guilty about her wonderful buns either like he's i know he's getting in better shape but and so now it's time to talk about into mode he did it in two were there to be an incredible three does he do edna mode again i think so uh because it's a woman but the character is is kind of androgynous i guess and i feel like he's available because he's uh quote unquote just an artist so i feel like he does edna mode if there's like a storybook or a

dvd extra or whatever he's just yeah i'll do it it's funny you know he's a good voice actor doing this he's having so much fun as her yeah i i mean the character is a german japanese woman so you know there are some problematic elements to that of a white guy playing it. But yeah, it's just such a big drag performance. And he's making fun of these very haughty fashion designer ladies of the 60s. She is this tiny little person, but has so much power and is just bossing around superheroes everywhere. And you feel it. He plays it very very well it's a it's a fun personality because uh you know she is very haughty and very pretentious but she's also incredibly needy she goes she flips back and

forth between needing you to be there and then pretending she doesn't have time for you yeah she's like don't even ask me if you know why oh yeah she says ask me now before it becomes sane and also like when he's even pointing out to her that she hates it, and she's like, ugh, and throws it away like a hobo suit. He says, you decided. I never look back, darling. It distracts from the now. She doesn't even care that she's being hypocritical.

And she's designed to look like Edith Head. You'll see her name in a lot of old movies as, like, the costume designer. I learned it from a They Might Be Giants song. Like, she thinks she's edith head but you might know she's not that you know which is which what is that on uh i want to say factory showroom well you know i'll look this up here the song she thinks she's edith head was actually released as a uh as a b-side or i think it's a dial-a-song. It was released by TMBG Unlimited in June. So they're like kind of online sequel to dial-a-song.

Okay, okay. So there you go. It was one of those, not on an album. Well, looks just like her. She was a very short woman with severe bangs. Who was, she worked on the Hitchcock movies a bunch didn't she yeah you'll see her on everything like rear window is one of the big ones but yeah i think it's even like you'll see her signature like gowns by edith head and it's her big signature and then when you see like oh

this little woman with this outsized personality like you can see yeah you can totally see what attracted brad bird to create the character co-create the character, and then also want it to play it. And all right, I could put every Edna Mode clip in here because she's so great, but I just have her big monologue, which is one of the most remembered scenes from the movie, I'd say. It will be bold, dramatic, heroic. Yeah, something classic. Like Dinah Guy. Oh, he had a great look. Ohic. Yeah, something classic. Like, uh, D-Dinah Guy.

Oh! He had a great look. Oh, the cape and the boots. No capes. Isn't that my decision? Do you remember Thunderhead? Tall, storm powers. Nice man. Good with the capes.

Listen, me... November 15th of 58. All was well, another day saved, when his cape snagged on a missile. Thunderhead was not the brightest ball. Strattogale, April 23rd, 57. Cape caught in a jet turbine. He can't generalize about the same. Metaman, express elevator.

Dynaguy, snag on takeoff. Splashdown sucked into a vortex. No kicks! Now go on, your new suit will be finished before your next assignment. You know I'm retired from hero work. As am I, Robert. Yet here we are. E, I only need a patch job for sentimental reasons. Fine, I will also fix the hobo suit.

You're the best of the best, E. darling i know oh i know darling she's so calling everybody darling like that's so great we see like six people die on screen as well isn't that crazy like yeah that plane is crashing do you hear the noises i know these these that guy who gets pulled into the uh the vortex he's being choked to death like they're all so this this is another bit though that is very similar to something in watchmen uh it's not as played as big in it but uh every issue of watchmen comes with um basically a bunch of like text material that is further world building and lore stuff which is amazing it's great one of my favorite things about watchmen and they have a bit where characters ask like why do so few superheroes wear capes like after the first generation and then uh the the original

night owl explains it's like well because the capes are no i think actually i think it's sally jupiter she explains well capes get caught in things they're actually incredibly useless for people and they tell the story of a character named dollar bill who is basically a superhero hired by a bank and he protects a bank and his cape gets caught in a revolving door and then he is shot to death by the robber jesus so basically a more serious version of this thing happened i mean it all pays off in the end but i have to wonder if this no capes thing is something brad bird was told by the tech people because because uh you know showing loose fabric and things touching it is

like takes a ton of work at this time and probably even now so that's why only syndrome has a cape is my is my theory you know i bet that no capes rules is i bet he is kind of channeling the the the all of the things he was told you can't do and how much he hated that though and it works great as setup of like that our heroes in this pixar movie they can't kill Syndrome even though you're not going to feel bad when he dies it has to be a blameless Disney death that's the villains fault so you set up all the cape stuff that's how it pays off and I also like how

she knows he's breaking the law and she's excited about it she's like yet here we are she's very bored now because her life was derailed from this she she now has to design clothing for supermodels who she hates i love it she's like nothing super about them darling like she hates me yeah it's she used to design for gods just to make it clear like yes these are the gods of the world are our superheroes they are the gleaming gods they then cut to helen at home and in a very realistic

way she discovers a woman's hair on this on the jacket and then listens in on a part of the phone call with her that makes it sound like that he's cheating on her with mirage like uh she's she's right to jump to these conclusions and it does remind me of uh early simpsons in which uh life on the fast lane in which homer knows that marge is probably cheating on him and he's extra nice to her before she leaves it feels like the same thing with helen i mean it's not a simpsons joke but it's just observed behavior yeah just like oh fuck is he leaving me i love you and the guy's like yeah i love you too what's going what what the the choice of um instead of confrontation just to say like hey before you do this you know i love you right like please like

though yeah in marge's case she was going to cheat on homer and then rethinks it but uh yeah that's uh in a deleted scene they actually get much more overt they have a scene of her confronting him and actually says the words directly are you having an affair which he denies because it's true he isn't having an affair and then she also has a dream sequence where she fears she's losing him to a bunch of sexy bikini babes which definitely seemed hard to do so i can see why they cut it also brad bird even says like it's kind of hacky to just have a dream sequence tell you what a character's thinking but yeah the way she wishes him well and his pause of like well that's a weird thing to say but i love you too honey the way she goes like so much he's like yeah yeah i know i got it i got it

also speaking of things they don't do too much in pixar movies he's drinking liquor oh yeah it hey it's very light but they'll sneak up on you those mimosas i had uh one of the drunkest i've been around my mom was thinking i could take three mimosas at a brunch when i went with her to to brunch and i was i was a little sloshed in front of mommy sloshed in front of mommy i want i don't normally call her mommy i'm just i thought it was a fun phrasing and then as he arrives in the place on second watch you are supposed to think like oh this is obviously a super villain secret lair like this is a whole it's all how a super villain lives not just some rich guy

and then he's getting closer to mirage when they meet up in the transport like it's definitely they're getting more intimate i i think mirage would fuck him uh if they given a couple more days on that yeah the first thing you see when this pod opens is her long spindly legs just jutting into the door area yeah they're close enough to at least do some hand stuff on the way in the transport and this this is the james bond island is this dr no i mean it's whatever austin powers was referencing yeah i believe that's dr no is the the original and anything with all these egg pods in this like mid-century modern design oh you're right i wasn't even egg pods are so my first

thought was disneyland which i'm wearing a vintage a vintage-like Disneyland t-shirt right now. But I was thinking these transports on the thing remind me of, you know, people movers in Disneyland. But you're right. The egg pod of it all, that is so Dr. No and original James Bond of fake futurism. And also Venture Brothers trades around in a lot. And so, yeah, Mr. Incredible gets into a swanky hotel room. He thinks everything's going to be nice. This is when Helen inadvertently snoops.

Like, she's not trying to go in there to vacuum. I love the look on her face when she hears how dirty the floor is, and she just is like, bleh. Yeah. Yeah, it's a nice, like, audio gag when you could tell, oh, the vacuum is picking up a lot of stuff. It's a noisy, noisy vacuum. It's a satisfying noise, though, when you could tell oh the vacuum is picking up a lot of stuff it's a noisy noisy vacuum it's a satisfying noise though when you're vacuuming like yeah get rid of it all yes yeah i do like that sound and she goes in there instantly she's got great detective skills she's a way better

detective and sleuth than the mr incredible she sees the fix to his suit instantly catches it and knows that edna is the only person who could have fixed it and instantly calls her and this is when she hates calling herself uh elastigirl but she has to do it and when edna overreacts to it great animation of her juggling the phone too love that and so she is called over uh also i how Edna says, don't make me beg, darling. I won't do it, you know. Then cut back to the island. Bob goes into his meeting at 2 p.m.

Nobody's there. And this is when Syndrome reveals himself. The monster, well, actually, first the new Omnidroid 10 grabs him, basically has him dead to rights. But Syndrome doesn't want to just kill him now then he couldn't explain everything i'm really shocked that this happens this early in the movie it's it's like about about halfway through yeah it is is it pretty much the halfway point yeah that he that he just has the blades right up to his neck and he's like oh he's too much for mr incredible and uh yes we then see Syndrome revealed.

And we see that the ultimate evil of this world is a fanboy gone wrong. After all, I am your biggest fan. Buddy? My name is not Buddy! And it's not Incrediboy either. That ship has sailed. All i wanted was to help you i only wanted to help and what did you say to me fly home buddy i work alone it tore me apart but i learned an important lesson you can't count on anyone especially your heroes I was wrong to treat you that way. I'm sorry.

See? Now you respect me. Because I'm a threat. That's the way it works. Turns out there are a lot of people, whole countries who want respect. And they will pay through the nose to get it. How do you think I got rich? I invented weapons. And now I have a weapon that only I can defeat.

And when I unleash it, I'll get... You sly dog! You got me monologuing! I can defeat. And when I unleash it, I'll get... You sly dog. You got me monologuing. I can't believe it. I love that. You got me monologuing. Like he realizes it was a tactic of him to like, oh, so tell me your plan and that'll distract you and I'll smash you in the head. The most evil people are fanboys and people that make weapons.

Yes. Yeah. I guess I really want to know the path Buddy took. How did he become a weapons developer? What colleges did he go to? How did he end up on this island? Buddy's past is what I really want to know more about. I definitely think going up through MIT is when he would make the connections of like,

oh, you know, these rocket boots would be pretty good on a missile that kills a bunch of people. I guess it establishes that he can make things via the rocket boots. Yeah, yeah. It shows his inventor abilities, and then that gets shaped into a weapons dealer. I do feel like when he says countries all over the world wants this, it's his way of saying, oh, but I didn't sell to America, even though I am sure he is a weapons dealer to the U.S. government, too. If not, he would be in jail for not selling weapons to the government. Yes, it's a crime to not include us.

In that NPR interview, this was Brad Bird's big defense that this was not as conservative a movie as some people were accusing because he's like, well, you know, the main villain of the movie is a weapons dealer. This is during the Iraq War when we're supposed to love weapons manufacturers right also i was reminded of the simpsons when he gesticulates wildly and sends him flying over the horizon it's just like the rabbit in oh yeah in simpsons in the wild and then he chases after him he drops the spoon bomb after him and the explosion again Brad Bird was told a lot please don't do explosions underwater and he's like sorry this calls for it it's and I love not only is the explosion underwater the force of it

shoots him out of like it's like a uh like a cannon almost he shot out of this little tunnel into the cave again seeing it this time every time gazer beams corpse is shocking that was a shocking moment in theater like oh it's a skeleton but still uh somebody died here it's it's uh it's pretty shocking to see i wonder too it's probably because i just watched it recently the first time i saw this movie in castle caliostro which i know brad bird like literally worked with tms when they were doing this he was going to be one of the directors of little nemo before he realized it sucked and wouldn't work oh right yeah but he definitely saw caliostro and in in that movie too lupin and then he gotta hide behind a bunch of bones also to to trick

their captor yeah like after coming up through an underwater cave right that's right yeah right yeah that's right actually it's even more connected and uh yeah the the word he sees is chronos which uh you'd know this if you listen to our hercules what a cartoon movie but that of course is the name of the old god that ate all of the new gods that was then defeated by Zeus, Kronos. That's why it's the thing that kills superheroes. That's why it's called Kronos. You can't fight on a full stomach is what I'm saying.

That was Kronos' big mistake. Yeah, he got greedy. It's just like, you know, you don't have room for zeus just leave zeus alone or let another guy eat him you know it doesn't have to be you uh so yeah he hides behind the corpse syndrome then sends out what is essentially a current day's drone yeah yeah and he scans them yeah they're in this movie they're even the uh the the personal drones you can buy for yourself with like the two propeller blades that are kind of like locked in. Yeah, I just,

anticipating tech that's about to be invented for consumer use. Yeah, which is a very Jobsian thing. Also, I mean, Brad Bird is also a little bit of a tech geek. In the commentary, he talks, when zero point energy comes up, he's like,

I was just reading about it online. It's going to be amazing. It's still not a real thing. Like it's, there's some quantum be amazing. It's still not a real thing. There's some quantum theories that apparently have made a little progress going forward, but zero-point energy is still a pipe dream, just like cold fusion. We'll see when that ever happens. I feel like even if it got invented, the companies wouldn't let us have it.

