There’s nothing like artistic self-confidence when it comes to inspiring a genuine desire for collaboration. That’s actual self-confidence, not its shady cousin, conceit, which forswears collegiality out of a paltry need for self-validation.
John Lasseter and his crewmates at Pixar Animation Studios, following an unbroken string of artistic and commercial successes, are clearly luxuriating in levelheaded self-assurance. Exhibit one is The Incredibles another computer-animated comic triumph from the outfit that, aside from technical similarities, differs in almost every important respect from earlier Pixar features.
The reason for the variation is Incredibles director Brad Bird, the extraordinary young talent who elevated limited-style television animation after being hired as a consultant-director for The Simpsons and King of the Hill. Bird graduated to features with the two-dimensional The Iron Giant, a movie that was as superb as it was generally ignored by the public. Although his range of attitudes and styles are too multifarious to be boiled down to a handful of traits, it’s fair to say that Bird is a master of caricature, color, geometric shape, scale, line and motion. These are not merely abstract qualities; as anyone who saw The Iron Giant knows, they can be the direct expressions of emotional truth when properly deployed. If you were to attempt to locate him within the American animation tradition, you could probably fix him as a direct descendant of Chuck Jones, and a nephew of the U.P.A. guild.
All this places him somewhat at odds to Pixar, which operates more in line with the grand Disney approach, which draws upon a grand dichotomy between realism and fantasy. Most obviously in Pixar work, that drive is apparent in the two Toy Story movies. There, the leading characters are toys which come to life (fantasy), yet are drawn with the utmost concern for sculptural accuracy and physical response (particular reactions to gravity, for example). But even in Monsters, Inc., in which most of the characters are the stuff of dreams and nightmares, the Pixar animators hew to a toy or stuffed animal-inspired basis for even the most whimsical creations. Yes, they went farther out then they had before, but not so far they abandoned their foundation. And, of course, the movie continued the studio’s effort to produce the most realistic images possible of human beings.
Just to make an obvious point painfully so, let’s assert that neither camp is “right” or “wrong” (nor, as far as that goes, are they the only alternatives). Whatever works, works. More importantly, both Bird and the Pixar folks haven’t contented themselves with mimicking a technique (the undoing of at least one promising contemporary animator). They’ve developed their own, highly rewarding styles.
So it’s nice to see Bird stroll into the Pixar playground and establish there’s more than one game to play with all the cool toys at hand. The Incredibles is, in fact, a Brad Bird film first and foremost, at least if you want to define Pixar by the features it has made to date. Here, Bird’s sense of caricature, bolstered by the computer technology, gets a free rein and expands the possibilities of the form.
For the benefit of those who have just arrived on our planet, herewith a brief plot summary. Because superheroes have been subject to so many lawsuits after their feats have resulted in unforeseen damages, the government has whisked them all to suburban locales, where they’ve been given new identities and told to keep their powers under wraps. Among them are Mr. Incredible, his wife Elastigirl and their three kids, all of whom have reverted to their straight names, the Parrs. Daddy, Mr. Parr, has taken a job as a claims adjustor, Mrs. Parr is contenting herself with being a housemom, daughter Violet uses her burgeoning power of invisibility to navigate adolescence, while 10-year-old Dash can’t resist using his super-speed to play pranks. The baby of the family has yet to manifest anything out of the ordinary. Eventually, though, the world calls upon the Incredibles for help, and mom and dad have to get back into the superhero biz.
The fun begins with the figure of Mr. Incredible himself, a Superman type with a massive physique. Bird takes the V-shape typically employed to denote a powerful figure and exaggerates it to huge effect. But he doesn’t stop there. He tops off the V by giving Mr. Incredible a tube-shaped head and balances both on precariously small, pneumatic legs. After the superhero trades in his tights for a business suit, Bird tells us everything we need to know about the years of lay-offs from villain-fighting by playing with that V. A stomach bulge makes it U-ish. The legs become thicker and the head fatter. All the physically-defined sins of the middle-aged couch potato are plainly, comically visible.
Aside from playing with the graphic dissonance between the shapes of active Mr. Incredible and sedentary Mr. Pratt, Bird has fun with the space around them, their physical context. When he’s Mr. Incredible, our hero is usually outdoors, where he has a freedom of movement as enormous as his muscles. But when he’s Mr. Pratt, he finds himself again and again in tight corners, whether the tiny office cubicle where he listens to a tiny old lady request a larger insurance pay-out (itself a wonderful study in scale), or, perhaps most hilariously, in the compact car that can barely contain his oversized bulk.
The use of shape to express character is the essence of caricature, and Bird’s mastery of it extends to motion, that is, shape in transition. Again, to go to most obvious, young Dash – especially when he is finally able to take on a superhero identity – displays all the rushed enthusiasm of unbridled youth when he lives up to his name and unleashes his super speed. If you want to think of a correlative, cast your mind no further than Chuck Jones’s Road Runner. In both cases, exaggerated motion is character.
This sort of animation had never been tried out in CGI until Pixar opened its doors to Bird. The partnership has produced a brilliant work of animation and, one can’t help but hope, a harbinger of more brilliance to come.