Echoes of the Multiverse

So I finally got to see Incredibles 2 on Monday after many delays. It was amazing. I loved pretty much every second of it, there were no parts where I said "this is dumb" or "this should be removed", it all worked out great. I honestly don't consider this film a step down from the first movie. If Incredibles 1 was a 10, then Incredibles 2 is, at its absolute worst, a 9.

Ares wrote: ↑Wed Jul 18, 2018 8:30 pm So I finally got to see Incredibles 2 on Monday after many delays. It was amazing. I loved pretty much every second of it, there were no parts where I said "this is dumb" or "this should be removed", it all worked out great. I honestly don't consider this film a step down from the first movie. If Incredibles 1 was a 10, then Incredibles 2 is, at its absolute worst, a 9.

yeah, it's remarkable.

The only thing I KIND OF find weird is how, if it's only been seconds after the first movie... which is Elastigirl still SO GOOD at fighting and driving? I mean, Bob had to go through a MONTAGE for his!

I just assumed Helen was a better trained fighter and better all-around skill monkey than Bob... He’s nigh-invulnerable and has super-strength, the standard archetypical “Big Guy,” he doesn’t need to rely on finesse.

Helen clearly spent more of her PP on Advantages and Skills, Bob sank most of his into Powers (although he obviously didn’t treat Intellect as a “dump stat.”)

Neither Bob nor Helen really lost any of their skill. Bob was out of shape because he worked at an office job, was miserable, and had no time or drive to really exercise. But the first time out in costume after all those years, while overweight, he still defeats an Omni-Droid that had murdered dozens of superheroes. His time spent exercising was less about getting his fighting skills back and more about getting back into fighting shape. And his second time out, after escaping from Syndrome and the second Omni-Droid, he was able to infiltrate Syndrome's lair and uncover all of his secret info, and only got caught because Helen triggered his suit's tracker and alerted Syndrome to his presence.

Meanwhile on her first time out, Helen is able to successfully infiltrate Syndrome's lair, and without anyone to give her away, is able to find Bob and could have freed him without Mirage's interference. When they got attacked by Syndrome's men, they easily got back into their groove and took down guys their children had been forced to flee from.

So Bob and Helen were both still on their A-Game, even after all those years, and neither really needed a training montage to get any skills back.

Bob is actually kind of interesting, as he comes off like a combination of Golden Age Superman combined with Captain America. He's got Superman's powers from closer to his early days, in that he's incredibly strong, durable and can leap far, and there's some evidence of enhanced senses (he's shown several times exceptional hearing and sight). And like Cap, he's an excellent hand-to-hand fighter, a great soldier and spy, and has amazing hand-eye coordination (such as when he catches that jumper in the first movie), and he can basically hit anything with a thrown weapon.

Yeah, I did notice that Bob & Helen were both much more multi-skilled than your typical comic book superheroes tend to be in many regards- both function pretty well as "Spy Guy" type heroes, and Helen in particular is a good pilot AND an A+ driver. That, plus Helen's lecture to her children about how "These bad guys WILL KILL YOU if they get a chance!" seems to imply a much more serious, "real" world, even as they adopt a lot of superhero tropes. They kind of implore the audience to realize just how much skill you'd have to have to really survive in their world.

I would love to have a fully fleshed out Incredible World sourcebook. Seriously.

Honestly i don't understand why a Fan-Made one(at the least) doesn't exist by now....

Batgirl III wrote: ↑Sat Jul 21, 2018 4:26 pm I would love to have a fully fleshed out Incredible World sourcebook. Seriously.

There was actually a comic I saw once- some licensed property that had a new super-villain or something. I don't remember much about it, though.

The thing is, they tend to Astro City much of their background characters, so a lot of it would read like the Invincible Handbook, with all sorts of "His origin and the nature of his powers is unknown", with most guys simply being names plus one or two observable powers.

Hell, we don't even know HOW people develop powers in this universe. Bob nor Helen ever have parents seen, and they treat it as a matter of course that their children will develop powers... but they have no idea which ones.

Hence my burning desire to learn more about their world. I’m kind of a fan of superheroes and spy thrillers (I’m sure you’re all shocked to learn this) so to see something come along that combines the two so well (without turning it into a Nineties BloodGun fuster cluck) just ticks all my boxes.

Sorry for practising my necro-posting here, but Incredibles 2 finally came out in Italy a few weeks ago and I was able to catch it last week-end.

I. Fricking. Loved. It.

It's hard to imagine a movie more different from the first one (at least staying withing the same genre and style), but I think that the production team was really able to catch the lighting a second time and deliver a story that really works by changing pretty much everything else but the characters. This is a really a character-based movie, the plot in and of itself is pretty simple and, I have to be honest, I saw the villain coming from a thousand miles away. The main drive are the character interactions and I would be hard pressed to find a scene that I didn't like.

The best (in my opinion)

• In general all the scenes with Helen and Bob, the character chamistry is really good and I love how the role reversal to the first movie works. Bob's faces when he tried to compliment Helen on the phone were especially hilarious.
• Competence porn. This is a thing I love in the first movie as well, most of the supers in the Incredibles universe are a lot more skilled than you would expect.
• Edna. I don't care how or why they put her in a scene. Edna is always great in my book.
• The villain's motivation. Usually I prefer villains with very simple and understandable motivations, but the writing really sold the idea behind the Screenslaver.

The worst (again in my opinion)

• The identity of the main villain was kind of a given after the first appearence, although this might be just my being too genre savy.
• Dash. I know this is unfair, but Dash really felt like the unnecessary baggage of the movie. Lacking a personal subplot he ended up being very pretty much a foil for Violet.
• Semi-inconsistent powers. While we never had a precise measure of their abilities, both Dash and Mr. Incredible were portrayed a bit inconsistently in this movie. Bob in particular seemed much more vulnerable than in the last movie and got dazed a lot.

Woodclaw wrote: ↑Mon Oct 15, 2018 1:54 pm [*]Dash. I know this is unfair, but Dash really felt like the unnecessary baggage of the movie. Lacking a personal subplot he ended up being very pretty much a foil for Violet.

Checking out the cast for my builds, I realized that Dash is played by a different actor this time around (as Spencer Fox is 31 and couldn't play a young boy)- this might be the reason why he didn't get much to do.

It's actually rather odd, though- the ENTIRE main cast is played by much older people than their characters, I think. Craig T. Nelson (Bob) is SEVENTY-FOUR YEARS OLD. Holly Hunter (Helen) is sixty, Samuel L. Jackson (Frozone) is sixty-nine, and even VIOLET is played by a 48-year old actress. Even the Deavors are played by actors in their late fifties- their characters appear in their mid-thirties at most.