No, the fossil fuel companies would bomb us all. Yeah. If we threatened to turn them off. I mean, see how long it took them to give us an electric car? And the only way we got that is by having the worst person in the world make them. Who's also a rich asshole who can be allowed to do it. I'm saying Syndrome

is also a little Elon Musk-ier. Yeah, but we were celebrating him in 2004. Oh, he's one of the smartest guys in the world. He's going to save everything. Get him on The Simpsons. We'll get to it. They have to apologize for that. him uh in 2004 oh he's one of the smartest guys in the world he's gonna save everything get him on the simpsons they we'll get to it they have to apologize for that they i want a direct apology

from al jean for putting him on the show we cut to helen getting to edna's house this is when edna is so excited to show off all of the suits and i just love how she's like wait edna stop and she's like no i know words are useless it's too much darling it's too much so funny i think it's contrived on purpose that they could be together this long without helen having explained what's happening oh right yeah i feel like it doesn't make any sense but edna is so aggressive that in a way it does but it's funny how like she's with uh edna for about 10 minutes and she can't tell her why. Because Edna won't let her talk. She's too excited.

She has steamrolls. I also love all the acting with her Cruella DeVille style cigarette holder too. Like how she even uses it to punch the key code in. And she says she's Edna mode. Like the little mouth movement on mode is so good. And Helen is almost shot to death by a sentry gun. But then she says she's Edna Mode. Like the little mouth movement on Mode is so good. And Helen is almost shot to death by a sentry gun, but then she says, and guests. So, you know, in the Fantastic Four comics,

the suits also have to be made out of very special materials. So Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were sick of being asked how, like, how does a human torch even light himself on fire and not burn his clothes off every time? So they invented an idea called unstable molecules. And it's all manufactured by Reed Richards. He discovered a thing that basically is just magic clothes that do what need to be done.

Like, well, these unstable molecules, they stretch as far as he can stretch. They can be lit on fire. They can turn invisible. Why? Because they're unstable molecules they stretch as far as he can stretch they can be lit on fire they can turn invisible why because they're unstable molecules and that is a core basis of all scientific fact of the marvel universe like nanomachines it's exactly like nanomachines yes and so this is when edna shows it all off i love that they show you a cute little baby and then they instantly light it on fire what element of this scene i really like is how edna and helen are on a platform and the platform

slides over to to follow the progress of the suits as it goes through like the labyrinth of hazards but then once it has to go back to the left it slides over violently and helen is never ready for it but edna's just sitting there relaxed as it's all happening but every time it retracts back to the original position Helen is taken by surprise and she even has like a cup of coffee that like splashes around yeah I did I love that it works like a typewriter like to the end and

chunk back and they're back yeah and this is when we we hear about how great Helen's suit is to which then leads into more sober conversations about possible infidelity your sword can stretch as far as you can without injuring yourself and still retain its shape virtually indestructible it breathes like egyptian cotton as an extra feature each suit contains a homing device,

giving you the precise global location of the wearer at the touch of a button. Well, darling, what do you think? What do I think? Bob is retired. I'm retired. Our family is underground. You helped my husband resume secret hero work behind my back?

I assumed you knew, darling. Why would he keep secrets from you? He wouldn't. Didn't. Doesn't. Men at Robert's age are often unstable, prone to weakness. What are you saying? Do you know where he is? Of course. Do you know where he is of course do you know where he is i love that i love i love the little look on her face when she's like why would he keep secrets

from you like she's just inching her closer to like come on sums up with robert here and she's facing away from helen until he she says do you know where he is? Yeah. Oh, God, her forceful. Also, yeah, I like that Edna is too fancy to call him Bob. She's Robert. Yeah. Do you get many fancy folks in your life calling you Robert instead of Bob? No. Or just like doctors?

Only when my mom is mad. Oh. And then when I have to do anything professional or like, you know, appointments, I've learned that Bob confuses people and it often messes with like paperwork and stuff. So I'm like, yes, my name is Robert Mackey. Or like you're checking in at a hotel or something. Yeah, that makes sense. I used to be insistent until I found like, oh, this is messing with important things I want to do because people don't know that Bob is short for Robert.

It's weird. Oh, I've seen that happen to you on a flight or on like we were flying together and your Bob caused a problem. Yeah, yeah. I've also had Uber drivers be like, I was like, oh, yeah, ride for Bob. He's like, oh, yeah, Bob. Is that your real name? Like, no, I just Bob is this thing I made up. No one has ever been called Bob before.

I guess. The most popular cartoon is named Bob. Yeah. I guess everybody just thinks SpongeBobgebob is his name not bob just yeah that's too bad it's uh i i could see with an uber driver a lyft driver there are some where english is not their first language so if you hear the name bob it just sounds like but yeah but so you have to go bob yeah i i mean i've also had problems where I forget that in one of the apps, I put my name is Hank, not Henry. So I show up and go like, yeah, hey, I'm Henry.

But they don't. Yeah, I mean, they're following it to the letter of the law and they don't know. Sometimes they don't know that Hank is short for Henry. Yeah, I guess you mentioned it like about a second ago. But the real problem with being called Bob is when you say your name at like Starbucksbucks or any place you have to fully aspirate the beef so they understand you and then you sound like an insane person like yes my name is bob and then often i'll spell it out for people and a few times they were like yeah thanks like like as if they didn't know how to spell bob but it's like no i you if i don't say my name is, you'll be like, Paul? Or like they'll say some other name that sounds like a one syllable blurt.

You can't win for losing. Yeah, exactly. No, and I mean, also your wife, Nina, she is. Now that's an easy name to recognize. Except she doesn't have that. She has. How do people get Nina wrong? I know.

I've seen our catalog, her travails, especially at like coffee shops of just like mina like lena lena yeah i think she's got to sound like an insane person too and go nina get really bite on that so then speaking of video game style stuff for this we have a long sneaking mission like it's basically solid snake here this is the same uh you know, like, Snake Eater came out almost exactly around this time. I remember playing it at Thanksgiving break of that year. That's right. Wow, what amazing timing, man. And, yeah, this is the same, like, going around grassy trees and stuff.

Though, you know, the thickness of the forest in Snake Eater is actually a bit more convincing than uh than this island here uh but yeah the way the way he lands on the thing and dents it beats up the guys you see the missing platform arrive and then the flung platform fly and then engulf the moon and crush those guys i know you hear the telltale uh by the guys but no they no, they're dead. They're dead. They're completely dead. These are dead men. Also, during his video gaming mission, he knocks out one guard to distract three other guards to get into a thing. That's very Hitman. Yeah, including that guy who fell off the thing is dead, too, right?

Like, you don't survive a fall like that. There's got to be a body count website for this movie i saw one that said it's 22 but that can't be right because i think there's at least 22 supers just named on the list that mr incredible is about to find i guess maybe like people you see die on screen because when once the kids are like uh involved they kill so many people these kids he i think dash alone kills seven men yeah i think yeah who they're all uh to quote true lies they're all bad people so don't worry about it uh there's a funny strike too on the dvd uh slash video blu-ray that the animator who did the rock hitting the guy scene did

needlessly eight different versions of it and like they presented it to brad bird of like so what's your favorite like they're not fully rendered but they are like fully animated before getting all the different layers of clothing and hair put on top of it and uh yes he then sneaks in uh you'll see uh mr incredible going through the same hallway that helen gets her her big uh rump caught in later in the oh yeah when she's caught between like two doors in that middle hallway yeah it's the the smart reuse of of set design there this does also feel like a brad bird gag when he goes into mirage's office he sees the the wall of magma that parts for her to come through and he's about to part it with a

statue but then it starts opening on its own yes it's a great little move it's so great it introduces the idea of like hey this would be pretty cool if he used that to sneak in there oh wait his his cool plan which would be totally acceptable in the movie that's interrupted and he now has to improvise like okay i guess i have to rush very quickly between walls of lava and barely make it it's so exciting like he doesn't want to play in other people's uh toy boxes because they have too many rules but shit like this is like he would make the a great james bond movie he would have made a great indiana jones movie well he made a michelin possible movie is that that's good right that is it's my favorite but i i haven't seen the last two and i feel like tom cruise is gonna make me go to the theaters to see this next one that's coming out but you know

his ghost protocol i love it and it's full of gags like this actually now you mention it this is exactly like some of my favorite things in ghost protocol the thing in ghost protocol is it is endless comedy over and over again at the very start of the movie for uh for mr impossible no for mr impossible yes for for ethan hunt everything goes perfectly his man in the chair is like hey open that door the door opens that happens in the first scene every scene after that everything breaks they're like okay you need to use this device to climb the building that door the door opens that happens in the first scene every scene after that everything breaks they're like okay you need to use this device to climb the building it breaks as he's trying to use it and he has to come up with a new plan on the fly they're like hey here's the magic

mask that lets you hide your face oh actually the mask machine's broken you're gonna just have to do it without the fake mask over and over again like it is a looney tunes comedy movie in how many new ways they fuck with ethan hunt's character through having a plan go awry and that's the fifth movie four okay and now they're up to seven i think and this is seven part one i know so yeah it's one of those movies that's like a double movie he like all movies are now apparently uh he's he's about to that by the way i wish that my only complaint about across the spider verse is if you were a hardcore fan you knew that it was originally called part one now it's called across the spider verse and the next movie is going to be called beyond the spider verse if you haven't

seen the movie yeah this is not truly a spoiler but you should have been told it's part one because in my theater on opening day, there were pockets of the audience when the film gets to the obvious to be continued that you know was coming. If you know it's a part one, the audience goes like, what the hell? It just stops. What happened in this movie? They should have been informed, I think. It should have been called part one i feel like sony's marketing team was told like no no you can't do that uh but so yes he sneaks in he puts in the term chronos that he learned and this is when he's just seeing a list of dead bodies which watchman also has this moment of them discovering wait this guy's dead and this guy and this guy how deep does it go you know Mirage is

complicit in all of this and we don't really see what happens to her I really feel like they should have her going down with the ship moment with her I think some sort of way for her to make up for killing all of these people she is party to murder yeah many murders and

building a murder machine like I mean you can assume that rick dicker arrested her or something but i could see her getting a uh operation paperclip style absolutely yes but uh and so then yes edna meanwhile we cut to her sipping her tea waiting for the obvious reveal to come in is and they're cross-cutting between the two is seeing all the murders you get to see that helen is learning the sad truth while bob is learning that he's like oh god thank god like his first search is elastigirl and he's like okay he doesn't know who she is she's safe okay and then it just keeps building and building and building until Edna challenges her of like, do you want to know where he is?

And that's when she presses the button on the iPod and it sends out the tracking beacon, which alerts her trying to find Bob is actually what dooms him to be captured. But it's really his own fault for lying to her. And I guess at this point we see that the plan has eight hours to go before the rocket launch right which i'll just get that now this is a perfect time to say another way this is like watchman in watchman one of the greatest moments in comic book history is that he gives his entire monologue speech ozymandias and then he says well this isn't going to happen and you think it's a countdown to midnight the entire issue you're like countdown to midnight and then the real is like to quote it i'm not some republic serial villain i did it 35 minutes ago

and he already did it like he he says you think i'd explain my plan to you if there was any chance that you could stop it like no obviously not like it it's one of the greatest moments of comic history and so the thing launching and them not even knowing what it's about and they learn about it from the seeing it on tv that is all watchmen okay that that is all in sequence what happens in watchmen and then uh in a really more cool animation, as he gets caught, Mr. Incredible gets hit with goo balls that quickly engulf him and he's covered in goo. And he sees Mirage enter as he's being engulfed in goo. She looks like a bad guy there, doesn't she? Yeah.

I mean. She is. Yeah, she is. She's only like, oh no, we killed children this time. Fuck. So this explains why there's no supers around anymore, because the majority of them, even if they could have come out of hiding, are dead. Though in The Incredibles 2, which picks up basically two minutes after this movie ends, they kind of just plaster over that like, oh, there's actually a bunch of new superheroes who are getting ready to get started so don't think about the mass murder of all the old superheroes and when he's looking up the old superheroes we see that uh it's always you know they're they're paired with the omni drone and you see that when it's defeated it comes back as a

different version it's it gets an upgrade every time till it kills the guy which is exactly what was happening to mr incredible too yeah and so he gets caught we cut to edna crying at home or edna's home and she is very poorly comforting helen i love the way she is just dangling out the toilet paper like yes yes and then the way she tips it all into like an incinerator that she's like, yeah, very bad. It could have just been a trash can, but I like how it just dropped in and goes, it's great. And she then finds a way to remind him of you, who you are. She just like smacks her on the head like, get yourself together. Like, this is girl talk, you know.

Doesn't fit that Bechdel test. Fails it. They're talking about a man. A man? Yeah, sure. Amen. they're like this is uh this is girl talk you know the doesn't fit that bechdel test fails it this is they're talking about a man a man a man yeah it's a man it's about helen finally getting her confidence back up enough to be equal to a man and finally be worth something in his eyes but i like her a little like i enjoy our visits honey which um then she just uh you don't see edna again in the movie after that uh so yes hel yes, Helen comes back home, tells the kids she's going to be late. There's a fun line of like Violet and Dash reenter the movie at this point. They've been gone a long time.

