“No matter how many times you save the world, it always manages to get back in jeopardy again. Sometimes I just want it to stay saved! You know, for a little bit?”

Married superheroes Bob and Helen Parr have been retired from the superhero business for years and have since started a family, with two of their three kids also having powers, too. When Bob is fired from his job, he gets contacted by a mysterious woman who offers him a job to take out a robot on a stranded island, and he doesn’t hesitate to take the opportunity. With Bob rediscovering his heroic past, things get more complicated with the organization he’s working with, and he finds himself having more of his past come back to him than he first thought.

Just to cut to the chase, I was honestly shocked by how much I loved this movie on this revisit. I hadn’t seen it in years, and I think it’s one of those films where you honestly pick up on and appreciate it more the older that you get. First off, it was by far the most mature Pixar film that had ever been released at the time, and was also the first PG-rated film that the studio had ever made. I think that could very possibly be why it is actually my favorite Pixar movie so far on this rewatch (release order), as it is full of so many scenes that are so up my alley. It can be extremely intense at times, and one scene in particular, let’s just say, a “reveal,” is one of the most shocking and bone-chilling scenes I’ve ever seen in an animated film whose primary audience is children. It’s similar to the rest of the film, where you don’t quite pick up on just how dark this scene really is as a kid until you get older.

The maturity of the movie also ties into its themes. The Incredibles, at its core, is a story about a midlife crisis, which is explored through the character of Bob, or Mr. Incredible, his superhero name. The film starts off with him in his prime days as a hero, saving numerous people, where there is also another pretty mature part where he saves a person from a really dark situation, before he marries the love of his life, Helen (Elastigirl). Mr. Incredible, alone, I think, is one of Pixar’s greatest protagonists, with him being incredibly relatable, which will perhaps be even moreso the older that I get.

When it comes to the rest of the family, they are also just as good. As mentioned before, you have Helen AKA Elastigirl, who has her side of the story, where she is mysterious about what Bob has been up to and goes on her own little investigation to find out. This rewatch was also kind of funny, as it’s been several years since I’ve seen the movie, to be clear, because it was the first time I realized that she was also very suspicious that Bob was cheating on her. Anyways, her investigation gets bigger and bigger throughout the rest of the movie, up until it ties into the main plot overall.

Bob and Helen have three kids, but only two of them are really prominent in the film, so I’ll just talk about them. These two are also very relatable, or rather believable, I should say, because despite their super abilities, that doesn’t change any of the typical stuff you go through as a tween/teen. The older of the two is Violet, an anxious and shy girl who just so happens to have the ability to become invisible and make forcefields. She represents all the anxiety and pressure that a teenager, and in particular, a teenage girl, faces, and though I’m obviously not a girl, I can still relate to a lot of the anxiety part of it. Dash is the more fun character (doesn’t necessarily mean he’s better) who is still in elementary school, the glory days, if you will, before you start to realize, well, life. His powers come down simply to being super fast, and though he’s probably the least deep of our four main leads, there is still definitely depth there with his struggle to want to compete in his school’s athletics, while his parents won’t let him for obvious reasons.

As far as pure filmmaking goes, this was by far at the time the most impressive that Pixar had ever done. You can really tell that there was much more emphasis on things such as the cinematography, which doesn’t just come down to the studio improving in the animation department, but also just having much more cinematic framing as well. A lot more scenes here represent what’s going on more than just on the surface level, which wasn’t really something I necessarily picked up on for the films that Pixar released before this. The framing, especially, is so important because it gets you to feel the emotions a lot more by understanding what a lot of the shots mean, which also happen to tie into the themes of the story, as well.

Pixar was also really on a roll at this time with their music/original scores. I said in my review of Monsters, Inc., which was the last film I watched, that it was my favorite of the watchthrough so far (I know that Finding Nemo comes before The Incredibles, but I had already revisited that outside of this little series I’m doing). However, that quickly changed with The Incredibles. Not only is the soundtrack super fun and exciting for a superhero movie when it needs to be, but it also adds to the last paragraph, where I talked about the pure filmmaking of it all. The way the music is used here, not only to be catchy and nice to listen to, but to ramp up whatever is happening, especially with the more intense and darker scenes, was really surprising to me.

The section I saved for last was what you’d probably expect to be most prominent in a superhero film review, being the action. Honestly, though, that was very far down the list of the things I enjoyed the most about this movie. Remove all the action, and you still have a fantastic movie, because the story, its themes, and especially, the Parr family, are just as interesting and relatable even without all of that. The action, however, is pretty fantastic. The best scenes are probably the solo Mr. Incredible ones that take place in the first half of the film, just because of how intense they are. I know I’ve already said this numerous times in this review, but I can’t emphasize enough how much I respect the mature nature and intense sequences of The Incredibles, while it is still a kids' movie. The other action sequences are great, too, especially in the third act, but that is also where you get a lot of your more traditional superhero stuff, so there isn’t really much to say about that, other than it’s a lot of fun.

I think The Incredibles remains to this day one of, if not Pixar’s greatest work (let’s see where the rest of the movies fall for me before I come to that decision), and is about as close to perfect as you can really get. No criticisms needed.