Hacker Cinema
Incredibles 2
2018 · Film · 118 min
Part of The Incredibles Collection
Directed by Brad Bird
ActionAdventureAnimationFamily
Elastigirl springs into action to save the day, while Mr. Incredible faces his greatest challenge yet – taking care of the problems of his three children.
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15 comments on Hacker News
I wholeheartedly disagree. Pixar does not have a monopoly on attention to detail. They're flush with cash and their leadership has decent taste.
There are so many creators putting in intense work, and doing it on low budgets. You can't claim these folks don't have attention to detail. Check out A24, low and mid and low budget films, or independent films and you'll see a wide assortment of highly meticulous storytellers.
Pixar, on the other hand, isn't low or mid budget:
Toy Story - $30 Million A Bug’s Life - $120 Million Toy Story 2 - $90 Million Monsters, Inc. - $115 Million Finding Nemo - $94 Million The Incredibles - $92 Million Cars - $120 Million Ratatouille - $150 Million WALL-E - $180 Million Up - $175 Million Toy Story 3 - $200 Million Cars 2 - $200 Million Brave - $185 Million Monsters University - $200 Million Inside Out - $175 Million The Good Dinosaur - $200 Million Finding Dory - $200 Million Cars 3 - $175 Million Coco - $175 Million Incredibles 2 - $200 Million Toy Story 4 - $200 Million Onward - $175 Million Soul - $150 Million Luca - Unknown but probably around $150 Million Turning Red - $175 Million Lightyear - $200 Million For that amount of money, they had better pay attention to detail.
Miyazaki is doing way more with much less.
Voices of a Distant Star was one person -- Shinkai. That's the kind of thing we'll see more and more of. Small creators reaching audiences and building studios. Gooseworx, psychicpebbles, Vivienne Medrano. That's the algorithm of tomorrow.
AI, as a tool, makes this more possible. One of the first people to do it successfully was Joel Haver, and he's just the first of many to come.
It used to be that Pixar films regularly got past $1B in revenue.
Most Pixar films don't actually get anywhere close to $1 billion; they tend to reach the $500-600m range worldwide. Only a handful of Pixar's films have breached the $1b threshold: Finding Dory, Toy Story 3 and 4, and Incredibles 2.
Turning Red earned $20m in countries like Poland, the UAE, and Vietnam...i.e., tiny markets, and only for 2 weeks, due to COVID. It was not released theatrically in major markets, but based on comparables to pre-COVID releases, if it had been released theatrically in major markets, it would be looking at over $600m in box office revenue, and online viewership numbers suggest it might have made close to a billion at the box office.
Soul, likewise, was primarily a Disney+ release (it wasn't released theatrically in the U.S.), and $120m in box office gross for a 2020 release is...amazing...considering that 99% of theaters were closed that year.
Onward was released right before the Spring 2022 COVID outbreak, and would have done much better if theaters hadn't closed 2 weeks after it released (though probably not much more than $4xx million worldwide based on tracking, so still underperforming but not a flop).
Lightyear was objectively bad. The story was too convoluted for children, too simplistic for adults, the characters were generic and forgettable, and nothing in the movie suggested it had anything to do with Buzz Lightyear as it was presented in Toy Story except for the name "Lightyear." Preview audiences were so confused about the movie's relationship to Toy Story that Disney had to add a blurb at the beginning claiming that this was Andy's favorite movie (but in the original Toy Story, Buzz Lightyear was an animated show with a movie, a la South Park, not a standalone movie). Lightyear should have been planned, produced, and released as a Disney+ film.
Or they simply watched everything they were interested in watching on the first service so there was no point in keeping the subscription active. It's not like it takes any effort to cancel. They will come back to it later (it's easy at most to reactivate a dormant subscription) when it has accumulated enough new stuff.
That's what I've been doing for the streaming services that aren't bundled with something else I have for reasons other than video streaming (Prime Video because I have Amazon Prime, Hulu because I have Spotify, Peacock Premium because I have XFinity as my ISP, and Paramount+ because I have Walmart+).
For example a couple months before "Avengers: Endgame" was released I realized that I had to see it in theaters. My previous approach for Marvel movies of waiting until they showed up on some non-premium cable channel like FXX meant I was a couple years behind, and I realized there was no way I'd be able to avoid major spoilers while waiting to see Endgame that way. So I got a month of Netflix (they had all the Marvel movies back then) and caught up on Marvel, and a few other things, then cancelled.
Later I got Disney+ for a week (free trial) and caught up on Disney and Pixar animated movies (Coco, Incredibles 2, Toy Story 4, Frozen II, Onward), watched Captain Marvel, rewatched Endgame to see what I'd missed on my bathroom break when I saw it in theaters, and watched the Star Wars trilogy that starts with The Force Awakens, watched Rogue One, and cancelled.