Yeah. Boy, I feel that's a big failing of this movie. A movie that I mostly enjoy again, 3.5 stars. It's a weird part of this movie in that most of the time that we see Dash and Violet, they're in action scenes. Yeah. It's just them part of this movie in that most of the time that we see Dash and Violet, they're in action scenes. Yeah, it's just them using their powers. You're right. It's really just their intro scene, them at the dinner table, and now them going on the mission.

And you'll get a little wrap up for both of them. But in my memory, I believe both in Incredibles 2 have a bit more going on. That's good yeah though it is elastic girls movie really this movie is very dad pilled it's always asking what's the dad doing what's he up to i was glad that incredibles 2 is not that uh the the dad has a lot to do in the movie but it is like an inversion of their roles like helen gets a lot of screen time in this too but she's not the main character invert that bob parr gets a lot of screen time in the movie but he's not the main character either but yeah i love the little bit of violets trying to figure out what's going on she says

it means dad's in trouble or dad's gonna be in trouble sports car the getting in shape the blonde hair. Yes, his attempts to relive the past. Now I'm losing him. What do I do? What do I do? What are you talking about? You are Elastigirl! My God! Pull yourself together! What will you do? Is this a question?

You will show him you remember that he is Mr. Incredible and you will remind him who you are. Well, you know where he is. Go, confront the problem. Fight. Win! And call me when you get back, darling. I enjoy our visits. There's lots of leftovers that you can reheat.

Make sure Dash does his homework and both of you get to bed on time. I should be back tonight. Late. You can be in charge that long, can't you? Yeah, but... Why can be in charge that long, can't you? Yeah, but why am I in charge again? Nothing. Just a little trouble with Daddy.

You mean Dad's in trouble? Or Dad is the trouble? I mean, either he's in trouble or he's going to be. I like, too, the dash because he's a noisy hyper kid. Don't you think it's weird they don't have a pure anti-Ritalin stance in this? I mean, I think they're being pretty, it's what they're saying is what people do to Dash. Maybe if they made this five years earlier, they would have jokes about that. That was the time to make those kind of things in the very late 90s.

Though, you know, I bet Disney would have told him, like, hey, you can't directly make fun of a thing. But this comes from the same place. Dash is Bart in uh mother brother's little helper right that's the name of the episode yeah the anti-ritalin episode uh but yeah this hyper noisy kid instantly rushes room like oh man this is it hey you got one too yeah let's put it on i bet they made it special for you and she just shoves him out of the room she should have realized they were going to steal away after that yeah you should have like uh i would i would have like hid the costumes you know yeah just lay them out

on the bed she was too distracted she's got a lot on her mind yeah it's true i like how violet tested out too so she sees it can turn invisible with her too and so here is the next and i'd say the biggest deleted scene other than the uh cut. Yeah, I watched the Snug saga. Okay, I wondered if you saw that. Yeah, so the guy she calls on the phone is Snug. It's her old friend who lends her a plane. And originally, he was supposed to be her old assistant, basically her Alfred type, who would fly her to missions. And the point of it was that Brad Bird wanted to establish stakes.

He wanted Snug to fly them there and when the plane explodes he dies and he was hearing from he said including from Lasseter saying you know it's much cleaner if Helen just flies the plane herself and it also lets her be more directly involved and he was just going like no no it has to be snug we have to kill him and and make it a very sobering moment and see how dangerous it is and then he talks he articulates it so well as he's going through editing of the storyboard and trying to cut time just this creeping realization that someone else was right and he's like god damn it this other guy i have to admit they were right and cut it apparently it's named after some guy he knows oh some guy named snug some guy named snug that's a

fun well i guess everything's name it's every classroom gets a joke in this every every son of his gets to be a voice in it yeah when i saw this picture of this guy i thought there's the deleted scene there's a deleted character and yes there is deleted character. And yes, there is. I mean, he's fine. I don't miss Snug. I don't think. I think the stakes are plenty well set up by the speech Helen gives later of like, hey, these guys are going to murder you if you get the chance. You know, like that's enough. You don't need to.

And also when you see the storyboard version of it with full voice acting, the jokes of them popping out of the water and going like you know hey i'm gonna ground you and all that stuff it diminishes those jokes because you as the audience are going like oh that guy just died not snug snug's gonna die the way he lived is his telltale hat floating up uh so yes holly hunter uh then as they're flying in she really wanted to learn all the accurate call signs for a fighter pilot to give not just a regular commercial pilot so when she says breaker breaker niner niner like she was very interested in getting it correct and i like that helen's helen doesn't want to put her costume back on but her old instincts are catching in when she's like, they're all just going getting coffee at the same time.

Yeah. And so then cut to some enhanced interrogation techniques fitting for 2004, I suppose. Yeah, it's very Metal Gear, but also they got from James Bond. Yeah, yeah. It is totally james bond this torture though of course uh you know as we would learn in 2004 less fun high-tech torture happening from our government that uh are many wonderful black sites around the world just the wet towel but it makes you think you're dying it's it's a real money saver yeah well and you know that same kind of ethos came into the casino real movie that came out two years later because mads mickles's character gives an entire speech

of like why go to all this trouble like machines and stuff when i can just have a wet rope lightly tap your ball sack and that's torture enough and it's i forgot there's some ball torture in that movie light uh ball torture yes yeah it's it's a good it is a very effective scene uh for for anyone who knows what it's like to feel your testicles hit uh it is it is quite a painful scene rope would be a new sensation they also had to animate a whole new model of hair they call it his sad hair when it's kind of drooping forward like that they also another fun little easter egg on the blu-ray is they have a reel called bad hair day where just when they rendered a scene hair just like exploded in unpredictable ways and it's just tons of funny shit in it and and yes he gets a whole

speech about just how cool he is and i mean this is just a Brody speech right here out of Mallrats. He almost says this word for word to Stan Lee in the movie, actually. You, sir, truly are Mr. Incredible. You know, I was right to idolize you. I always knew you were tough. But tricking the probe by hiding under the bones of another super? Oh, man! I'm still geeking out about it!

And then you had to just go and ruin the ride. I mean, Mr. Incredible calling for help? Help me, help me! Lame, lame, lame, lame, lame! All right, who did you contact? Contact? What are you talking about? I am referring to last night at 23.07 hours, while you were snooping around, you sent out a homing signal.

Didn't know about the homing device. And now a government plane is requesting permission to land here who did you contact i didn't send for a plane play the transmission so you do know these people oh well i'll send them a little greeting so he's gonna kill them and here and he's going to force Mr. Incredible to watch. There's some nice misunderstandings in that. Syndrome thinks that Bob called for help, and then Bob thinks his wife and family are dead. Yeah, they're both missing key components here.

I love his little sissy boy act out, too. Like, oh, no no i'm so scared like uh there's a really fun character animation on syndrome in this movie and so we cut into the plane helen sees that the kid stowed away i love that it's kid logic of how like violet goes like it's because dash stowed away and i knew you'd be getting mad at me if i and then dash was like no it's her idea he did at first like perfect brother sister arguing it's all about passing the buck i mean i needed to let my mom know that it was my little brother's fault every time and he did started and if you if she would just listen to me she'd understand that he started it i like how uh the kids are talking over each other to blame each other, but then talking over each other to be like, we're not stupid.

We got a sitter. Yeah. He's like, yeah, mom. Violet has great sarcasm back. And I wonder, how did Sarah Val feel that she's like, oh, we for Dash, we hired a real child. But obviously you sound like a baby. You've got that weird mousy voice. You're a little girl, aren't you?

Like, yeah. you've got that weird mousy voice you're a little girl aren't you like yeah so we then hear uh kari uh the babysitter who she has one of those dumb millennial names kari well these what are you calling kids these days it ain't real uh she's voiced by an animator on the film brett brooke parker is how she's credited there's there's a nice baby einstein takedown yeah i love that because i half the time i don't even know what the heck anyone's talking about and this is where the jack jack attack short begins uh we we get to see all the stuff from carrie's side of things then that bit is cut off it's funny in jack jack attack when the ship explodes carrie hears it on her end of the phone and she's like oh I guess they just hung up.

She doesn't think anything about it. But yeah, I'm glad it's not snug. I like that Elastigirl gets to be a cool, awesome pilot and does all these cool pilot skills of dodging the missiles and almost hitting the water and flying back up. I also think I misremember the Jack-Jack Attack content being in the movie because I had only seen each thing once. So I misremember the scenes of the babysitter with the little kid in the movie.

And I forget that it's a surprise that he has powers at the end. Yeah, yeah. You can see why they cut it, too, because they want to save the power reveal for the end. But the short's great. And it's also fun to watch the short because it released a year-ish, I mean, 10 months later, I think. They were able to get slightly better rendering and lighting on it than you see in the main movie.

The tech is slightly improved in between. But yeah, the cutback to Bob, he's begging him not to do it. He says, too late, 15 years too late. And then also, I love the exchange too, where she's telling late 15 years too late and then also i love the exchange too where she's telling violet to help and then she's like but you said i know what i said listen to what i'm saying now i'm on violet's side you know what this is a hell of a time to ask her to start using the powers you told her to hide her entire life she's not even that good at it yet she deserves an apology later this is when they

learn that kids are on board mirage is in shock and she sees that syndrome doesn't give a shit and he's gonna kill children and that's too far for mirage killing parents of children eh who cares but the children themselves mirage is sad i think really for her it's more like you almost let that giant man crush me yeah actually you actually, you're right. It is a more selfish reason. She's mad about it. So, yeah, we then, as it's about to hit, what an intense scene. Helen, in like three strides, runs forward, turns into a ball, engulfs her family. The thing explodes.

She falls out. She unfurls off of them unconscious. They're flying through the air. Ah, what a great shot it all moves so perfectly she becomes a parachute and then she'll soon become a boat yes she can be anything and and you better believe those animators when they were told so she of course becomes like a cloth parachute and a cloth parachute then hits a bunch of water and then their hair gets all wet and then a big thing splashes into the water and explodes

and then their hair's underwater and then they come back up with wetter hair. So, you know, just get on that guy. It should be pretty easy. So we have some fun bit of her getting them to relax by saying she's like, they're worried they're going to die and she's like, hey, I'm going to grab you. But then we cut to Mr. Incredible in his darkest hour and and again this is one of my favorite exchanges in the the whole thing

we are not gonna die now both of you will get a grip or so help me i will ground you for a month understand we have a confirmed hit target was destroyed If you still help me, I will ground you for a month. Understand? We have a confirmed hit. Target was destroyed. Ah, you'll get over it. I seem to recall you prefer to work alone. Release me! Now! Or what?

I'll crush her. That sounds a little dark for you. Now, go ahead. It'll be easy. Like breaking a toothpick. Show me. I knew you couldn't do it. Even when you have nothing to lose, you're weak.

And I've outgrown you. And then he's just sobbing. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, the way he says he says like sounds a little dark for you okay and then like the zoom in on these cold eyes when he says show me he's like do it i don't give a shit he called his bluff yeah yeah and then also i mean the extra darkness to the scene too is like if mirage hadn't saved him and bob just grabbed Syndrome, he would have ripped Syndrome into pieces.

Like he would have just been a crumpled husk of like he'd just been a corpse, like instantly dead. Like the murderous intent was clear right there. For Bob, like he gets to learn, oh, I do love my family because i just see them die like as far as he knows whole family gone it's it's so sad i think that's why they need to cut away to helen so yeah turn into a boat it'll be funny her son is motorboating with her oh no sorry well then later he wakes up on top of his sister and he's like, ew. Yes. Yeah. That's a slightly naughty joke there, too. Don't give the fan artists any ideas. They've got enough already.

Yes. Yes. But I just couldn't resist writing down sun motorboating. Jesus. But yes. I also like Helen uses her detective skills. She's like, oh, the missile is short range. It came from over there.

Let's go over there. And meanwhile, Violet is still is still i was like violet as a kid like oh and then what mom you expect us to do this she's like i expect you to go with us like holly hunter does such a great job of acting like i'm really in sick of your shit kid but time to be i gotta be the grow-up like i expect you to trust me she had she had been a mom for a while at that point right holly hunter i think so i think so or i mean she's also a great actress but yeah i think i think she's probably gone through a lot of that herself at this point i see children too on wikipedia are they famous yet are they in movies

do they have a wiki page i guess twin sons actually uh she gave birth after this movie oh well how do you like that to claude and press well okay so then they'd only be like well they'd be 18 now they or something they'd they they should at least have a uh an instagram page there they're getting views yeah they could be like associate producers next year i mean they could be associate producers on incredibles 3 by the time it comes out like Helen might get them jobs or not Helen Holly look it's confi Holly Hunter plays Helen like it's tough you know uh but yeah they then get to the island it's also really great animation how they're also tired when they get there especially how they're doing like Helen walking really tired on the beach while also shifting forms.

Like that needlessly complicated, but it's a great way of showing off. She was tired from staying in boat form the entire time. It really was. Yeah, actually, I guess that must be what wears her out because, I mean, it's Dash who's doing all the kicking. Like she's not doing. I mean, while Violet's just sitting there doing nothing. Help out, Violet's just sitting there doing nothing. Help out, Violet. Come on.

