Throwback Breakdown: The Incredibles- Pixar's Dark Magnum Opus

about three weeks ago from the writing of this script the much bigger and better channel shipfoolish productions released a video hailing ratatouille as pixar's magnum opus now if you haven't watched shiv village productions number one you're missing out who is this mysterious voice is a question you probably want to have the answer to right off the bat so you can foreshadow it and develop the story's themes around it nope they genuinely had no idea who this voice was supposed to be and number two he has a nearly ironclad monopoly on video essays concerning disney in pixar but one 30 minute video he hasn't made at least as far as i could find is on the incredibles and it would just so happen that i would argue that the incredibles is pixar's true magnum opus across the last half year on this channel i have made it a reoccurring endeavor to look at the writing of animated children's entertainment specifically though i wanted to look at how some of the great fictions that we all grew up with balanced the whimsical levity of animation with the darkness of gritty impactful storytelling managing these tones is not easy for a writer but when done correctly proper execution can lead to the creation of a fiction that can captivate both children and adults my hope for this video and others like it is that it can help you writers out there who want to create similar stories or it could simply act as an interesting deconstruction of one of your favorite childhood movies either one is good with me so for what it's worth i believe that pixar's incredibles is their greatest achievement concerning this narrative tightrope routine of darkness and levity and since big daddy chopralis has so generously left the subject unspoken on let's take the next half hour or so to dive into the third entry of the throwback breakdown series focusing on the incredibles let's place ourselves at the beginning of our journey the early 2000s you have been watching pixar hit it out of the park over and over again for years at this point toy story a bug's life toy story 2 monsters inc finding nemo every single one of those movies is considered a landmark animation and a staple of millions of childhoods but something else that all these films have in common is the massive amount of collaboration and teamwork that went into creating their narratives that would hit the big screen toy story had seven writers a bug's life had six writers and 2 directors toy story 2 had 7 writers and 3 directors monsters inc had 6 writers and 3 directors and finding nemo comes in with a by comparison small group of 3 writers and 2 directors and when you think about the level of quality that pixar was striving for and what they've been able to achieve the large group of creative minds for each film starts to make sense by putting so many seasoned expert storytellers behind the wheels of their multi-million dollar releases pixar was hoping to create the best most engaging story possible these writers and directors of the films were meant to be used as a check for each other covering one another's weaknesses and uplifting their strengths so that the final narrative product would be as good as it could be pixar's entire history of filmmaking its culture of production is based on expert diverse collaboration in the writing room and that has led to stories with viewpoints and perspectives that no one person might have been able to come up with however that all changed in the year 2000 and the change came by way of this man what if i just lay down right now how about how'd that be that elegant beast was brad bird director and writer for the incredibles and when i say director and writer i mean the only director and the only writer as you can imagine based upon what i just spent the last minute talking about that was a huge change for pixar and a really massive gamble for them like i said their success had come from an adherence to a specific creation formula centered on multiple writers and contributors but now with brad bird they were completely deviating away from that but the risk didn't just come from giving complete creative control to a single writer the risk stemmed from brad bird's industry history let's back up just a bit more to understand brad bird graduated from cal arts in the 1970s and found work at disney as an animator working on movies like the fox and the hound and the black cauldron but as great as that sounds don't get too excited he would later be fired from disney because of his constant vocal criticisms of upper management saying that they refused to take risks in animation and played it too safe with storytelling and as any idiot could imagine getting fired from disney is not a great start to a career but brad bird's indomitable nature kept him from being held down and following his time at disney he bounced around animating and writing for various television shows even directing a few episodes of the simpsons but brad bird's directorial debut for a feature-length film came when warner bros agreed to create his brainchild that you all just might have heard of it's a little movie called the iron giant now a running theme that you're going to notice across this video is that brad bird never does anything easy and of course the iron giant was no different not only did brad direct the feature film he took it upon himself to write the entire thing as well and for his monumental efforts the iron giant received nearly universal critical acclaim once it hit the big screen what the film did not receive was profit the iron giant had a reported budget of 50 million dollars but throughout its entire theatrical lifetime it only made 33 million dollars no matter how much you liked the story of hogarth brad bird's directorial debut was a box office bomb which is again not a great mark to have on