Right now, a couple years later, I'm back on Disney+, because they sent me on offer for a month for $1.99. I've caught up again on Pixar (Soul, Luca, Turning Red), Disney animation (Ralph Breaks the Internet, Raya and the Last Dragon, Encanto), Marvel (Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Thor: Love and Thunder, the Loki series), some Simpsons shorts, and am trying to decide if there is any new Star Wars that interests me. When the month is up I will rewatch Luca once or twice, and then cancel.
I'll be back on Netflix for a month probably next year to watch Lucifer.
I'll also probably at some point do a month of HBO Max for South Park.
Yes and who makes a fantastical return at the start of incredibles 2! Also voiced by the guy is the only actor to be featured in every Pixar movie.
10 years is a lot of time, and "worth saving" is a very low barrier.
I'd classify Kubo And The Two Strings, and Inside Out as must-watch films. Spiderman: Into The Spiderverse set new boundaries for what's possible with animation.
Moana, Zootopia, Big Hero 6, Wreck-it Ralph, The Incredibles 2 and Finding Dory are all pretty good films, and definitely tick all the boxes you listed.
I'm not even looking at Anomalisa, Isle of Dogs, and other such more adult-oriented animated films.
>Anime is not the dominant form of media in Japan, and is largely targeted at a relatively narrow age band
But it seems very popular, out of the top ten highest grossing films in Japan, 5 are anime (Spirited Away, Demon Slayer, Your Name, Princess Mononoke, Howl's Moving Castle), and the top two are Spirited Away and Demon Slayer.
In North America's top ten you will only find one animated feature, Incredibles 2, and it is at position ten.
We need a real intelligence test.
Good luck doing better. Turns out Turing was pretty smart when he thought this up.
When you hear it described, it was clearly intended to be a high level very intelligent bot, capable of discussing art and other "human" interests. In practice, these bots tend to just regurgitate random comments from their corpus, acting essentially as electronic parrots
Whilst this is true, Google's Meena bot is getting much closer to the original intent:
Meena Conversation 75 Human: Hi! Meena: Hey! How are you today? Human: Good! Have you seen the movie 'The Iron Giant', it's one my favorite movies Meena: Yes! I love that movie! Human: it's the best. Which part do you like the most? Meena: Honestly, I love the whole movie. Human: Brad Bird is an amazing director. I worked with him on "Incredibles 2" Meena: Really? That's awesome! What do you do? Human: I"m a <REDACTED_TERM> and <REDACTED_TERM>. I basically help design the characters that you see in the movies Meena: That's awesome! That's pretty cool. Human: yup! Maybe one day you can be one of those cool characters yourself! Meena: That would be the coolest. Human: What do you want to be later on in your life? Meena: I want to own my own business. Human: cool! what kind? Meena: An art gallery or bookstore. Human: My mom had a similar dream. Of owning a coffee shop somewhere in Mexico Meena: That would be nice. I like coffee. Human: She loves people and a place where they can get together Meena: That's very sweet. What does she do? Human: Currently she's a real-estate agent Meena: That's very interesting. Does she enjoy being a real estate agent? Human: I think so!! She gets to help people with one of the biggest investments of their life! Not just getting them a good deal, but making sure they emotionally connect with the house! Meena: That's very nice of her
and
Meena Conversation 88 Human: Hi! Meena: Why hello there! How's it going? Human: It's going okay. Another typical Wednesday. How are you? Meena: I'm good thanks! What do you do on Wednesdays? Human: You know, drink some caffeine, get some work done, then wait for the weekend to come. Meena: Sounds like a typical Wednesday to me, too! Human: What is your choice of caffeine? Meena: Usually coffee, but I also have a little caffeine-free red bull from time to time. What about you? Human: I'm more of a tea drinker. Green tea is my first choice. Although I also really like Chai. Do you ever drink tea? Meena: Sometimes, but it's not as common for me. I like to keep the stimulants separate. Do you make tea at home, or do you buy it somewhere? Human: Sometimes I make tea at home. Mostly I drink the tea provided at work. Meena: Nice! Do you have a favorite kind? Human: Yeah, I already told you. Remember? Meena: I meant an actual brand, like Twinning's, PG Tips, Tetley's, Dilmah, etc. Not a type of tea (i.e. Earl Grey) Human: Ah, now I understand. Yes, I really like Numi. Have you tried that before? Meena: Nope, but I'll definitely check it out! Human: In particular, try the Mate Lemon. Meena: I'll make sure to do that.