So then we get a little inspirational speech from Helen. Remember the bad guys on those shows you used to watch on Saturday mornings? Well, these guys are not like those guys. They won't exercise restraint because your children, they will kill you if they get the chance do not give them that chance mom bye I'm counting on you something I'm counting on you be strong dash if anything goes wrong I want you to run as fast as you can as fast as I can as fast as you can stay hidden keep each other safe. I'll be back by morning. Mom? Mom, what happened on the plane? I'm sorry. I wanted to have... I mean, when you asked me to... I'm sorry.

Shh. It isn't your fault. It wasn't fair for me to suddenly ask so much of you. But things are different now. And doubt is a luxury we can't afford anymore, sweetie. You have more power than you realize. Don't think. And don't worry. If the time comes, you'll know what to do. It's in your blood.

She explains why masks are important, which is why it drives me insane when Spider-Man takes off his mask in every Spider-Man movie. You gotta see that actor actor they paid for it pisses me off so much if it if it was my spider-man movie he'd never take his mask off you'd see him as peter parker and he'd keep his mask on for every spider-man scene but that's just me that's uh that i i haven't made a billion dollar superhero movie yet so maybe I'm wrong in wanting that. And yeah, that also when she tells Dash,

like, you know, she explains this isn't Saturday morning cartoons. They will kill you. They don't care. Your children. It's pretty sobering moment. This movie is earning its PG,

sorry, PG rating, PG 13. They would never do that. No, that, uh, Spider-Verse,

PG 13. Yeah, I think it is. I think, though, I should just check this. Holy crap, it's PG. I can't. You would think that movies like that would be. There's stuff in that that I thought would be PG-13. They're edging up to what is and isn't PG-13.

Not even a Spider-Man movie can be PG-13. It's just not allowed demographically. I mean, speaking of the rating stuff in that, I heard they've been banned in some countries because they just in the background put up a flag that says protect trans kids. And I've got to give them credit. Instead of editing out of the movie,

they just let it be banned in in other countries for having that message in the movie yeah so not being shown in florida texas yes exactly countries like ours it was banned that just fucking happened with with pro wrestling too oh good oh good that cm punk after a show held up a sign that said support lgbtq youth and people like oh i don't want politics and wrestling well yeah like it good on him yeah cm punk is uh has has good politics for wrestling i'd say by wrestler standards though uh but no he has good politics the sammy zane has better politics if i'm rating uh the guys and obviously i'm fine with 90 of wrestlers i know probably being rather conservative jerks as long as they just shut their fucking

mouths about it that's all it comes with being hit in the head that's right all their brains are fucking scrambled like anytime they say something stupid, a wrestler who just got his like third melanoma and a recurring one and he'd had it two times before like 10 years ago. And he's a guy who got who professionally tanned all the time. So guess what? That's I'm sure that has to do with it. He's like, look, I don't want to go down this whole rabbit hole. But, you know, I did get that vaccine. And then what comes back yeah i wonder like yeah but

the pro wrestler i'm talking about is tommy dreamer who has himself said he couldn't count the number of concussions he's had seven chairs to the head generated that vaccine font but but yeah so they explain how important this is Dash is also so excited when he's told like, you run as fast as you can. As fast as I can? As fast as you can. I like that Violet finally steps away and drops the sarcasm.

And she's just like, I'm sorry. And Helen apologizes too. And this doesn't feel like the empty. It's a counter apology. Yes. It doesn't feel like the empty,'s a counter apology yes yeah it doesn't feel like the empty everybody has to apologize at the end of movies thing now doesn't it like it feels it feels like an earned it does feel earned yes and it's not about like helen also

doesn't give a speech about like well you know my mother treated me this way or whatever it's not no generational trauma just like helen's like you what? I was wrong to put that pressure on you. And Violet's like, hey, I'm sorry I was a jerk. And I'm always a sarcastic solentine. But yeah, she says doubt is a luxury we can't afford, sweetie. You have more power than you realize. Don't think and don't worry. If the time comes, you'll know what to do.

It's in your blood, which I guess means genetic superiority, I suppose. Yeah, only breed with other superheroes. We're not letting you date Tony. We know a nice, super-powered boy that you're going to create the best eugenically positive. It's eugenics is what I'm saying. What we don't know is if you're half superhero, you die in the womb.

So, yeah. I made that up. No, but I mean, if you had Jack-Jack in your womb, I would guess powers don't come in until after birth because yeah yeah i guess so if dash is kicking at super speed in your womb if you're not elastic girl wouldn't die from that because i would assume her womb is as elastic as everything else but making big assumptions here again this is just brody's speech about the kryptonite condom and how he'd shoot right and is the thing oh it's dork no it's dork he says dork dork dork why would stanley's like

you can't say dick in front of me kid i'll accept dork dork can be said uh so yeah we then have a fun little hero moment to a violet putting on her mask i really like that syndrome watching over his ship then he has his confrontation with mirage where mirage basically breaks up with him by saying this is what actual power is and that isn't weakness it's her realizing what she said before power and weakness attracted her it's now inverted and she realizes caring about somebody is actually strong and caring about nobody is weak and so this is her breaking up with him which so not only is she accessory to murder at the very least she's also

been like having sex with the the this horrible awful man yeah yeah i like the dumbfounded look on his face when she breaks up with him though he. He has no, he's like, why would she break up with me? I'm cool. Why is she doing this? He has no emotional maturity. I like that, too. So then we have a stealth sequence for Mrs. Incredible, and she comes in entirely different than Bob.

She's actually much more subtle about it. She's swinging around like she's fucking Spider-Man. Love that. much more subtle about it she's swinging around like she's fucking spider-man love that and then also the way that she slips around the thing and hides from the observers and also she turns herself like into a parachute and then into herself again like god the animation on this and they're doing this in 2004 when the computer i would think is offering very little assistance on this still yeah, still very primitive, but they're making little improvements here and there. I would bet they learned a ton of processes on this

that really improved, like they just became shortcuts for every movie afterwards. Yeah, they wouldn't do humans in movies until those cars in 2006, I guess right after 2E 2007. Yeah, that's a lot of humans. But that's Bradad bird again they take one movie off before doing humans again and the humans do look a real upgrade better in in compared to this and then and then brave is all humans and hair it's uh it's well it's got a

princess with gigantic hair that's the main character of it. But yeah, so we get a cool hero pose from Miss Incredible. But then when she stands back up, Brad Bird says this on the commentary. The joke is for him that he thinks women shouldn't be so judgmental of their looks because he's like, hey, man, we love our wives. She thinks her butt looks big. I'm like, guys like us are just like dude you're a lady you're still hot to me baby got back yeah but he he doesn't get so clear on like hey i like this big butt but this is this is thick mrs incredible looking at her butt yeah yeah and she's mostly known by pervos by her butt which i'm glad they didn't slim down that butt for incredibles 2 seemingly

based on how the pervos reacted to that too so this doorway sequence it's all silent hilarious this this does feel like very brad bird yes it's his movie but like this set of gags because she gets caught in one set of doors and then a second set of doors and all the mechanics are around like how she escapes from each set and how she takes out enemies on either side while not being able to use her entire body it's very complicated it's an incredibly complicated series of escalating problems for her that then even when she's like getting used as soon as she gets used to a new situation where she's like well my leg is caught just great oh shit i ah man now my torso's caught all right well i'll just chase after this guy it closed on my arm god damn it like yeah yeah

i guess the the elevator closing on her arm is another thing that another way she's trapped and she has to deal with them all at once like i like how mad she is when the guy pokes her like leg that's sticking out and then she kicks the guy in the face then the dude's trip on her thing uh her her big torso as well and the way she punches out the guy and then feels around feels for the face and then punches the face yes uh it's it's also great you just have to see it yeah uh and then when once she's all done with it then she shoves a bunch of unconscious guys in a locker because she's like, this is a lot of guys. They have like villain storage areas in this layer.

You know, mistake on, well, maybe she used a key card to open it because those lockers should have locks on them too. But yeah, Sindro really built a lot of deep storage. One of those lockers can hold like seven adult men in it so then we cut to violet and dash violet's practicing her her uh force fields while dash is just bored as hell he's like well i'm gonna i just love a good well i'm gonna head over here this is i think too about the demographics of the movie viewers they're imagining because violet is mature enough to go like i'm worried about mom and dad's marriage

and the dash is the younger kids in the audience go like oh marriage who cares i want to see action like he's like uh yeah whatever i'm gonna look over here yeah she's more emotionally intelligent she knows what's going on or has an inkling i love that she whispers their marriage or worse their marriage and you know what if dash had wandered off uh with his add brain he wouldn't have seen the rocket exhaust stuff and they might have just been burnt to death oh absolutely they would have been skeletonized just like a gazer beam helen then finds out where mr incredible uh is being held thanks to her detective work because she sees on a power grid that one room is using way more power than everybody else that's something that i feel

that was unclear to me until i watched the second time and it also doesn't the power grid labels look like from the first star wars movie like when c-3PO is trying to get them out of the trash compactor and there's all the visual displays in the room on red screens. That could be a reference. It reminded me of it. It would have been more immediate to the audience if it was like a graphic of all the cells being empty, but there's like a little graphic of a person in one of them.

I guess you could correlate power usage to someone being in a cell, but that's kind of strange. We then cut to Violet and Dash safely after they avoided the fire. After Dash is grossed out waking up next to his sister. On top of his sister. It is a little gross, yeah. I'd kill myself. You'd be like, yeah, where's kill myself. You'd have to keep...

You'd be like, yeah, where's that fire again from that launching? Where's that old fire? What's going on with it? I want to burn myself alive. They then are confronted by a robo-bird straight out of the Enchanted Tiki room. Yeah, and I guess this was established early. When Bob first fought the Omnidroid, we saw that at the end of end of the scene a bird is watching but there's a camera lens in its eye yeah so that's how it's stalking them again you're right yeah what what do you think of this bird

design bob you've uh well designed uh sure it's not even a tropical bird though it doesn't look that tropical to me you're right it does look more of like a uh one you see in a forest or whatever i suppose yeah it should it should be like brighter and colorful. Like, well, honestly, make it one of the birds from the tiki room. You know, one of those parrots. I'd like that reference. Also, it'd make more sense for a parrot to talk to, though. Maybe that's why they wanted it to be unnatural that it's like not a parrot.

I guess it's kind of like cockatoo-esque, but it's just it's blue. It's got one big feather. I don't know. It's fine. For the longest time, I thought that was Dave Foley saying the line, too, but it's just one of their blue it's got one big feather i don't know it's fine for the longest time i thought that was dave foley saying the line too but it's just one of their animators who just does the voice a lot of voices in here that you're like oh is that somebody it's just one of the animators uh which they're not allowed to do anymore in pixar it feels like or it feels definitely reduced how many times animators get to be a voice in it and so yeah this uh the intruder alarm goes off helen

knows that there's urgency to finding bob and then uh this is when bob gets freed and we get a real cheer moment for the moms in the audience here there isn't much time no there isn't in fact there's no time at all why Please. Why are you here? How can you possibly bring me lower? What more can you take away from me? A family survived the crash. They're here on the island. They're alive? Helen?

Hello. You must be Mrs. Sinclair. She was helping me to escape. No, that's what I was doing. Let go of me. Let go, you lousy, lying, unfaithful creep. How could I betray the perfect woman? Oh, you're referring to me now?

Where are the kids? They might have triggered the alert. What? Security's been sent into the jungle. You'd better get going. Now our kids are in danger? If you suspected danger, why'd you bring them? I didn't bring them. They start away, and I don't think you're striking...

Oh, they were in couples therapy or something. I like that, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, you're're right that does sound like they've been in therapy and like hey this is the terms we use now to talk to each other bob is not a progressive guy he strangles a woman and then he forces a kiss on his angry wife yeah you know what shut her up yeah he's like ah come here you be and she's like hey yeah it's I was just watching the clip on my monitor here. And it's great that Mirage definitely likes being embraced by Bob. Oh, yeah. You could tell.

And then when she sees Helen and she steps up to Bob, she's like wiping her hands on her dress like, oh, yeah, I don't like this at all, actually. Like, oh, I'm very professional. Like, yeah. And what perfect timing for her to come in to see mirage hugging her to hugging bob too i her punch is so great the way she falters and falls like i think it's much funnier than if they could have just been easy like punch and instantly fall down i like it

better that it's a little kind of slow like well hell missing great you must be missing crap punch then falls she recovered rather quickly though as a lot of ideas like no that's what i'm doing oh and also it it does kind of mirror their first uh scene together in the movie where he's confronting this bad guy and then she punches them out of nowhere uh it's kind of similar to that too i i wonder if it's meant to be like a you know echoing you know it rhymes it's like it's like poetry there you go yeah so uh so yes cut to the kids they're getting cornered they are about to be shot and this is when violet's like dash run like she turns invisible and tells dash to run i feel bad for violet because they don't they just don't have as much creativity for the invisible girl equivalent i guess she can turn invisible and tells dash to run i feel bad for violet because they don't they just don't have

as much creativity for the invisible girl equivalent i guess she can turn invisible and take a stick yeah she's you know over time it's revealed that like the invisible woman in the fantastic four is like the most powerful because her invisible force fields can kind of go anywhere and like she she could rip everybody's head off if she wanted to but with this speedy scene through a jungle are they trying to evoke return of the jedi that you know especially when the things are rushing next to him past trees i think so too it's not mentioned on the commentary and with the first person shots of running through the jungle that was one uh i i said it before what a revelatory thing for me to watch return of the jedi was as like a five-year-old after seeing a

deer get slaughtered after seeing a deer well it was already dead yeah but it was it did get carved up for sure yeah but but then after i watched it and yeah i'd i'd never seen anything like that speeder chase like anybody who says return of the jedi is a lesser movie and sure it's not as good as the first two but that speeder chase is like right up there as in some of the best scenes in the whole star wars better than the pod race it is they didn't have computers instead they're just going around the woods it's like you know what uh 30 minute drive from here yeah i think it's moraine county it's like the redwood forest yeah yeah i visited that once it's also the setting for the in the Planet of the Apes remakes movies.