your career and this brings us all the way back to brad bird's courtship with pixar here was a man who was fired from disney for basically what amounted to insubordination and the man whose writing and directorial debut was a major hollywood flop and this same man stood in front of pixar now seeking for them to step away from their established storytelling traditions so that he could take nearly complete creative control over their next major motion picture now i can't say anything with certainty but something tells me that was a hard sell but luckily brad bird had an ace in the hole an ace named john lasseter a friend from college and a long time director of some of pixar's biggest movies john lasseter desperately wanted his friend brad bird to come to pixar but knew for that to happen brad would have to bring a really convincing idea and that is where the stars aligned one thing that is imperative to understand is that many of brad bird's previous jobs saw him working on already established material such as the black cauldron being based off of the chronicles of purdain book series or the fox and the hound being based off of daniel mannix's novel or the iron giant being based off the 1968 book the iron man so when brad bird went to pixar he decided to do something completely different something deeply personal see back in the early 1990s things were not going smooth and easy for brad he was struggling with balancing his marriage his family life his work life and his personal aspirations but like any creative person might do he used his inner turmoil for inspiration and sketch down a family of heroes that would use their powers to get through their own personal turmoils brad created this family in 1993 and had sat on and thought about this story ever since so in the year 2000 seven years later with pixar asking him to deliver the goods he decided to turn away from working on adaptations of existing fictions and focus solely on bringing life to what he had thought of so he pitched the incredibles and pixar loved it they loved it so much in fact but they allowed the incredibles to be their most unique movie ever and while that might sound like youtube clickbait hyperbole it really isn't i've already talked about how this would be the first pixar movie with one writer and one director but that is just the tip of the iceberg while it might seem strange to think about now since movies like brave and coco exist the incredibles was the first pixar movie centered on humans sure there were humans in toy story 1 and 2 but the focus was set squarely on the toys the incredibles was pixar's first full ray into telling a truly human story centered on humans the incredibles also deviated away from the 90-minute run time tradition that toy story monsters inc in a bug's life had set up the incredibles would clock in at nearly two hours and to this day is still the second longest pixar movie ever only beaten out by cars by 18 seconds but we are still not done the incredibles was the first pixar movie to be rated pg and had by far the most mature content the official kill count for the incredibles is 21 people a pixar first the movie showed blood and wounds another pixar first this was the first pixar movie to talk about consuming alcohol this was the first pixar movie to show guns pointed at a person and this was the first pixar movie to show an attempted suicide the incredibles from the ground up was different and brave and new and that was the point in recounting his time pitching the incredibles to pixar brad bird has said give us the black sheep i want artists who are frustrated i want the ones who have another way of doing things that nobody's listening to give us all the guys who were probably headed out the door a lot of them were malcontents because they saw different ways of doing things but there was little opportunity to try them since the established way was working very very well we gave the black sheep a chance to prove their theories and we changed the way a number of things are done here even brad himself had to adjust to the new frontier he was traversing as the incredibles would be the first 3d animated movie he would work on but as a lesson to all of us struggling writers out there he did not run from the challenge he embraced it but in a way we are getting ahead of ourselves all pixar had in the year 2000 was a sketch of a family and a rough idea what they would need would be a fully fledged narrative and to reach that story that we all know and love today brad bird would need to find inspiration in a plethora of places standing as another great lesson for aspiring writers the first place brad bird turned to for inspiration was his own life i can't believe you don't want to go to your own son's graduation it's not a graduation he is moving from the fourth grade to the fifth grade it's a ceremony it's psychotic any specific things any real life things come from your own life make it into the film yeah all over the place i mean an argument that uh is in the first incredibles where bob and helen argue about one of their kids graduation in quotes is an argument that my wife and i had the age old saying is write what you know and that is exactly what happened the fingerprints of brad bird's personal life are all over the incredibles my middle boy jack was a baby when i first came up with the ideas and we called him jack jack syndrome himself is modeled after brad bird's facial features if you look at syndrome it's an exaggerated brad bird and as some others have pointed out mr incredible also bears a striking resemblance to brad bird as well and then there's the uncanny likeness to brad and bob if you look at it it's an exaggerated brad bird the meat and potatoes of the film setting in style also was a personal touch from brad modeled after his favorite childhood spy movies such as james bond even the