@Kaido:
Incredibles 2 was a worthy sequel that retained many of the things that made the first film great, like the characters addressing problems, fight choreography, and soundtrack, without feeling like a rehash. I had a delightful time watching it.
My biggest problem with it was the climax. I felt that it was solved too easily, without any significant tension. More on that in the spoilered part.
! So, the villain. I had the sense of familiar dread that it was going to be another Disney surprise villain, and yeah, she was that. But there were quite a few things I liked about her. I also didn't really hold up Syndrome as a measuring stick because to be honest, I didn't really care for Syndrome. His backstory was great, but his role in the present mainly amounted to him monologuing all the time and it was pretty boring. And compared to him, I thought Evelyn's motivations were pretty interesting. I could understand her frustration with superhero worship, even though her response was of course flawed. Who knows, that could factor into a potential sequel. We've had two movies attempt to address the fact that superheroes aren't all-powerful and can sometimes do more harm than good, and while the other side of "Doing what's right can't always be an orderly process" is legit, I'd like if the elephant in the room was someday addressed in full.
! However, either way Evelyn kind of let me down in the climax. The superheroes were all un-hypnotized without too much struggle, and from there it was mostly just busywork to save the city from the boat. I was left wanting something more that I didn't get. For someone whose motivation is to delegitimize superheroes, I thought there'd be a lot of potential for Evelyn to go toe to toe with Helen in a sequel to the fight with the pizza delivery guy, which I had really enjoyed. So yeah, the ending left me a little put out from a movie which had pretty much been incredible otherwise.
I mainly agree, but:
! Syndrome entertained me more probably because of his plan being a lot more interesting and less palpably flawed, his design being freaking AWESOME, and his lines being very memorable. Most of that's pretty shallow, sure, but he is one of the very few modern Disney/Pixar twist villains that actually leaves an impression on you because he is given enough screen time and prominence to revel in being a villain. He might only monologue all of the time, but he's at least entertaining while on-screen. Which is more than you can say for most of the recent Disney/Pixar villains.
! With Evelyn… Honestly, I just get more depressed the more I think about her because there was so much wasted potential there. I real liked the idea of having a villain have a grudge against hero worship and connecting that to a media projection complacency motif. It could actually be very relevant to how mainstream superhero movies are today. But all of that is given way less focus than it deserves.
! I mean, take for example the scene where Elastigirl pursues Screenslaver's broadcast to the apartment hideout. He gives a whole monologue about how people project themselves onto heroes to feel better about themselves, trust superheroes to save lives instead of trying themselves, and criticizes how people prefer artificial escapist experiences instead of pursuing the real thing. "You don't talk, you watch talk shows. You don't play games, you watch game shows." That line is pretty good. In fact, the whole monologue is actually pretty good. It's just too bad that the main focus of the scene is solely focusing on Elastigirl doing elastic parkour that makes Screenslaver's dialogue drowned out by sound effects and action visuals, as if the movie is suggesting Screenslaver is droning on about typical deluded villain monologue drivel we shouldn't pay attention to.
! Then there's that dumb motivation. God, I hate that motivation. I always loathe that "SUPERHEROES SAVED EVERYONE EXCEPT ME/LOVED ONE SO NOW I WANT SUPERHEROES GONE", ugh. It's so damn petty and narrow-minded, even for a villain. If her father tried to call the cops instead of superheroes, nothing would have gone differently. I don't blame Evelyn entirely because she does have a point about her father being an idiot by choosing to contact help instead of taking his family to the safe room. But to blame that experience on superheroes right after they were made illegal is just so, so dumb. Maybe that can START her distrust of relying on superheroes, but that one experience can't be it.
! Although to be fair, Syndrome became a mass superhero killer and wanted to supersede them with technology only because he got his sidekick offer rejected and was arrested for letting a villain escape and almost getting himself and a whole train killed. That's way more petty and deluded than Evelyn's motivation. But at least the first movie doesn't try to make Sympathetic sympathetic, it only banks on him being out of his freaking mind as commentary on overzealous fanboyism.
! Evelyn's plan makes sense until you finally realize that she wanted to end superheroes by helping to bring them out of retirement and then sabotaging the big ambassador meeting instead of just... not helping her brother make superheroes legal again in the first place? Maybe this could have worked better if they explored how Evelyn is forced to work with her brother's wishes or that Winston could have still gotten another partner to help make supers legal again or the public was already rejoicing at the Incredibles coming back into the spotlight as a sign superheroes would be back, so she had to find a way for that to backfire badly by making everyone lose their faith in supers for good. But I don't know... This feels so unnecessarily convoluted.