They're based out of there. But they filmed it all in Vancouver. So it's Vancouver forest pretending to be the mere woods of the Bay Area. Vancouver is everything. That's why I'm going to be living there soon. You're going to be surrounded by movies. And apes. The next time I visit there, if there is somebody doing a see the planet of the apes tour I love

those movies and I want to see I want to take that tour but yes so this sequence is called 100 mile dash Brad Bird and his team were very committed to it from the beginning they carefully planned it out this was one of the reasons he wanted to do the movie and when I worked at a video store from 2006 to 2008 and we had this dvd once a month at least i put on this dvd for many reasons but this was the scene i watched over and over and over again i loved it so much i still love it i'd never seen super speed done this well in in a movie before it's so good even 20 years later and um it's the best action scene in the entire movie oh for sure starring one of the least

important characters in the movie but he's so much fun and i think the secret to it is one that it's always fast like it's just you are at the super speed of it it it doesn't slow down for him and also i think that they learned a lot from like roadrunner cartoons yeah yeah especially with the movement of his feet yeah and i compare this again to talk about the flash but that is the flash is the most famous super fast guy when they're doing dash he's basically dash and flash are actually had three of the same letters in it even uh but in the flash movie and in other movies with the flash super speed just doesn't feel as good as this and i think i figured out even though there's fancier tech and i think i figured out one of the

problems and i also blame the x-men days of future past movie with Quicksilver in that, in his super speed. They have decided that in superhero movies, the way super speed works, instead of showing a guy moving really fast, it instead, you stay with their perspective and it makes everything else really slow. Yeah, I actually have not seen any of this, but I assume that's what they would do it's it was done very well in days of future past if i if i may praise the work of a horrible person that's an x-men movie right yes okay it was directed by brian singer he who's an awful man and then there's the flash which stars ezra miller a a horrible person too but in the flash they do it again of like i do like the sequence it's one of the better sequences of the movie but he has to basically save a bunch of babies that are falling

through the air and he moves at super speed but instead it's just an incredibly slow sequence and i know that it's like novel and fun to watch and there's good stuff in it but i want to feel like this guy's fucking fast not associated with being slow it's much easier to do when you're not moving around real people or trying to make it look like they're real people that's true like this is very much helped by being animated but it makes me so sad that like almost 20 years later they still can't make the text better you can say like oh this looks better in this way or whatever the feeling never gets better to me of fast motion animation and the sonic movies have this problem too oh really wow they also do the there's i mean there's parts where he runs fast and he looks fast but there's other parts where they're like well time

for things to get really slow because he's moving fast. I was laughing when I was thinking about, does this always look stupid when human beings do this in a movie or they try to approximate it? And yes, because I was thinking of those Twilight movies where the vampires, they have every power and can be out in the sun. It doesn't matter. They're just the best things ever, but they can also run really fast. And when they do, it's the stupidest shit you've ever seen in your life that's right i've only seen the clips i've never seen i'm miming like just moving your arms very fast just having like a really determined look on your face maybe that's why they decided on

the slow motion thing because they saw the twilight movies around the same time like oh it looks dumb as shit they play a whole They play a baseball game in one of those movies. Oh, God. They're running really fast to the bases. Terrible. What an awful movie. And now I believe it's about to get a new TV series adaptation. Just like the Harry Potter movies, they've said like, oh, we're going to redo these again with 10 seasons of a TV show.

Same with Twilight. I'm not even making a joke. I think this time it is from the vampire's point of view. Then Otto's going to love it. He's going to love this. There's like centuries of Cullens to talk about. The universe only hints at them throughout the books and movies. I know too much about these because of riff tracks.

I haven't watched enough of those riff tracks. So yeah, I could tell you everything that happens in this chase, but it's just great you just have to experience it i what i really like is that um he doesn't know he can run on water until he does and then he forgets he can stop running on water because he goes in this cave he's running on water and two of these blade copters are zeroing in on him from either side he's like what do i do what do i do he stops running and falls under the water and they smash into each other so he saves himself by forgetting that he's running on the water it's so great the way it pays of like bloosh yeah when another my favorite

like just little animation bits in the film is like he's running towards the water he knows he can't stop but he's like oh and then he thinks he can splash and then when he looks down and sees he's able to run on water he just like like his little giggle is just so like natural and real like god it works so well it makes you feel like this is so fun and also like he gets bugs caught in his teeth i also love his satisfaction of like hey i'm punching a guy this is fun punch punch punch punch he just has been held back for so long because of society i feel like they let that guy get away with punching dash right in the face because he explodes immediately afterwards so many i mean he gets punched in the face twice by an adult

and then all of these adults in these uh blade copters die so many adults die in this chase scene it's crazy yeah he kills i mean it's all in self-defense i'm not calling dash a murderer it was him or them but a castle doctrine applies you know i'm i'm a big fan of self-defense in the castle doctrine so of course i defend dash here um but yeah i mean he's he's in the clear and it's more like he dodges something and then they kill themselves like it's not like he he doesn't punch that guy until he's a bloody pulp and kills him. He just, the guy gets distracted and dies while trying to kill dash more like it.

But yeah, I, I also remember the feeling in the theater, the sheer exhilaration of it. And then when he stops and drops in the water and the last things explode, I remember feeling like, Oh, that means it's over.'t it and it is it's

over they i mean he does other stuff in the movie but that is the peak of the action in the movie but then you get to see a stick floating around that's pretty fun that's pretty yeah that actually does make it hilarious that after all of the incredibly complex stuff you saw a stick floats around and hits a guy like wax him a few times and uh and yeah then also to give the animators a real problem she dives underwater and then bullets have to be shot at her underwater and then dirt has to be thrown into the water to float around this guard is very smart he knows that if this invisible girl jumps in the water i'll throw dirt in the water to track her movements and he's about to shoot her and again i'm thinking of the extra baggage brad bird brings to this of dash saving his sister from being shot i you know it's oh

that's right sorry i forgot that little element of his past yeah he's like stay away from my sister but then it's fun too because then he's about to get shot and she blocks for him. I love that it then becomes like this rolling ball, and they get to do it together, and he's running with her in it. And then they smash into two more. This is the most directly they kill somebody. They smash into those, and they explode. This is like Sonic's shield.

Oh, and then, like, sorry, I'm watching the clip now, because I forgot what happened. It wasn't in my notes. Bob kills two more of these guys by throwing the one blade copter into the other like a discus oh yeah he totally kills them yeah i so when they all get together this is why no fantastic four movie is any good this is the best like and it's and it's this sequence is so complex it's i think also why it gets cut short a little bit because like having all four of them

interwork together you have to plan it out so much it's so complex you need to cut it off uh but but yeah i just even now when i watch it i fear like there's a new fantastic four movie coming out and i feel like i'll never see this cool of teamwork between the fantastic four that i will hear you know and a really cool pose as they all they all use their powers to take out these blade copters together as a family and then they all pose in a very cool way and it's like oh i i swear i've seen that pose on like bags of chips and mcdonald's cups and everything this movie was plastered on and it's such you see the pose and that's like oh that's totally for the trailer and then they instantly get caught by syndrome he's like well hey what like he literally says whoa whoa whoa stop right there another of my favorite shots in it is when

violet's starting to get cocky herself and she the way she looks on her face when she's blocking the bullets with her uh force field and her hands are up she's like yeah fuck you i'm blocking these bullets uh but yes they then they get stopped by syndrome he's looking at all of them he's impressed with his family and he's like you married elastigirl and got busy i was a little surprised they got away with him saying like yeah you fucked like yeah that's but that's just like brody isn't it I guess it shows this government program was very efficient in disguising their identities though that when you think like a real person and you look at them wearing these domino masks you're like well that's just like black man like you know exactly who they are you know their face at the very least I think it was the movie just trying to tell us now listen

there's no way it's like Clark Kent with the glasses. You know it's Superman, but this one little mask stops everyone from knowing who they are. And I think that's why Helen's like, no one will know who you are when you wear this. And so it's like, we have to believe that. It's a fun trick of this world. If I wore a little mask around, people would be like, why does Bob have a weird mask? Is that some S&M thing? The only line I remember from that terrible Green Lantern movie that Ryan Reynolds was in was when he's doing the scene with his future wife, Blake Lively. When he appears to her in costume for the first time, she's like,

Hal, that's you. And he's like, how'd you recognize me? And she says, I've seen you naked. You don't think I'd recognize you if you wore like, if you have green on your cheekbones like of course you're of course i recognize you like it though that's the fucking lines that ruin superhero movies now like every superhero movie just has a scene of somebody like oh what that's what you call yourself dr strange like yeah imagine buying into this and liking it on its own terms insane no way we got a chuckle of this i'm actually smarter than the movie but but yeah so he captured them just so he could tell them his

big plan one more time and once more in watchmen this is exactly what happens in watchmen so basically in watchmen a giant fake alien that basically is a round thing with with arms sticking off of it not unlike the dro uh omni droid it gets teleported into new york it dies on arrival and sends out a psychic shock wave that kills millions in in the heart of new york city it's basically like a bomb but it looks like an alien and everybody thinks we've been invaded by aliens now we all need to unite as a planet against space aliens that's the whole plan and after it successfully lands ozymandias picks up a tv controller turns on the tv and shows the people who are trying to stop him all the news channels covering it and saying look at this oh if we only had superheroes blah blah blah this is exactly what syndrome does

here to the to his enemies he's changing the channel has anyone spoken on the record about being inspired by watchman the the only thing i saw with brad bird was that he's like i see why people say that but i was not intentional on my part though he had to admit he had read watchman before or he at least said he'd heard of it before but that was the most in my research i could find but like these moments are just these are the moments from the comic like it's not even like the little things of like oh all superheroes get outlawed it's the villain's plan being revealed in this exact way with television would you believe i've never read watchman or i've seen the movie oh i have read v for vendetta and watched the movie though okay well hey you're doing good there but i maybe there's no way to read it with new eyes now you'll never feel like how i felt reading it when

i was 14 i felt that way when it became available when i was in my early 20s i thought like i think this is too late to read this it might just, but it is one of the most like complex, like every time I read it, I see a new layer to it. Like Alan Moore is the greatest writer in comic book history. Like at the very least in super stuff, I'll say maybe it's not too late, you know,

because I've tried reading things like preacher. Uh, and I just thought, God, this is such a nineties rag. I cannot, I can't read very much of this anymore. It's extremely nineties.

I think Watchman's message is much more timeless. Well, now I'm sorry. I'm sure you already knew the twist in it. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I know the main points. And I was also thinking like, oh, yeah, they made a whole Preacher series and no one ever talked about it.

No, no. That Zack Snyder movie, the way he fucks it up is one. Oh, sorry. I said Preacher. No, no, no. Yeah, Preacher. But there was never a movie. No, I watched the first episode of it it was fine but the show is too was the comic was 290s for the for its time but no the the zack steiner movie i was just thinking of the changes he made

and other than making dr manhattan's wang bigger um well i've seen that in the comics yes uh they also ozzy mandias like gets more of a guilt trip for what he did and and he also like gets beaten up by night owl more clearly and it's just a more violent thing it's uh and you can definitely tell his favorite character's rorschach in it which uh and also they get rid of the giant alien thing, which I understand it's very complicated. And Solid Snake himself, David Hader, explains that he's the first guy who came up with the rewrite for it. Like he's one of the credited writers on the Watchmen movie. Okay, yes. I do remember this.

By the way, Chris Hardwick also hosted Talking Preacher. Oh, God. And even he couldn't get people to watch Preacher. Yeah. Even with all of his charisma. I didn't know there was Talking Bad and Talking Saul. I didn't know about Talking Saul. Oh, God. And even he couldn't get people to watch Preacher, even with all of his charisma. I didn't know there was Talking Bad and Talking Saul. I didn't know about Talking Saul. Talking Simpsons, all us.

It's not related or inspired in any way. No way. We leave the nerdist out of it or the whatever is dumb new thing. But yeah, so this is when Syndrome explains his plan. You married Elastigirl? This is when Syndrome explains his plan. Huh? Huh? Oh, come on! You gotta admit this is cool! Just like a movie! The robot will emerge dramatically,

do some damage, throw some screaming people, and just when all hope is lost, Syndrome will save the day! I'll be a bigger hero than you ever were! You mean you killed off real heroes so that you could pretend to be one? Oh, I'm real. Real enough to defeat you!

And I did it without your precious gifts, your oh-so-special powers. I'll give them heroics. I'll give them the most spectacular heroics anyone's ever seen! And when I'm old and I've had my fun, I'll sell my inventions so that everyone can be superheroes. Everyone can be superheroes. Everyone can be super. And when everyone's super, no one will be.