plane that helen flies the lockheed jetstar is an homage to bond films as it's the same plane that appears in goldfinger the character mirage strikes a close resemblance to many bond villainesses especially ones such as [ __ ] galore and andrea anders who like her eventually defect from their truly evil employers but the used inspirations also extend out from just the personal frozone's water cooler scene closely mirrors samuel jackson's in die hard with a vengeance the death of superheroes by capes hearkens to the death of dollar bill from watchmen who was shot by bank robbers after his cape got caught in a revolving door and while bradberg said that watchman was the only comic slash graphic novel series he had heard of before making the incredibles competing reports state that he also took inspiration from jim sturenko's agents of shield comic for the espionage that would be included in the film even edna mode who brad bird personally voiced if you repress your depressed darling is based on inspiration coming from real world legendary costume designers edith head and edna taylor but even with all this inspiration fueling his creative passion brad understood that not everything has the luxury of reaching the final cut well i'll argue with you about gooey jack-jack i you know i won't argue hey did i cut it that's excellent that was an excellent decision one of your best sometimes you have to kill your darlings for the betterment of the hole and some of your pet things that you had the idea to do don't actually work you know because it defeats this and this and this and if you are willing to lose this one thing that originally was such a great part of your pitch that everyone laughed at or loved and you go like that and all these things go and they click together you know that's what you have to do doing what was best for the story over doing what he wanted to do was always brad's outlook and he listened to those around him for the best path to follow for example the original script called for mrs incredible's friend snug to fly the jet and the family to nomadis an island to rescue bob bradberg originally conceived that to impress upon the audience the stakes of the narrative and how mortally dangerous the villains were snug would die in the plane when they were struck by missiles but people close to brad told him that route wasn't really the best option instead the script was adapted to mrs incredible flying the plane herself not only giving her more agency in power but creating probably the most tense scene in the entire movie that's what it was like for me emotionally because i didn't want to let go of this and you know i know that i have to and but once we got it out it not only saved us screen time which we needed for things that were more important but it enabled us to make helen the pilot which i think amped up missile lock because now she's in charge of her family and i'm very happy with that one of the most intense sequences in the movie i think yeah you can actually see the remnants of the original narrative plan too when mrs incredible looks down at the wreckage snug is supposed to be in it that long look she gives was the last chance helen had to say goodbye to her friend and that's just one example of the many changes that brad bird conceded would work better than his original vision and while we're at it we can look at arguably the biggest most consequential change that came through edits syndrome believe it or not syndrome was only supposed to be in the intro of the film the real villain was supposed to be a man named zurich whom you can actually find in the incredibles comic series originally zarek was set to be the main antagonist of the film and the ex-boyfriend of mrs incredible his goal throughout the film would have been convincing helen that her life as a robert parr's wife was a complete waste of time compared to all the things he could give her syndrome on the other hand was simply meant to be a villain that was a means to an end he was supposed to show the audience early in the film that villains could track down robert and helen even through their secret identities creating constant tension going forward about when and if the family would be attacked next then shortly after syndrome was supposed to die in a house explosion but as we all know that didn't happen because brad bird recognized what was best for the film so i came up with this uh syndrome character and the thing that was interesting about it was that everyone when we did this sequence responded to syndrome much more than the villain that had been a part of my original pitch which was this is eric character right understanding what is best for a narrative is a skill in and of itself but biting the bullet and following that recognition is also a skill i am sure brad bird had all sorts of ideas that he wanted from his original script that weren't able to be included in fact here is another clip of brad bird talking about such ideas which conveniently also gives us a look into how he appreciates the darkness of storytelling and the moment that i miss most of all is him having the mom and dad frozen in the ray and hearing the sound of the baby and going [Music] and moving down the hall towards the baby's room with mom and dad floating in the air and they're unable to do anything about that i think we made the right decision in terms of what's in the movie what the movie is i i don't think we made a mistake but i miss those aspects of this moment and and there was a particular feeling that i got from that that that we don't have that feeling we have a lot of good feelings in the movie but we don't have that specific one and i kind of wish that we did that feeling that brad bird yearned for especially in that proposed scene came from just how personal the conflict was for the characters the action of a villain approaching a