EMERYVILLE, CA – “Incredibles 2” director and screenwriter Brad Bird has just sat down in a conference room at Pixar’s headquarters alongside the film’s producers Nicole Grindle and John Walker. They’ve all just finished a press conference where they discussed the highly anticipated sequel to the Oscar-winning and fan favorite, “The Incredibles.” You can tell there is a sense of relief and excitement as the production process is coming to a close for a film whose release date moved up an calendar year just 18 months ago. And, yes, that would be tough for any feature to pull off and was even more so for an animated feature.
The first “Incredibles” film was a stylistic breakthrough for Pixar and proved a director not part of the original creative brain trust (in this case Bird who had already helmed “The Iron Giant” at Warner Bros.) could flourish at the then independent minded animation studio (Disney acquired Pixar two years later). Since the original film was released in 2004 Bird has spent years telling the press he was waiting for the right idea to move forward with a second chapter, an idea that might be more timely than initially thought (not that Bird or Pixar think in those sort of historical contexts).
WATCH: New “Incredibles 2” trailer puts the family center stage
The entire charming Parr family is back this time around including Bob, aka Mr. Fantastic (voiced by Craig T. Nelson), Helen, aka Elastigirl (Holly Hunter), Violet (Sarah Powell), Dash (Huck Milner replacing the all grown up Spencer Fox) and the adorable and newborn, JackJack, who might be the most powerful one of the bunch. Other favorites such as Frozon (Samuel L. Jackson), Rick Dicker (Jonathan Banks stepping in for the departed Bud Lucky) and the more competent than you’d expect super villain The Underminer (John Ratzenberger) return as well.
Earlier, Pixar screened over 20 minutes of footage that sets the stage for the further adventures of the Parr clan of super humans. The new film starts directly after the end of the first “Incredibles” where The Underminer is attacking the Parr’s hometown of Metroville. Eventually, the family is introduced to Winston Deavor (Bob Odenkirk), a telecommunications entrepreneur who is obsessed with helping superheros have the freedom to practice their skills in public again (in case you forgot, super heroes were banned in the first film). He’s assisted by his incredibly smart sister, Evelyn (Catherine Keener), a tech genius whose true intentions seem slightly unclear.
Warning: slight spoilers ahead if you believe learning something in the first 20 minutes of a two-hour movie is significant.
Winston is upset that superheroes are still illegal and wants to financially support the Parr family and Elastigirl specifically as a public relations prop to get the laws changed. This means instead of finding a new job Bob will stay at home and watch the kids, something that hurts his ego just a bit. And this home just happens to be massive hilltop mansion neither Winston or Evelyn are occupying at the moment (a dwelling the production design team have gone to great extremes to make as authentically a mid-century modern wonder as possible including the difficulty of digitally recreating Terrazo floors).
Based on the tease that was screened it’s still unclear who the real villain is in the story, but Elastigirl runs into trouble on her first mission when someone disrupts the launch of the city’s new monorail. It puts her stretching skills to a “Spider-Man 2” like test. It’s also obvious JackJack will have a bigger part in the film based on a hilarious “battle” he engages in with a raccoon who gets more than he bargained for (something that was sneaked at the D23 convention last July).
After a day of creative conversations at Pixar, Bird and his colleagues spoke about the process of returning to the “Incredibles” world and his thoughts on Steven Spielberg making The Iron Giant a centerpiece of the blockbuster “Ready Player One.”
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The Playlist: Brad, every single time you’ve done press, for what, the last 14 years, someone has said, “When is The Incredibles 2 coming?”
Brad Bird: Yeah, and now I don’t have to answer that. I can say, “June 15th.”
The Playlist: Did you ever get to the point where you thought, “You know, I just need to do this so that fans are happy”?
Brad Bird: No, because if you do that then they go, “When’s ‘Incredibles 3’?” If you do a good job, they immediately follow with that. I mean, quite honestly, it was a little depressing on social media when people would – and very nice people being friendly – but they would suggest movies to me, and they were always, “Can you do the 8th ‘Iron Man’?” Or “What if you did the 17th ‘Star Wars’?” “What if you made another ‘Iron Giant’ or remade it in live action?” When I was first into film I was like, “Francis Coppola going to Vietnam? That’s cool.” “Martin Scorsese wants to do a 1940s musical? That’s cool.” I wasn’t sitting there going, “You know, you should do another ‘Taxi Driver.’” I want people to kind of shake it off a little bit. I like it when people are interested in artists going somewhere they haven’t gone. You know, Sergio Leone doing a Western. At the time, you’re going, “Ah, it’s just a low-budget thing.” I mean, that’s what I imagine the thing was because it was kin of done cheaply in Spain. But he kind of reinvented the Western and those Westerns are as legit as the best Westerns ever made. And you know, it’s ’cause Leone brought something special to it. So, I’m great with sequels. I’ve done two of them now, and they’re fun, and some of my favorite movies are sequels. But I also like it when people are curious about exploring other things. I think that’s cool.
The Playlist: You’ve now mentioned Westerns twice in the past 45 minutes, in this interview and the press conference we just came from. Is that something you’re interested in tackling someday?
Brad Bird: I would love to do a Western, yeah. Absolutely. Hollywood is not clamoring for the next Western though.
The Playlist: That’s true.
Brad Bird: So the thing is if you wanna go off the beaten path, you gotta be ready for some rejection, you know? And I’m okay with it. I’ve had it before.
The Playlist: Well, let’s talk about this movie specifically. During the press conference you admit it took you a long time to come up with the idea. But do you remember what the epiphany was? When you first thought “O.K., this is my starting point. I have the idea. We can really start thinking about this”?
Brad Bird: I always thought the idea of the role switch and playing with Jack-Jack was sound. What I thought I had was the villain plot. And I had a villain plot that I still think has interesting ideas in it and might like to explore in another movie, but when we started building it out in this one, it took us into areas that were kind of static and weren’t as emotional, in terms of the family. So, I had to bail on that idea. And now, we’re into production, we have a release date. So [the story] contained the role switch and it contained the JackJack exploration, but now I had to go somewhere else and I came up with another idea I was very excited about. And then we went down the road with that idea, which had a lot of possibilities to it, but again, it wasn’t emotional for the family. I retained a couple of elements from that, but had to throw that one out, too. So this one was a little more of a trying, “Hmmm. That doesn’t fit. Oh, that’s nice. Now that doesn’t work.” It was more what movies usually are here, you know?
The Playlist: Well, speaking of that there have been so many superhero movies and television series since “The Incredibles” was released in 2004. Would you come up with ideas and would someone on the writing team shoot it down with “Hey, did you know that this was in the fifth episode of whatever. Do we not wanna do this?”
Nicole Grindle: We don’t have a writing staff.
The Playlist: Right, but did someone from the story department or your colleagues here ever say chime in with a, “Hey, do you know about…?”
Brad Bird: I think it might have happened on certain gags. But they weren’t plot things because our plot kind of veered off into … maybe there’s some comic book somewhere that has one of these ideas that’s sort of similar? I don’t know and we had a lot of comic book fans here, too.
John Walker: But no three-point stances, right?
Brad Bird: Yeah, I ruled certain things out. I didn’t want them to ever land like that. I said, “No three point landings.”
Nicole Grindle: Yes.
Brad Bird: Oh, yes.
John Walker: And so, we’re always getting animators and people all over always putting stuff in front of it or people doing this or doing three-point “No, god dammit. No!” Just to screw with him.