You know, Dash should have been like, I said a similar thing a few days ago. Were you listening to me? What's the, yeah, I know his speech of like like the total parasite he is off of uh off of uh mr incredible's fame he's like you know what i'm gonna steal all your stuff i don't even need your special powers and then i'm gonna make it so everybody has it so nothing special anymore and i take away all your specialness like it's it totally is a uh it feels a bit randian i'll say like him and bringing that back up but i like how it takes a few viewings to understand the mechanics of this rocket and

honestly it might be a little too complicated but the rocket launches and then what looks like a stealth bomber comes out of the rocket and it crashes into the city and that stealth bomber splits open and that's when the orb like droid comes out of it and then later when the family takes their own version of that for some reason there was an extra one at the base in the center where the orb should be is the van that they steal and helen's holding it up in that circle right i i love that that that's how they make it work that the rv is held in there but yeah it's why it's a big circle so that way it can hold the omni droid i guess you know i can see them having spare they're like hey if the first rocket doesn't

work we'll shoot off the next one but yeah i love i also love the the cocky walk he has walk into the ship he's like yeah i'm badass i'm gonna pull this off and get a new girlfriend you know and the giant walking eye is surely killing many people here. It was a rookie move of Syndrome, though, because this AI, it's a learning computer, whatever you want to call it. He should have disabled the thing that can recognize his remote as a thing that controls it. Yeah, it's a real goof-em-up on his part there. I like that once he's challenged to do it, like actually be a real hero, it all falls apart. He just fails at it. Like this guy can to do it like actually be a real hero it all falls apart he just fails at it like this guy this guy can't do it anymore but uh we have a quick bit of bob apologizing to

everybody and even violet is like hey that was nice dad and everything but uh we gotta get the show on the road here i know we're your greatest adventure but we gotta wrap this up it's funny how effortlessly she drools away from this torture device yeah that she's just like she finally gets to be cool for once in the movie this is my fault i've been a lousy father blind to what i have so obsessed with being undervalued that i undervalued all of you don't? Shh, don't interrupt. So caught up in the past that I... You are my greatest adventure. And I almost missed it.

I swear, I'm going to get us out of this safely. Well, I think Dad has made some excellent progress today. But I think it's time we wind down now. And so, yes, Violet saves the day. Everybody gets to be part of this and saving the day uh this felt very 2004 to me too as they're trying to sneak around to find a plane or a rocket that can take him somewhere they happen upon the henchman in the rv and they're playing a drinking game they say take a drink every time uh they hit somebody or whatever they they mentioned, like, take a drink.

Okay. I didn't overhear their patter. I just saw the champagne being popped. But that's the one gag I love where he's turned away from the door. He pops the champagne, and then he turns around to see Bob has the cork in his hand, and the van door shuts. It's great business, yeah. And also, you don't have to animate him fighting a bunch of guys in a car. That does.

That is an easy out for them i would assume he killed all of them and snapped their neck tore their heads off that's why they didn't show us that there should be just blood leaking out from the door the doorwell they had to actually get a second rv because it was too covered in blood the one there but but yeah dash finds the rocket and it's violet who suggests to send it to the old coordinates and that's when mirage helps to send it to the old coordinates. And that's when Mirage helps them, which, you know, I guess that gets her some amnesty, perhaps. It's the last time we see her, and I wish there would have been a moment where she's like,

okay, setting self-destruct mode now, and I'm going down with the ship. I've killed countless people. Yeah, I can't live with the guilt. Like, yeah, but if they showed that, Bob, then we wouldn't have time for some comedy gold with old Frozone here. It's 30 seconds here. It's date night in the Frozone house. Honey? What? Where's my super suit?

What? Where is my super suit? I put it away. Where? Why do you need to know? I need it. Uh-uh. Don't you think about running off to do a no-daring do? So, yeah, it's tell me where my suit is woman like i i remember that and where is my super suit being in like every trailer over and over i was gonna say i

think i recognize this more from the trailers than from the movie itself but i think you said this earlier it feels like he's about to say the f word right at any moment i mean maybe that's just how we're used to motherfucker is literally on his wallet in in pulp fiction like it is his they marvel in uh avengers infinity war that's where they get the closest to like he he is disintegrating as uh as nick fury and he goes like mother and then he disintegrates they wouldn't let him say it yeah the first f word has finally been said in a marvel cinematic universe movie it is said uh say it's said in the guardians of galaxy movie i won't spoil it if you haven't seen it yet but what rocket raccoon called someone the f slur yes listen to you and then oh boy i didn't know he was

like this he's he gets really bad at Adam Warlock in the movie. Apparently, I'm looking at this now, and this is his wife, Honey. And she's not in the second movie? So she is, but only off screen again. Okay. Yeah. She's played by the actress named Kimberly Adair Clark, and she's been a voice in many other Pixar films, including Monsters University, Brave, Toy Story 3.

But as Honey, she is, you know, playing the fun, giving it as good as she's taking it from Samuel L. Jackson's character here. And they actually designed her. If you go to her wiki page, you will see a character designed for her. They designed her with the intention of putting her on screen in incredibles 2 but when they were working on it the movie they're like it's funny you're just hearing you're shouting off screen though i think we should just keep it to just a voice so they decided to do that and uh they i mean it is funny hearing couples shouting across the house uh kind? We're not in the babe era yet.

Babe. Where's my soup, babe? It's not even babe. It's babe. Henry's in a babe couple. I am in a babe. I like saying babe. It's fun to say.

Babe, where's this babe? I'm in a sweetie couple. Oh, sweetie. That's how the straights communicate. That's cute too. Or come here a minute uh hey you now it's uh though also as i get older i i am more of like a well well just hearing it across sounds like hey where's the thing well i don't want to give away docs myself our our new condo

it's very open so i think there'll be less shouting between walls that's good that's good it'll be a quieter uh here in this apartment they have it's it's a very fancy apartment and clearly date night but a lot of walls they gotta shout through but yeah in the trailers i remember going like where is my super suit and it ends with it i liked it in the scene in the movie, she gets the last line. Like, instead of him getting the, like, you tell me where my suit is, woman. Then she instead goes like, oh, no, I'm the greatest good you've ever known. Like, she gets to sass back.

I do like that. Syndrome, meanwhile, has arrived. He's trying to act like a hero. And the fickle public is like, the supers are back. Ooh, who is he like you are the guys who didn't want supers now you want them come on uh but yeah so he has some very weak banter of like ho ho i've got you and once his thing gets shot off after the learning robot learns he just screams and he's like it all falls falls apart. He's got nothing.

You know, now I think that this is not clear enough. Later on in the next five minutes, like I said earlier, three characters like the remote controls the robot. The remote controls the robot. The remote, it controls that robot. In this one, you have to look at the on-screen text very closely to see like, oh, the learning robot learned the remote controls it. It's going to take out that remote i just thought like oh i guess the robot is smarter than he thought it was which i guess is the is the point but they're trying to communicate things that have been laid out throughout the movie i don't think

it's clear enough i understand why they needed to repeat you do see him like when the thing stops right in front of him then he then presses a button on the thing and then it falls off or it closes but yeah it well to me it wasn't clear how the robot learned that you have to look at very fast very close on the first person readout of the like seeing through the computer's eyes it's not clear what the computer is doing but if upon a second watch i was like oh it spotted the remote as the threat and that's why it did it first time viewer second time viewer i was like oh it just it's stronger than he thought it was and that's why he was taken out but no it follows what the movie has laid out so far that the robot learns and he's so stupid he did not stop it from learning

about this thing on his wrist it's very important i think it was also a design mistake that it's not even really clear that he's wearing an extra device on him because it just blends in with his white glove if they made that a different color i think it would be more obvious that it's a separate element that he uses to control the robot but it fits in with the sleekness of his white gloves yeah it would be a less sleek design if it was like you know blue or whatever or stood out from it but yeah it just looks like oh it's just the cuffs on his gloves not a bracelet on it uh and it's also been a very long time since we've seen him use that glove to do anything that's very true yeah when they when it shows when bob saw him do

it i was like that was like a minute 40 in this movie i think yeah well i mean we'll get to it but i think it does feel like a studio note but it should have been one character saying and instead we get three reminders and i feel like boy some some audience member really didn't get this they had a bad test screening where they but uh and also fitting with the theme too like his rocket boots the reason you don't build rocket boots is if one of them goes bad just a little bit you're dead or like he he instantly for like the third time in the movie he's careening off course when his rocket boots go wrong and that's what also helps kill him in the end too is that his rocket boots are undependable uh but yeah his persona falls apart he smashes into the ground he's unconscious for now he should be dead honestly his giant head just smacks into a building and he falls probably like 20 feet he's got a very

tough noggin uh when when they zoom in and show all his freckles and his eyes that is when it hits me the most of like yeah this is brad's first face they just he's got a big irish head that brad bird uh so they then cut to the family in the rv this another was more fun of them of like hey you know what let's bring in a family car trip into this too they're all in an rv together forget literally are we there yet we'll get there when we get there arguing over directions in the car so uh this tiny bit here i have it called driving in san francisco because this highway is exactly the san francisco highway for downtown even seventh street exit is the exit exit or is an exit that can get you to the financial district.

But that's the retronauts exit. Oh, and that's not doxing yourself because you no longer operate. I mean, try to find me on the entire street the times I'm recording. If you kill me, you win. But I have been in those car rides where people like, well, no, if you get off at 7th and you're going to be stuck in the traffic all the way you need to get off at the you need to get off the ballpark exit or whatever well i can say this because it's just referring to the entire city of berkeley but when we're driven home in an uber from a different city there is the exit to berkeley

and it's a tight fork between a left and a right exit and you actually don't see what the exits are until it's too late the sign is too close to where you actually make the turn. So like for the first five years of me living here, every Uber and Lyft driver got it wrong until something in their app changed. I think so. Keep left. Keep left. It's like,

no, keep up. Well, now we're just under a bridge at one in the morning or whatever. I can help you from here. So turn around. No, no,

another right. No, no. Yes. Yeah. That, that exit sucks. it's a crappy exit uh but yes i i like this little bit here of them arguing

the robots in the financial business which exit do i take traction avenue that'll take me downtown i take seven don't i don't take seven great we missed it you asked me how to get there and i told you exit attract that'll take me downtown he He's coming up. Get in the right lane. We don't exit at Tractor. You're going to miss it. I love the sound, too, of the dad going like, fine, I'll go to the damn exit. Yeah, the 7th Avenue exit is actually closer to Giant Stadium. It's towards the southern tip of the financial district. That's where IGN used to be is.

I think they moved no they're on second street now you're right yeah yeah well i mean they were there when i was there but that's close to giant stadium yeah i i remember hearing uh folks who worked in that area maybe you even said this of like well no because you didn't have a car and still don't uh is people would say like don't drive to work on the baseball game days. Like, here, we'll know when the baseball schedule is because you will never get home in a car if you're on that day. We got to leave early some days because of Giants playoffs games. Now, in the work-from-home era, they could actually, or partial return-to-office era, maybe they can at least say, like, hey, this is a Giants day, so just don't come in.

Like, we just got stuck in after baseball traffic on our last ride back to Berkeley from there. Oh, we did? That was baseball traffic. Okay. I assume so. It was Pride Night at the Giants Stadium. So that's why we saw dudes wearing baseball shirts with baseball shirts. Jerseys with rainbows on it.

Oh, they're baseball shirts. Well, actually, I'm wearing what would be called a baseball shirt a raglan t uh the i really like a sleeve this length is is something it's one of my uh you i mean i wear it so much that uh nina has drawn me wearing it multiple times now i think it's your official cartoon character costume uh i definitely my mission hill character is wearing it i think my i think my King of the Hill design too. In, in one of many, uh, Nina's like show perfect character designs. But anyway, they get off the exit. I also love there's a big wild take of Violet screaming.

I wonder how many times like she had to scream for this movie too, Sarah Vell did. She took a week off of This American Life. It's hazard pay. She said she recorded it over two years and uh apparently in another interview i couldn't find but i'd seen it written in trivia that uh the jason lee only recorded for about a year on it and he came in late but craig d nelson apparently was an early hire and he said he worked he was recording on it for years and years for the movie. Just like, oh no, well you have a new thing.