child as parents watch helplessly speaks to the characters and the moment they are in and when an action moment becomes a character moment that is really when an audience becomes invested when he runs on water he thinks he's going to fail and then he finds that he can run on water and he's exhilarated by it you know and so it it wasn't just the action the action wasn't enough it's how does the character feel about the action and then it then action becomes character which becomes more interesting even though the incredibles was different from every other pixar film in so many ways one of the key aspects that made it inarguably pixar was its focus on the characters and the struggle of their hearts at the center of the narrative no matter what pixar movie you look at whether it be before the incredibles or after they all zeroed in on the characters and the deep struggle that existed inside of them but if we do look specifically at the movies released before the incredibles their themes and messages were made more impactful by the allegories they employed what i mean by that is sometimes when you are too close to a problem or a conflict it becomes hard to appreciate or even recognize but when those real deeply human issues are shown through toys or monsters or ants that distance from our own world makes the themes a bit more distilled a bit easier to understand monsters inc's message against xenophobia was given power because the characters were friendly monsters toy story's message of purpose and usefulness was given power because the characters were toys a bug's life's message of teamwork succeeded because it focused on a colony of ants animation and allegory and exaggeration can pull us back so that we can see the thematic forest for the trees and i'm not just saying all this because i'm some esoteric english major i actually wasn't an english major at all i'm saying this because it is important to recognize the hill that the incredibles had to climb relative to its pixar predecessors where the other films could create distance from the audience because the characters were fantastic and exaggerated therefore making the thematic messages a bit easier to recognize and swallow the incredibles didn't focus on toys or monsters or ants it focused on humans on people on a base level there is no inherent message encased in a 20th century family which means the important themes might be lost because of how close the subject matter resembles us in our everyday lives but if you're watching this video that means you have probably watched the incredibles all the way through which means you already know the movie has fantastic conveyance of messages and themes so that then prompts the question what did brad bird do to achieve the success well that requires kind of a two-part answer first let's listen to him talk about how he views animation and how it can be used to find something's most distinct essence is uh caricature that's what animation is great at and caricature is often is a word that's often used derogatorily but actually it means um reducing um something to its essence and that doesn't just mean making things bigger in a drawing or making things louder it also can mean making things tinier or smaller it's about intensifying whatever the essence of that thing is and the drawing of the person would look more like the person than the person did and you're just going how is that it's because they took what was distinctive about the person and emphasized it and took away the things that didn't emphasize it so it becomes this it's almost like boiled down to its essence well animators do that not only with the style of how something looks but how it moves hearing that you can start to realize that everything in the incredibles is caricature meant to serve the purpose of distilling down the characters to their thematically meaningful essence everything from mr incredible's massive upper body and tiny lower body to syndrome's devilishly wide smile or violet hiding behind their own hair is a caricature meant to highlight the essence of that character even though these human characters look like us the parts of them that are thematically significant and important are so exaggerated that we can't help but notice them and that leads us to part two of the answer because interestingly enough this approach to caricature to the boiling down of essence extends past the character's designs and goes straight into the storytelling when you actually look closely at the incredibles everything in the story is exaggerated to send a message but done in just enough of a way that it doesn't break our immersion brad bird has said i don't think the film looks realistic i don't think it looks remotely realistic but it feels realistic and those markers of simultaneous caricature and realism are hidden throughout the movie in plain sight want to show how mr incredible is obsessed with being a hero have him be late to his own wedding because of heroin want to show the unintended consequences of actions have a guy be angry that you stopped him from killing himself hey i saved your life you didn't save my life you ruined my debt listen my client comment at this time want to show that bob hates the mundane normie life he was forced into have him literally throw the physical representation of his horrible work life through a wall but just in case you are thinking that these caricatures of conflict are still too subtle there are even more exaggerated ones want to show the duality of the fantastic and the mundane kind of the the whole vibe of this film is is the mundane and the fantastic you know have mr incredible be known as robert parr a name that literally means robert average want to show that everyone needs to accept help from their support group have mr incredible be in peril on a place literally called no man is an island currently 78 