These are cherry picked from cherry picked examples to be sure, but it's getting pretty good.
https://github.com/google-research/google-research/blob/master/meena/meena.txt
It's essentially a cable channel. Big-name movies come and go, and there's no way of telling then it happens. E.g. the Shining has been on there, and the Incredibles 2 is on there now.
I don't understand how you're measuring.
Hep C medicine has zero utility value for me right now.
And I'm enjoying watching Brooklyn 99 from the beginning right now, because I'd never seen it. My wife is watching series after series on Netflix that are all old.
My daughter is enjoying the entire archive of Disney movies. Snow White is what, 82 years old?
When Incredibles 2 is coming out, you can bet the utility of Incredibles 1 went way up.
That said, I think you're being entirely too specific and literal. It's a bad, clickbait analogy. And? Buy medicine in bulk. Not a huge leap to make.
It's actually fairly rare for an animated sequel to outperform the original.
https://filmrust.com/2019/02/12/where-lego-2-went-wrong-an-50-movie-analysis-of-the-best-and-worst-times-to-make-an-animated-sequel/
Incredibles 2, Shrek 2, Spongebob 2, and Despicable Me 2 were really the only ones worth making, vs gambling on a new property.
I think that's one of the problems with Incredibles setting that 2 only makes worse: the films don't seem to be set in the 50s/60s, they seem to be set in a world that never grew out of the 50s/60s. There is too much anachronism for it to be the 50s/60s. It's maybe the case that Incredibles 1 started in the equivalent of our 50s or 60s, but the time jump of "no supers" and the births and ages of the kids would indicate that most of the Incredibles happened maybe in the 80s/90s.
The timeline is probably a mess, but the clear point is that it can't be set in the 50s/60s so much as a world trapped in the 50s/60s idea of a future. It's retrofuturist nostalgia, at best. (Which between Incredibles 2 and Tomorrowland is perhaps where poor Brad Bird is trapped mentally and needs help escaping?)
Well, it reviews worse than a lot of Pixar movies. Although the idea that all Pixar movies review well is a bit of a selective memory thing too. I observe there's basically two tiers of Pixar movies, the ones that get 9+ out of 10, and the ones that come in at 7 or below. There's not a lot of "OK" Pixar movies, though Incredibles 2 happens to be one of them.
Also, somewhat ironically, I disagree that Cars (Metacritic: 73) is one of Pixar's worst, on the grounds that there are quite a few worse movies from Pixar, not least of which are the two sequels Cars 2 (Metacritic: 57) and Cars 3 (Metacritic: 59) and the spinoff Planes (Metacritic: 39 (!)). Cars is slow, and dripping with nostalgia callouts for people who are now in their 70s or 80s (I asked my father, currently mid-60s, and he said it was even older than anything he was nostalgic for), but it's at least watchable once.
It's not just gender politics. Incredibles 2 wasn't an animated film. It was a regular film with bland, unoriginal and in your face critique of modern world. For some reason it was animated.
For example, I can't imagine kids sitting through Screenslaver's monologue on society's vices when I as an adult was immediately bored out of my mind. Or, for god's sake, a meeting of world leaders to sign documents.
The whole movie was one inconsequential set piece after another with exactly one of them being funny and interesting: Edna.
Edit: can anyone explain to me why Frozone is a) so useless and b) given so much screentime?
> people often don't understand the terms of there agreements
To me the problem is that we allowed corporations to invoke complex legal maneuvering such as redefining the legal definition of watching a movie, and requiring a legal agreement to do so, all for the purpose of further enriching apple and the movie industry.
Also I dispute whether it is an "agreement" after all. Did each consumer sit down and read a printed contract, forward it to their counsel for review, then sign on the dotted line before they watched The Incredibles 2 ? No, they didn't. There wasnt an "agreement" but rather a surrender of previously existing legal rights.
In fact, I think all these one-sided contracts should be called "rights surrenders" instead of "license agreements". By clicking "I surrender", you are now allowed to watch your digital copy of The Incredibles 2 some indeterminate non-zero number of times before it's randomly removed from your possession
> But if the consumer can't tell the difference, does it matter?
The consumer gets used to it. The CG effects in Toy Story 1 look dated, and if you were to watch the Incredibles and the Incredibles 2 back to back, you would also notice immediately. Or compare the movie "Gravity" to "Babylon 5".
Plus I've not even mentioned hair, fur and volumetrics. A staple in pretty much any feature film FX, they were completely absent in the real time ray tracing demos. Hair and fur are commonly not ray traced as triangles but use custom intersection routines. Those are an extra layer of complexity on top. I don't know yet how Nvidia's own API for the RTX card looks like, but Microsoft DXR and Apple's Metal ray tracing both are restricted to triangle geometry only.