I’ve talked about several superhero movies on this blog before, and Pixar’s first foray into it was more than successful with The Incredibles. In all honesty, superheroes and parodies of them have been done to death, but there is always some new spin you can put on them to breath more life into them. I’m not talking about rebooting them like what Columbia did to Spider-man/The Amazing Spider-man.

The Incredibles is a film that is targeted to young audiences, like all of Pixar’s films. What is interesting is how the film isn’t really about superheroes, but more about how days of glory fade and you have to make new ones or you will die inside. In other words, it is about a mid-life crisis, a topic that I am pretty certain Disney has not tackled before.

The opening of The Incredibles shows a world of superheroes that is like the one we see in children’s cartoons. That is, the heroes are constantly on patrol of a their town, stopping random crimes. I must admit there is a lot packed into the opening sequence, but most of it is necessary plot elements. It also introduces Mr. Incredible, and how he really had a heroic age in his life.

Shortly after he was married, superheroes were then outlawed. All of them were defeated not by a great villain, but by lawsuits. Seriously, the glory days end because people are suing superheroes for doing their job. I personally think that is a very realistic twist to the superhero story, even if the super-villains would never go along with it.

Mr. Incredible is sadly forced to settle down and take a job at an insurance company where he becomes more bureaucratic villain than savior. Mr. Incredible, or Bob, spends his days frustrated at work until he gets fired. However, a mysterious message offers him work, as a hero once again.

This leads to a plot of Bob lying to his wife about how he is moonlighting as a hero. Bob’s wife, Elasti-Girl, doesn’t seem to mind her role as housewife, but she has trouble raising the kids. Her kids are Violet (who can turn invisible), Dash (who can move at super-speed) and baby Jack-Jack (who apparently has no super-powers). Dash is upset that he can’t play sports, because his parent know it would give him an unfair advantage. It is here where Elasti-Girl, or Helen, tells her son that “Everyone is special”, to which Dash responds: “yeah, that, just another way of saying that no on is”.

I always enjoy films that deliver lines that really make one think, and that is one of them. The Incredibles is able to use the superhero genre to show that the age of heroes does pass us by with our youth. There is a sense that humanity needs heroes, but this concept can’t really exist in the real world.

The resolution that Mr. Incredible needs to find satisfaction and adventure in his own family. I suppose that this is a moral that we have seen in other films, but what makes the difference is the setting. The Incredibles somehow manages to mix the look of James Bond with comic book imagery and still has a beautiful minimalistic look to it. It appears that Brad Bird, writer/director of this film, seems to love the sixties era of comics and spies and delivers a film that everyone can enjoy.