degrees want to show how helpful a support group can be have mr incredible's family literally take him away from nomad is an island want to show how wrong it is to try to become a hero by creating negative situations for yourself to solve name your villain syndrome literally based off of hero syndrome a real psychological phenomenon where a person seeks recognition by creating a harmful situation of only which they can resolve want to make a commentary on family dynamics actually i'll let brad bird take this one well men are expected to be strong so bob is super strong right mothers are pulled in 10 different directions at once so i have her be elastic teenagers are defensive and insecure so i had her be invisible and have force fields and 10 year old boys or energy balls who want to open every door and press every button now and babies are unknowns they could have no powers or they could have all the powers the incredibles is a film completely based around these over-the-top exaggerated caricature representations of conflict and themes but that is also why the movie succeeds the incredibles understood its own setting and how a story containing superheroes was already exaggerated meaning that the only way to create a cohesive consistent feel was to meet that exaggeration head-on the incredibles fully understood the superhero cartoon genre it was in and turned its weaknesses into strength somehow i managed to find cover and what does band von ruthless do he starts modeling he starts monologuing you slide dog you got me monologuing i can't believe remember the bad guys on those shows you used to watch on saturday mornings well these guys are not like those guys they will kill you and of course like with almost everything else that we have talked about this started at the top with brad bird he has said there's expectations for animation and you know you make this connection with animations and superheroes you think saturday morning and saturday morning they have these very strange shows completely designed around conflict and yet no one ever dies or gets really injured or there's no consequence to it i think that you know came out of a team of psychologists determined that it is bad for children and i think just the opposite i think that it's better if kids realize there's a cost and that if the hero gets injured and still has to fight it's more dramatic it's closer to life and at the end of the day that is really what darkness in animation is about the realism and the closeness to life that is what makes the incredibles feel so potent to us that beneath its exaggerated exterior it deals with genuine life struggles that we can all get behind we feel for helen when she thinks her husband is cheating on her how soon can you get here i'll leave tomorrow morning we feel for bob when he learns he's lost his good friends we feel for violet when she fails to live up to the demands of her mother put a field around us now and we feel for dash when he is forced to live a lie these are flawed human beings who suffer and fight and claw to become better and that makes them easy to connect to but at the same time they're superheroes with really cool powers that i've become endeared to because if nothing else they are a blast for my inner child to watch and it's not just you and me and the other millions of people who've watched this excellent movie that feel this way it was the creative team as well they're very endearing they're flawed and you know they have you know these quirks that are very human so you connect to them and um they also have these powers that are really cool so i can nerd out with them at the same time the incredibles succeeds in walking that tightrope of entertaining adults and kids alike because no matter who you are and no matter what age you are you can get behind the themes of the story being told you don't have to be an adult to understand that everyone needs help and that everyone should have the freedom to be themselves you don't have to be a kid to enjoy a superhuman running on water or picking up a train the incredibles strength of handling darkness animation is that it's simply a well-conceived story that does not pander or turn its nose up at anyone and really this quote from brad bird sums it up perfectly he has said look i think if you talk down to a kid or aim specifically at a kid most kids aren't gonna like it really because most kids can feel when you're being patronizing and if you're making entertainment that you yourself wouldn't watch i think there's something insulting about that people have gone the other way and asked not only to me but a pixar in general how do you guys do just the right balance as though there's some complex equation that we follow it's really really simple we make films that we ourselves would want to see and then hope that other people would want to see it if you try to analyze audiences or think there's some sophisticated recipe for success then i think you're doomed you're making it too complicated anyway thank you guys for watching all the way to the end i hope this video could be of help to any of you aspiring writers out there looking to craft your own stories if you like this entry in the throwback breakdown series make sure to like comment subscribe and leave me a suggestion for the next one if you want to support in the greatest way donate to the channel through patreon and get some awesome perks in return as always it was a pleasure and i will talk to you all again soon you

Channel: Savage Books

Views: 547,924

Rating: 4.9711523 out of 5

Keywords: the incredibles, dark pixar, schafrillas productions, how to write, dark disney, Brad Bird, The Incredibles video essay, dialogue dive, savage books, writing tips, dark animation, the incredibles 2

Id: lTxSeusvHg8

Length: 31min 6sec (1866 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 31 2020