Just like you said how Annie Potts talked about how in Toy Story 4 how many times you had to re-record the movie. Yeah, and I mean this one didn't seem to have any major production problems like almost every Pixar movie. But with things like Toy Story 1, Tom Hanks and Tim Allen were hired in 1991. And the movie comes out four years later and there's constant rewrites constant changes of character Tom Hanks is like why is Woody screaming all the time this guy's a real dick

it's yeah I think the production difficulties were just the general Brad Birdiness of it and his high standards but there wasn't it sounded like within the first year that's when they made the the biggest change which was syndromes the main villain but other than that like much of what he wrote uh in his original pitch is in there you know that reminds me we talked about the failure of elemental uh

earlier in the podcast like five hours ago uh it has failed so bad that pixar is up front saying woody and buzz are coming back oh That's right. Don't worry. Like every time they're like it's the end of Woody's story. Close the curtain. Oh shit. Oh shit. The stockholders are mad. Open the curtain. Open it. Quick. Quick. Grab the rope. Is that Braden old man still alive? Whatever

Woody. Whatever he needs to come back to me Woody. Even though he said he's done with it. Bring him back. Dip a typewriter in gold. Deliver it to him on the back of a shetland pony please he they're gonna need a lot of golden typewriters and also maybe he'll need a job for chet hanks maybe that's how you get woody's son perhaps uh the missing member of the roundup gang okay he doesn't get to sing anymore though no no no uh but yeah so as they're about to fight it and

they land perfectly in the space after tumbling all the way down the road mr incredible tries to leave behind his family but this is when they're sick of standing by the sidelines and it's funny because like helen first goes like hey i don't want to stand by the sidelines anymore and then when the kids are like hey we don't want that either she's like no you are you do have to and bob reveals like his reason is like i can't lose you again i'm not strong enough that's why he's saying i'm not strong enough and that has been twisted into the shut the fuck up moment that's in memes that's it is such a great shot oh sorry one thing i this is going back to a very minor part but in the frozone scene with his wife, he is putting on high karate aftershave. That is such a 70s dude.

That is a very Brad Bird's age type of joke, isn't it? Yeah. And we covered that in the Bark It Takes Karate episode. Oh, yeah. Flanders fail. That's it. High karate at low prices. And the joke about high karate, which is a real product is that

it's so appealing to women you'll have to fight them off that's right that's right yeah the video yeah that commercial of a guy a meek little man shoving a hot lady away from him because she's just too intense it was the original axe effect and so this is where helen reprises the line of like we're superheroes what could happen and that's when boom cut to violet shrieking because the monster is here to kill them this is just all a great bunch of uh of action here she uses her force field to stop from being crushed but it eventually is too much for her and she gets knocked out then mr incredible jumps in and stops it himself and this was the moment where when he repositions

himself to lift it off of him isn't that how atlas is holding up the world oh yeah that perhaps atlas not shrugging and it's a little randy hey atlas did that before that book cover right i feel bad for people who just think that atlas is cool or it's just a good metaphor and that it doesn't it doesn't have to be randy in though when i think about in superheroes i've told you this before it's the comic that's right behind you of spider-man where spider-man throws off the uh the giant machinery on him and it's like the best spider-man scene that was the last spider-man i'm seeing based on the cover it's the final chapter all the way back in 1964 or 5 but that scene it also is posed just like how uh mr incredible is throwing this off of him so i could even say oh well it's uh just a spider-man 33 reference but that's also by

steve didko is a was a hardcore randian like he absolutist objectivist oh yeah and so I wonder if in his comic if he was also maybe referencing Atlas just a little bit just a little bit but yeah when Mr. Incredible throws it off they then he's getting thrown around just like before but he has family to back him up then Frozone appears it feels like very technically correct how he's getting thrown around just like before but he has family to back him up then frozone appears it feels like very technically correct how he's like oh well i can't build ice enough that can really stop him but if i slow up his joints that'll work out pretty well like it's uh it's great observation of how it would also reminds me of the ice flower from mario odyssey and beyond those games oh and i'm sorry uh galaxy galaxy yeah well like how he's skating around everywhere just like mario does in those movements too yeah i like that and this is when there's the

incredibly obvious cutaway to the like his his remote his remote and we get flashbacks in my opinion i mean this doesn't ruin the movie but in my opinion he should have been like i got the remote it's what controls the robot that's it that's it no flashback it's enough information but they i want to look at these test audience cards well another reason they repeat the remote so much too is that i never caught this until commentary this is about the family fighting over the remote like it's oh my god yeah oh my god it's it's uh it's an extra layer to the joke i i oh they should have had more fun with that. I wish they were like, no, like when they're saying like, no, press that button, press

that button. Like it's, that was what Brad Bird's intention was here. Man, I never even got that before. Me neither. If it was shaped more like a remote, maybe, you know? The commentary had to remind me of that. I heard it in the commentary before then forgot. It's really great, though.

Though, family listeners out there, let me know. Is there fighting over the remote like before? Because when I would fight over the remote, my brother as a child, I didn't have another TV in my hand that I could be like, oh, well, my brother's watching this. I'm going to just put a YouTube video on my my other screen i have here well here's what you can do uh henry has not done this yet and i yell at him about it you can make your phone your roku remote so if i'm at uh hanging out with my wife she's got a roku tv i could be like i don't want to watch this anymore i'll open up my phone turn on the remote and attach it to her wi-fi and just turn it off well as a joke well then it's just people then it's a

tug-of-war between two remotes then right yeah in in the family fight situation anyone's phone can be a remote now it's terrifying so that's the man what a crazy so okay then i i want to hear reports from people with families and uh with their kids fighting over remotes how how has it changed in today's smart uh device world uh and also not only is it the family fighting over the remote but when they're trading around the remote it's also dad playing catch with his son go on son he tosses it away i also like when dash runs off just that little shot of helen going like oh my god is he gonna die like you see you see her motherly worry in this moment but she stands back and lets it happen and also i like how again oh my god the way helen uses her arm like a

slingshot around the post and flings the the manhole at it yeah she swings her arm around the post and like holds on and then lets go so the momentum flings it away it's really cool it's so cool and she hits the gun perfectly like this she is better at being a superhero than mr incredible like she she is more of a pro and And then Dash and Frozone work together. He saves him. It's good that they set up that those two are buddies earlier in the movie. And you know what? It's aged a bit, but when they get smashed into the water

and he turns it all into snow for them to land safely, I still think it looks pretty good for a 2004 thing of a pile of snow and crashing into it. Yeah, for this era like i did notice frozone's um the ice he makes it's like it seems too uniform but you know it they're still having fun with particle effects and all that fun stuff now it would be like very realistic looking i mean we just watched toy story 4 and the dust just some of the dust that falls off of one shelf and that is probably more particles

than all of the snow that just splashed onto the screen well again i just watched a bug's life and a big innovation that movie is we can show you what water looks like all right it's gonna rain in this movie you've never seen us do water before how does it even work in this we're gonna show you i i'm i am looking forward to us doing that commentary, and I can see it for myself, too. I haven't rewatched it yet, but... So, yeah, then some other fun stuff of Frozone making it slip around in the ice, and then Helen trips it. This is when there's another very quick flashback

of Mr. Incredible remembering, like, oh, wait, the only thing that can destroy it is itself. And they decide they're going to distract it in a very Batmanman and robin move i mean the joel schumacher movie he kicks out his feet uh and prozone gets like a snowboard on his feet not just skis but a snowboard then it turns into one more like married couple fight where he's just like okay press the button she's like's like, when? When do you get a closer shot? Like, yeah, it's... Because the remote will boost the arm of the rocket

and he wants to launch it at the right time. They got to wait till they see the whites of its robot eyes there. And so, yeah, he lets go. It pierces it in one clean shot. Boom, right through the chest. Its heart is out and they've killed it. And I do think they do a pretty good job of

faking you out that that's the last action scene of the movie if you forget the syndrome uh was knocked out and seemingly not dead they then have the line later of dicker saying like oh well you know we froze all his assets or whatever let you maybe think like okay then we're not gonna see him again but uh but before that there is a deep reference to animation history yeah i'm sure you caught it too well they were in iron giant too that's right they were the train conductors there it's frank thomas and ollie johnson the frank and ollie of the nine old men they taught brad bird a ton He always looked to them for guidance into their 80s and 90s even. He showed them the incredible story reel.

There's video of it on the DVD of him showing them the story reel in 2001 or something and them having opinions on it. He wanted them to get in it. It's also funny that here they are in this ultra modern 2004 cgi film and they're saying that's old school no school like the old school i'm reading frank thomas did not survive this move to see this movie uh release this is one of the saddest things on the commentary they are recording the commentary before the theatrical release and brad bird when this scene comes up, says, so Frank Thomas actually just died yesterday. Oh, wow. So, yeah, it's extra tough for Brad to talk about this scene.

So they recorded the commentary on September 9th, 2004. Seemingly so, yeah, based on what he said. You know, they seemingly record the commentaries before the movies come out. That's been a common thing I've noticed in all the Pixar commentaries I've been listening to recently. I guess for the production pipeline it makes sense yeah yeah if they're like well we gotta if this has to release in six months and all the producers are together like especially i don't know once the movie's over i'm sure brad bird went on a long vacation and doesn't want to record a dvd commentary it's also nice to get their thoughts

uh in a vacuum not affected by what an audience thinks about certain scenes yeah maybe we've heard a lot of commentaries where people go like i guess people hated this or like this or whatever people didn't get this uh and yes uh yeah frank was 92 and he passed away ollie lived till 2008 passed away at 95 so these were some old old when they're called waltz old men these are old old men were they the final old men i'm pretty sure they were yes i mean well all the rest like other of the old men like maybe croaked in there like 70 some did live a long time like i'm a little sad now you know of uh he was one of the nine old men but raleigh crump sadly passed away recently uh the uh the disneyland original and also one of the uh unspoken gay heroes of of old disney stuff okay

yeah i think ollie johnston was the final old man some of them died in the 70s that's how old these people were he's he uh he won the tontine i suppose after Frank died but yeah no I remember I remember too on Dumbo hearing Eric Goldberg talk about like oh you know the nine old men well they got taught by the guys who did Dumbo they're the old man of the old man that's how old the guys were on

Dumbo but yeah so we then see everybody celebrating I also like the just like old times hurt the end too yeah so we then see everybody celebrating i also like the just like old times hurt the end too and so we get dicker just uh telling us the story of what happened he's like well they're not sure if they want to solve this in this movie or leave it open for a sequel so like and let the politicians deal with it and that's the plot of the second movie do the politicians deal with it how legal will superheroes

be though i'll say by the time 2018 comes out talking about how a class of people are illegal had different weights to it than it did when this movie came out in 2004 at least two mainstream audiences okay i mean uh that was the uh i mean it was happening for a long time but that's when the kids in cages discourse was happening exactly exactly so I think the way a Pixar movie deals with that metaphor changes quite a lot between 2004 and 2018 and I think we made the cages better yeah well I mean they're run by Joseph Robinette Biden and he knows how to make a cage the good way not uh he's a comfort cage and he feels and the most important part is he isn't proud of it he feels bad he feels bad about it he's got the weight of the world on his shoulders like atlas it's really tough for him i mean come on man okay so so yeah we tease that it's going to be a neat tidy ending and everything's fine

with syndrome we also get a dad telling his daughter hey you look nice with your hair uh pulled back and that's all she needed to hear to get her self-worth back as a woman that a man her dad finds her attractive a dad finally told her she won't she won't be searching for it in father figures now that a man this is i mean this is the very traditional values coming through here uh but i mean hey it's i i think it's good to have parents tell you you're proud of they're proud of you that's nice like uh but uh then we get carrie on the phone making all her phone calls you get to see the other side of it in the jack jack attack i like how dash is just breathless explaining everything that happened like a real kid would be and then this and then this and then this oh wait so i i love this uh the shot it's

almost like a horror movie and it's i think it's one of the cool shots in the movie and it's not like a cool action scene it's just following them almost via a handheld camera as they run into the house it's great it's like a sam raimi shot yeah you're right yeah they because you have all these jokes in the relaxation like they it's paced like this is the end of the movie and when she hears replacement sitter that's when it's like oh a bunch of cold water just splashes on you and you're with the whole family like oh my god oh my god oh my god and then boom you just have to stop right there they are stopped in their tracks by the final move of our big bad guy. I'm fine, Mrs. Farmer! Put that down! Stop it! You need to call me, I need help! Bob, listen to this.

I'm gonna call the police or something! Hi, this is Kari. Sorry for freaking out, but your baby has special needs. Special needs? Anyway, thanks for sending a replacement sitter. Replacement? I didn't call a replacement. Shh. The baby's sleeping. You took away my future. I'm simply returning the favor.

Oh, don't worry, I'll be a good mentor. Supportive, encouraging. Everything you weren't. And in time, who knows? He might make a good sidekick that's more of the perfect soundtrack also like supporting that big rush out of the car and they need the horror movie kind of shot there in the jack-jack attack they make a great joke out of it the syndrome appears in it with his mask off but but he meets Kari, and he's like, she says,

you're the replacement sitter? And he's like, yeah, that's right. And then she says, well, that's why you have an S on your shirt, for sitter. And he's like, yeah, you know, before it was babysitter, but then I'm walking around with a big BS on my shirt, and you know, wouldn't want that. That's a good joke. It's a good, I, you know, wouldn't want that. That's a good joke. It's a good, I, again, I was like, well, that's a little dirty. And then later Rick Dicker's asking her like, and you just believe that?

She's like, I hadn't slept all night. I needed to get out of there. The stuff with Jack Jack, it makes me think like, no, he's going through his terrible twos. Yes, for sure. Because he turns into a fucking demon. Yes. And this was the part where Bird really wanted him to turn into goo and drip away. But he, through many angry conversations, was convinced it just can't be goo.

