We also had the chance to tour the archives of Pixar, where just about all the materials pertaining to the 20 films produced during the studio’s 23-year history (starting with Toy Story in 1995) are safely and carefully housed for generations to come. It’s a remarkable treasure trove of historical artifacts from what will surely be considered for years to come as one of the greatest runs of animated entertainment ever realized, a stretch now continuing with the new chapter in the story of superheroes Bob and Helen Parr and their three exceptionally gifted children. How did Toy Story 4 and Incredibles 2 switch places in the release schedule? Brad Bird: We often shift, I wouldn’t say often, but it has happened a number of times. The original Incredibles was supposed to be after Cars. It was going to be Nemo, Cars, Incredibles, and our reels came together a little earlier than Cars did, so we moved up. And the same situation happened here with Toy Story 4. They’ve been going in a number of different directions in story, and it was concluded that we were a little further along than they were. So, we moved up. So that was a challenge for us, but the studio is three times bigger than it was during Incredibles. So we actually, if we didn’t choke, we could actually theoretically get the movie made, and then that is what came to pass. Brad Bird: Yeah, when I got involved with Ratatouille it was a little over a year and a half between my involvement and the finished film. We only retained two lines of dialogue and two shots from all of the previous versions that have been done. It was like running in front of a moving train laying down track…as Nicole said, everyone rallied and as long as it’s clear where we want to go, people rise to the occasion. Can you talk about the decision to set the film at the moment that the original ended and any of the courses or options that you considered at the beginning? And then right after that, I realized I’m not very interested in the powers. That’s not the part that interests me, what interests me is the idea of having a family. And having there be a reason to hide the powers. Once I had that insight into what I wanted to do, I picked the powers based on who they were in the family. Men are always expected to be strong, so I had Bob have super strength. Women, mothers are always pulled in a million different directions, so I had her be elastic. Teenagers are insecure and defensive, so I had Violet have force fields and invisibility. 10-year-olds are energy balls, they can’t be stopped. And babies are unknowns. Maybe they have no powers, maybe they have all powers, we don’t know. So that’s what Jack-Jack was. He was seemingly the first normal one in the family. Then at the end of Incredibles, you find out that he’s a wild card and he’s sort of a Swiss army knife of powers. And that to me reminds me that babies can grasp languages really easily and adopt them easily. But that idea changes if you age the characters up. The insight into those periods of your life, and those particular perspectives disappears once you age them up. I’m not interested in a college aged Jack-Jack. I’m just not. Can you talk about how this superhero movie renaissance has affected The Incredibles in any way? Brad Bird: Well, on some level it’s kind of like going out to the football field and there’s been way too many games on it, and there’s this dried dirt with a few sprigs of grass and everything’s kind of clunky. Life doesn’t grow there anymore. So there’s that aspect where you feel like, oh Jesus, it’s really been covered. It kind of reminds me of how Westerns were in the late 1950s where if you had a television 95% of what was on was a Western. So we’re in that phase a little bit. And it makes it very challenging on a story level, because not only do you have every superhero under the sun, and cross promoting films, but you also have a bunch of television shows. John Walker: When we were trying to sell the idea of the first Incredibles, one of the criticisms of it was, well what is it? Is it a family movie? Is it a spy movie? Is it a superhero movie? You have to pick one. And I think that’s been the strength of both the films, is that they are all those things and that it isn’t just rooted just a superhero genre. Back when the first Incredibles came out, diversity wasn’t being discussed very much. Now it’s very much on everybody’s mind, but in the footage I didn’t see much of that. How quickly did you find a new story for this one, knowing that you have a lot of people who love what you did in the original? Brad Bird: I think that it’s really distracting to think of that. If you think about pleasing an audience that has no definition. It’s old, it’s young, it’s east, west, north, south, conservatives, liberals, everyone in between. If you try to think about pleasing that, and what will they like two years from now, you just will curl up in a fetal ball and never come out of your room. The better way to think about it is, I’m going into a darkened movie theater, the curtains are opening, and I’m seeing what? What do I want to see? And if you ask that question of yourself that way, you’re always connecting with the person that wants to be told a story. John Walker: The fact that we took 14 years to do it suggests we took the challenge seriously. Brad Bird: The thing is that many sequels are cash grabs. There’s a saying in the business that I can’t stand where they go, “If you don’t make another one, you’re leaving money on the table.” It’s like, money on the table is not what gets me up in the morning. Making something that people are going to enjoy 100 years from now is what gets me up. So, if it were a cash grab, we would not have taken 14 years. It makes no financial sense to wait this long. Brad Bird: It explores a lot of ideas. I don’t like to talk about the ideas as if that were the reason I made the movie was to push some agenda. It’s more like you create something that’s hopefully as fun as entertaining, and there are places where you can put little ideas here and there that add dimension to it. The most important mission of the first movie was to entertain the crap out of people. And the second thing was, we have some other things we want to comment on, and some of them is the role of men and women, fathers and mothers. How do teenagers view the world? That kind of stuff. There were a lot of little things buried in the new movie. Again, exploring the roles of men and women. The importance of fathers participating. The importance of allowing women to also express themselves through work and that they’re just as vital as men are. There’s aspects of being controlled by screens. There’s feelings about the difficulties of parenthood, that parenting is a heroic act. All of those things are in this movie, but if I start to single out one of them and say, this movie is about that, it doesn’t give you an accurate picture of the movie. It makes it sound like we’re having broccoli and not dessert. I don’t mind nutrition, but I’d like to have it in dessert if possible. Brad Bird: We don’t have enough time to discuss the ideas that didn’t make it into this movie. The two ideas that were in my head as the first movie was ending were a role switch between Bob and Helen, and showing Jack-Jack’s powers and making Jack-Jack a main character rather than a side character. What changed is the plot, that shifted endlessly and drove me insane. Because I was always faced with a release date and if something didn’t work I couldn’t sit there and try to bang on it. I had to throw it away immediately and go to another idea that solved some of the issues that the other first idea didn’t have. That half of the story was shifting always. The Incredibles 2 is out in theaters June 15.
