Only Some Movies are Special

I finally saw 2004's The Incredibles last night. It was a breath of fresh air though I can also see how it's informed discourse on superheroes since its release.

I watched it on Japanese Disney+, which digitally replaces most of the text with Japanese, so I know the movie's title in Japan is Mr.インクレディブル, "Mr. Incredible". Which seems odd because it's clearly an ensemble piece. The first part of the film follows the point of view of Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) but from the halfway point it's mostly the point of view of Mrs. Incredible (Holly Hunter).

Now I understand why so many people lust after Mrs. Incredible (and why there seems to be a mountain of porn based on her). Who'd have thought giving Reed Richards' powers to a woman would be so sexy? But of course it is. She twists and stretches, she envelops, she accommodates her body to various rigid forms, not without strain and visible chagrin.

The film's philosophy has become primarily conservative, though, or right wing. Disney has steadily rowed their boat away from it ever since. The Incredibles face a world unable to deal with the fact that some people are just better at some things than others. Disney has used Marvel movies increasingly to put distance between themselves and that idea. Though the true opposite would probably be Amazon's The Boys, which I watched the first two seasons of, and part of the third, waiting to see if they would even address the question of whether or not superheroes actually help people. Maybe they finally get around to it in the third season but it really ought to have been right at the beginning.

The Incredibles shows a world in which bureaucratic entanglements entirely prevent superheroes from using their powers. I wish writer/director Brad Bird had found some more plausible scenarios than a man who'd tried to commit suicide suing Mr. Incredible for saving him, or Mr. Incredible and Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson) saving people from a burning building only to accidentally end up in a jewellery store wearing ski masks.

I imagine the ultimate product would combine The Boys with The Incredibles. You'd have a scene like the one where Homelander botches an intervention in the middle east, killing a civilian, and then one in which Mr. Incredible plucks a passerby out of the shadow of a falling building. Let's have a show where people debate the real benefits versus risks, like a David E. Kelley superhero series. But maybe audiences are too polarised for that (I wonder if that's why Kelley's Wonder Woman series never got off the ground).

The Incredibles is available on Disney+.