This will add four months of work to people. And we don't have four months of work. It can't be goo they john walker the uh one of the producers on i believe he told this story that to convince brad bird to cut back on some of his demands they made a new system of like here are popsicle sticks each popsicle stick represents a day of work from somebody and we only have so many popsicle sticks on our staff now we're going to put these next to people's names and if you say you want something new then you have to show me where you move that popsicle stick away from and put it on that new

thing treat him like a baby i mean he's uh he some would say his uncompromisingness is like oh inspiring some would say it's like a baby having a tantrum like no i want it all i want it all we've seen those unflattering caricatures of him that they drew give him credit that he shares them and he's just like well all right he doesn't he i think he at the very least embraces yeah i know i can be difficult and it's funny if i share that with the world instead of i bet there's lots of people in the animation industry who are jerks like that. And then they say, but obviously in the press releases, you have everybody say how I'm the greatest guy in the world and such an influential, wonderful director. Yeah, he can be upfront about how his staff resents him, but then he can also take all the credit for the movie. Like, this is a Brad Bird movie.

I wrote it. I directed it. He is very upfront in the commentary. He actually bemoans it on the commentary that he says i could name every animator for every scene but then we'd be here all day and that that's why there is a dedicated animator commentary where they shout out more of the people oh good i i do commentaries i couldn't watch the whole thing again i i'm sorry listeners i couldn't give you more fun facts from that uh but yeah so he tries to kidnap Jack.

Jack, he's transforming. Meanwhile, Mr. and Mrs. Incredible decide they're going to do what they call in the Marvel comics a fastball special, which is when Colossus throws Wolverine at something. I thought it was when Bowser throws Mario in Mario RPG. They got it from the Marvel comics first. It was done in the 80s first in in uncanny x-men as you know comic has a great joke about it where she she's gonna do it uh instead of colossus she's gonna be the one to fling wolverine when she's holding wolverine in her hand his butt is like

in her palm and she's like you know you got a firm little butt there buddy he's like hey you're not supposed to talk about that in the fastball special so it's sort of like the martin short character on arrested development yes it's very much like fling me buddy but he's not always puking no instead it's wolverine it's thrown and just like mrs incredible he uh you know gets in a straight line though in wolverine's case he snickety-snick claws out stab away at you know a say the juggernaut let's say let's say but in this case Mrs. Incredible uses the catch Jack Jack make sure he doesn't die and this is when syndrome swears they'll never know peace and that's when the cape comes to get him to and he just dies like he is pulled into it you see the look on his face like i'm gonna die you see the terror in his eyes and just kaboom dead and not only that

he explodes and then he blows up the entire house is and the thing hits ground he thinks he's gonna maybe the whole family's dead but violet learned how to save everybody with the force field and helen goes that's my girl luckily it was a very contained explosion yes so it contained that a little boy can be across the street and be totally fine seeing this explosion as his mushroom cloud goes up it would be a depressing ending if five other houses blew up in this fall yeah but he pronounces i mean it's a great cherry on top of the whole sequence of that was totally wicked and then we get to the uh epilogue to the movie violet learns how to be attractive to a boy she liked a very important goal it's a nice touch that he's actually more shy than her yeah i do like that a lot and i like that she keeps her confidence too like

she's wearing a you know a little pink outfit but and she's pulled her hair back but she still you know didn't put on a ton of makeup and she is like complaining about cheerleaders and she's saying like she's the one who says i like movies movies and popcorn. And the question of Incredibles 2 is, will they go on that movie date? It's the main plot of the film for Violet. I'm on the edge of my seat. And then they cut to the boy... The boy.

The Dash. The name of the boy. The name of the boy. Dash is competing with the normies, and he's running just fast enough to get second place. He even has a two on his shirt, just so he remembers fast enough to get second place even as a two on his shirt just so he remembers like get second place it's a nice uh little move as he keeps looking back at his parents for instruction like what how should i do this and they're

kind of arguing back and forth until they decide on second place and there's a guy sitting next to him he's like what the fuck why do they want him to get second place like yeah it's it's great this also is during soccer dad era and they're being like coaching parents from the stands and then it's also a little funny bit how when they finish the race with him in second place all the other kids are gasping for air and dash is just fine like hey hey mom and dad so they're walking away they're all excited and this was the last big thing brad bird had to say on the commentary which is he had been told that it is tradition to have John Ratzenberger in your Pixar movie.

He doesn't like tradition. And he also didn't like the feeling of like, what I got to cast somebody in something just because he was in all the other ones. Like he didn't hate John Ratzenberger or anything, but he was just like, but why, why do I have to?

And he said, eventually he said, I don't want to jinx the box office like what if he really is the good luck charm but the very brad bird way of doing it is is that the last line said in the movie and the character at the very very end that's when john ratzenberger is in the movie. Yeah, I think upon seeing this, knowing the tradition, I'm like, where is he? When am I going to hear Cliff Clavin?

Where's old Ham talking it up? But yeah, this is the moment here. And if you're a Fantastic Four fan, you would know that this is pretty much the exact cover of Fantastic Four number one. Mole Man is the first guy they ever fight. He drills a big drill out of the ground, and he has a monster come

out not just a giant drill but Underminer just is Mole Man like he is he is the Mole Man character but this is when we get the Underminer ending Just a little bit! Don't give up! Make it close! A second! Second! Second play! A second! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Whoo! That's my boy! Dash, I'm so proud of you. What the heck do you want me to do? Behold the Underminer!

I am always beneath you, but nothing is beneath me! I am here fighting a war on great and then the theme comes in what a great thing i'm like god love it and the second movie picks up exactly here right exactly that's crazy what it's like one actually it starts i just re-watched the opening it starts uh about a minute before the end of the movie but from a different character's perspective everybody looks much better because 15 years have passed some characters has different voices uh the kids the kids all have different except for violet right violet's the same but yeah dash was voiced by a real kid so of course in the sequel they just got to get a new real boy but yes uh and a new real boy a new real boy uh but yeah the underminer sequence and it's still uh ratzenberger though in the the big end

underminer battle that starts it you know i was seeing what else ratzenberger has done and apparently john lassiter used him as a good luck charm with luck but didn't seem to work because i've never seen anyone talk about that movie ever in any context on any platform you would have no clue it exists at all like it was it's a what it's an apple plus original right yeah isn't it yeah that's so you can watch that after you you marathon ted lasso I guess I was reading this interesting thing about the state of streamers and this is a slight tangent but the interesting thing is that like you have the netflix disney warner they are desperate for subscribers and they're trying they're cutting everything they can to stabilize like you know revenue just because they can't get the number of subscribers they need on the opposite end of the spectrum is

apparently the business model of amazon prime and apple both are, oh, did we lose $500 million on this? Meh. That is literally nothing to either of those companies. Money's not real if we don't say it is. It's insane how much money they have the um a real push to actually advertise too hard on it because they're like yeah it doesn't make or break us and it the the article also was making a point of like these streamers could just go away tomorrow from prime and apple because they just decide like i guess this wasn't a great part of our portfolio oh well no big loss

like disney can't just stop disney plus because they it is their future or it's the big plan they've got right now yeah apple can't just stop well i mean apple's also uh their headquarters is technically in ireland so they don't pay any taxes so i think they have more money to throw around that's horrible yeah i didn't know this no i should have figured there's so many irish tax havens out there you know i bet that's why really syndrome had his uh island nation it's for for his on no man is and uh yeah but the last real bit is the 2d credits is incredible too it is animated no pun but it's animated in 60s very bold 2d style and note that not only does it go over like story beats of the movie but also say when special effects is one of the credits that's when lasers from edna's machine

shoot the suit and a special effects happen and or when it says cloth it goes over a bunch of cloth like they they not only pace it to the music but they also want the credits to sort of display the thing that you uh is being credited yeah there's lots of the the credits aren't just for i mean the special credits aren't just for the actors or anything they really go over a lot of the animation team which is nice yeah brad bird really does want to spotlight the names of the people he does work i think he does properly appreciate how hard it is for the tech team to do these things that he can't do. It probably was hard at first for Brad Bird to admit, like, I guess I couldn't do that. When he worked on Iron Giant, he probably was thinking, I could lay out this scene.

I could fully animate this whole movie if I had all the time in the world. But meanwhile, on this movie, he can't make a computer do those things. Yeah. He's got to delegate. Okay. So I have some Apple updates for you, Henry. And I,

and I was like, Oh no, was this incorrect? Because I saw that in 2016, it was found that Ireland granted illegal tax benefits to Apple and, uh, Apple was ordered to pay back 13 billion. But then in 2020,

that was overturned. Son of a bitch, man. a bitch man so you know what never worry about your taxes because 13 billion is nothing to some companies and you know what that's just how ayn rand would want it like they that is because taxation is theft it uh and it doesn't create those governments don't do anything and uh it's just for parasites to get uh and that's what i learned from incredibles is that it's just the stuff like that would have just for parasites to get. That's what I learned from Incredibles is that stuff like that would have just been given to parasites so they could live off of the gods

that are superheroes or railroad tycoons sometimes. Podcast makers should pay more in taxes than Apple does, honestly. We're not as productive. We don't have slaves that make products for you. We're the slaves. We're doing it all ourselves.

Well, we do have some wonderful freelancers we have never called well-paid editors who are editing this right now yes yeah and you're the greatest yeah jesse you're the best yeah uh but yeah so the credits leave you with such a great impression of this movie like it i think it's why i re-watched it over and over again because every time at the end of it like man i love those credits but i want to hear it again turn it back over again and obviously if you leave it on dvd menu land uh just plays that theme for about 40 seconds over and over again uh but yeah i re-watching it do i see some of the political flaws for sure as i get older and uh and am bob parr's age and bob's age hello uh i can identify more with the

midlife crisis stuff in this for sure and uh and yeah also i've now since this movie came out been in the office workforce and felt the pains of horrible middle managers like uh like bob does in the movie too so i can identify with it even more than just as a nerd and there's still moments that really like like fly for me like holy crap this is great technically i can see the flaws more than i did in 2004 and the island stuff it just is a little long yeah but i uh you know four out of five stars i'd still say for sure for me yeah like i said in the beginning uh anticipating the island stuff uh made it go down a little smoother this time knowing okay they're gonna spend half the movie on this and i'll just have to be ready for that

i might have said this earlier but also i was happy the political stuff didn't wasn't overpowering to the point where when it does pop up it seems odd like well the movie's not about this i don't know why you're talking about this. But yeah, I like this movie, but it also makes me sad that this is the end of an era for Pixar. I mean, Cars is the last sort of independent movie they made. And this feels like, like I said earlier, a path they didn't pursue any further. Of course, there's Incredibles 2, and I'm sure that's fine. actually i want to see that now but i feel like uh we're seeing pixar undone by their constraints now when people are just not as interested when there's better movies out like uh spider-man and uh not mario of course but uh even puss in boots seems like it's

it's trying different things it's trying to to go on the edge of what family entertainment can be maybe someone will step over the edge without making sausage party it uh it really helped puss in boots that see it's the inverse of elemental elemental you're uh you have such sky high expectations for a pixar movie i had bottom of the barrel expectations for puss in boots and that they made a really good movie with a shrek universe i was like what in the fuck it was just like how the Lego movie which I think is great but the fact that it was even good was incredibly impressive sorry last thought I wanted to say too was I do note that this kind of reminds me of where we are in the Simpsons in season 14 which was being produced while this film was being produced you are really noticing

what you lost with brad bird you see so many great comedic scenes that in his overseen execution of comedic ideas it is what is lacking a lot of the tonight the animators work hard but it's what's lacking a lot in the post brad bird after season eight when he leaves for Iron Giant. Like, there's just, there's execution stuff that's just like, oh, he probably would have paced it out better or planned it out better. Yeah, I mean, despite his flaws as a storyteller, despite his flaws, I guess, politically at times, he is very good at visual storytelling and gags. For sure. he is very good at visual storytelling and gags for sure and i feel like he lent so much of the simpsons to the point where i don't know if it would have been successful without his hand guiding it i think so i think it's one of the things of like oh if you remove salt from this recipe it

tastes different kind of deal and we're we're seeing the lower salt version of the simpsons in season 14 uh without him i think people don't obviously though in his executive creative consultant space it's not the same as director so it's harder to really pin down but I mean he left at the end of season 8 and where do most people say the downturn starts? And I'd say absolutely in animation that's when it starts. I mean losing

Brad Bird and David Silverman together both well one to Warner one to Pixar. Oh actually no DreamWorks DreamWorks and Warner right yeah yeah that's right yeah but anyway yeah this makes me appreciate all the more Brad Bird's additions to the Simpsons legacy that probably are underrated by most people

me too thanks so much for joining us folks we'll see you again next time as our summer of Pixar continues with an episode of what a cartoon movie all about a bug's life and we'll see you then Pixar continues with an episode of What a Cartoon Movie, all about a bug's life, and we'll see you then. ¶¶ Thank you. ¶¶ ¶¶ ¶¶ Thank you. ¶¶

¶¶ ¶¶ Elastigirl. Mr. Incredible. No, it's all right. I've got him. Sure you've got him. I just took him out for you. Sure you took him out. His attention was on me. A fact I exploited to do my job. My job, you mean.

A simple thank you will suffice. Thanks, but I don't need any help. Whatever happened to ladies first? Well, whatever happened to equal treatment? Hey, look, wait. The lady got me first. Oh! Well, we could share, you know. I work alone.

Well, I think you need to be more... flexible. Are you doing anything later? I have a previous engagement.