! And like you said, Kaido, I too feel like Evelyn's plan fell apart a little too easy. And it only starts to unravel because she gets too fazed by Jack-Jack floating in the air to stop him before he takes off Elastigirl's glasses. So Elastigirl essentially failed because of a random baby humor gag. The endgame are still exciting to watch, but Evelyn herself as a mastermind is a bit underwhelming. Additionally, I might be forgetting something, but I still have no idea where that flare gun that Elastgirl shoots Evelyn out of the plane with comes from. Maybe my memory is being terrible as usual. Syndrome in comparison handled his master plan tightly and stood his ground well. He only occasionally gets threatened by getting ahead himself with his fanboy monologuing showboat ego, a recurring built-up flaw in the film. Hell, even though he got killed as a reference to a literal gag earlier on in the film about capes, it still syncs up well with what we know embodies his character throughout the story.
! Also, I think the most lackluster part about Screenslaver is how compared to Bob in both installments (secretly reliving the superhero glory days as it puts unknowingly puts a strain on his marriage and struggling with his insecurities about becoming as good a parent as his wife while she is living his dream job better), Helen doesn't really have a character arc in this film...?
! She gets back into superheroing after a couple talks with her husband at the beginning of the movie and then the rest of her plotline is only capturing Screenslaver. A completely new lackluster villain for the aforementioned reasons above that does not do anything interesting or meaningful beyond inciting random acts of terrorism Elastigirl has to stop. I don't feel like she had anything to prove/gain either internally or externally aside from catching a random bad guy, and the goose chase/twist in catching said bad guy wasn't that great.
! Which is why it feels so weird whenever I watch that one scene where Evelyn is escaping and Helen has to get motivated by her family to catch her instead of worrying about them. That scene feels so damn jarring because it's trying to act like that's some cathartic climax for a character arc we barely got to see, in turn only being an awkward tonal shift. The only times we see Helen worried about her family is she hesitates to take Winston's offer and when she calls Bob and jumps the gun on assuming he messed up with their kids. I sort of get why they don't want Elastigirl's scenes to revolve around constantly being worried about what's going on at home, but it still feels weird.
! To be fair, the action choreography and animation in these scenes is top notch and I love how creative this movie gets with Elastigirl's powers, and it mildly entertains me. Incredibles 2 also gives more balanced focus to the whole family than centering everything around Bob, I love how the third act premise is about the kids stepping up to save their brainwashed parents and the Jack-Jack humor is actually funny. But the first movie had a much stronger emotional core behind it in showing Bob's feeling restrained by his monotonously dreary lifestyle, the subtle infidelity analogy worries, and agonizing over feeling too incompetent to save his family. The humor centering around that also felt more grounded and witty, at least to me.
! Incredibles 2 has a more lighthearted zany, almost trope-y tone to it in both its humor and stakes. It banks a lot more on goofy hijinks ensuring during superhero action than the first film did. Which is fine. I don't have a problem with sequels getting lighter or darker than their predecessors. But when it steps back from having as deep of an emotional core, it feels like a step back. Especially when Bob's side of the plot still does have a character arc. It's so weird how Incredibles 2's biggest selling point was Helen stepping up as the superhero breadwinner and de facto protagonist like Bob in the first film, but Bob still hogs most of the screen time in the trailers and all of the heart wrenching moments and moral messages in the whole film.
! I have actually watched Incredibles 2 three times in theaters now because different relatives want to see it with me, and it still amazes me how I actually get more underwhelmed and even a little embarrassed by the Screenslaver/Evelyn villain plot that tries to act like it's deep but never digs into it much at all and Helen's character arc feeling nonexistent. Brad Bird mentioned in an interview that he had to rewrite the script multiple times by basically recreating the villain from scratch each time to make the story flow, and I think it really shows in the end product.
! But hey. At least Frozone's scenes are great. I loved seeing him roll up to the Parr house without being the slightest bit intimidated by the brainwashed villain menagerie, and he helped the save the day a bunch of times. He seriously needs his own Pixar short.
Oh my God, I got ahead of myself and basically typed up a whole review of the movie lol. The movie's still quite good, definitely one of the better rewatchable Pixar films. But the a bunch of aspects feel a lot emptier compared to the first film aside from giving the family more all-around focus.
