Review of Incredibles 2 (2018) by Youmedead — 13 Mar 2019

Okay, so, you thought Incredibles 2 was a good movie? You thought it was as good, or better than the first. Maybe you even thought it was just "okay." I'd like to make a few points that I believe more or less deny any hopes of Incredibles 2 ever being solidified as a classic alongside The Incredibles, or even hope to be believed to be a good movie. I'm going to get a bit of a pet peeve out of the way before moving on into the bigger points. These don't really affect the quality of the film by themselves, but on top of the others, they just sort of throw salt in the wound. First off, it's not *The Incredibles 2*, it's just Incredibles 2. For some reason, they decided to stray from *The Incredibles* to just *Incredibles 2*. Just sort of a pet peeve. With that out of the way, I'm going to move on to some more egregious errors. My first frustration with this film is the seemingly sudden personality changes for certain characters, most notably Violet, but Dash and Elastigirl/Helen also have different traits than the original classic. Violet seems to have changed from a shy, sweet teen to a super angsty teen. You could claim that this was due to the events of the first film, but it doesn't really make sense that'd she go from her original personality to this seemingly different person. She was clearly more confident and open by the end of The Incredibles, but not angry and angsty. Helen is another example of seemingly unexplained characterization switching. In the first film, she was very hesitant to get into hero work, and chastised Mr. Incredible/Bob whenever he did illegal hero work. However, she's immediately ready to jump on this illegal hero train, and despite trying to hide it, actually is clearly enjoying it. Where did this sudden adrenilene feuled thirst for illegal hero work come from?

Dash has experienced something of a *non-characterization* approach in this film. He is there seemingly for no reason, and he does basically nothing throughout the film. He just runs around and does things that get into mischief. A problem similarly found with Jack-Jack. Whom I also hate in this film.

Mr. Incredible/Bob seems to have gone through what I call the **Lightning Mcqueen** effect. In the Cars franchise, the movies follow a very similar formula. We open the film by seeing Mcqueen act like an a-hole, he goes through something, then by the end of the movie he is no longer an a-hole. Lather, rinse, repeat. Unfortunately, they seem to have taken this route with The Incredibles. By the end of The Incredibles, he has learned the values of family (as cheesy as it sounds), and has saved both his reputation, and we're lead to believe the reputation of supers is rather high. Now, we follow him go from an arragont a-hole, to learning the values of family and seemingly the reputation of supers *again*. Which leads me into my next point: this movie is just a lesser repeat of the original. It reuses plot points, character archs, and "plot twists," from the original. We reuse the dislike of supers, and end with the the re-introduction of supers into the world. **Now you could say that they didn't end the first film with re-introduction, but that is what you are lead to believe has happened.* It reuses, as mentioned above, Bob's character arch. It reuses a surprise not surprise villain reveal. And yes, that is a total recycled concept, because to be fair, it was super easy to predict the villain of The Incredibles. Speaking of villains, the villain in Incredibles 2 is one of the most *generic, boring, stupid* villains I've seen in a long time. One of the worst parts of Screenslaver/Evelyn is that she doesn't provide a believable backstory. Being as intelligent as she is, you'd think that she'd understand that Supers weren't the cause of her dad's death. Because of the backstory provided by her and her brother, we are immediately dragged out of believabilty for this story because of how much depends on this terrible backstory. One of the things that made the original film so good was that we both understand where Syndrome is coming from, and can actually empathize with him, and if he weren't evil, maybe we'd even side with him at times. One of the problems with Incredibles 2 is that it has such a legacy to live up to. The orignal had such ~~incredible~~ dark themes throughout it, such as the failing mairage between Bob and Helen, dozens of murders, and actual child murder. It was a action drama with certain humorous bits scattered throughout. Incredibles 2 takes a complete 180 from that. It decides it wants to be a family comedy, while still trying to be edgy. One of the biggest examples of this is the huge emphasis on Jack-Jack. This movie wastes so much time on long sequences of Jack-Jack mischief. Sure, there are moments throughout these sequences that could be funny. But there is an over-saturation of it throughout the film, and it kills both the flow and pace.