Covering the Basics: The Incredibles

I find that often people use the terms “children’s movie” and “family movie” interchangeably. “Family” seems to be a common innuendo for children in our language; when people talk about censoring television for the sake of “families” it’s not their parents they’re trying to protect from sex and violence. Even so, when talking about movies it’s important to draw the line between a movie for children and a movie for families. Children’s movies are created only for the sake of entertaining young viewers. A children’s movie is something you have on video that you play to keep your kid distracted while you and your spouse run upstairs to the bedroom and…play chess, which is what I assume all parents do in their sparse free time.

Family movies, on the other hand, are intended for all audiences, with “all audiences” meaning not that anyone can see it unaccompanied by an adult, but that people of any age should be able to enjoy it. The family film is a movie that, ideally, everyone in a family should be able to watch together and enjoy. This fact shouldn’t be surprising, considering that adults don’t need constant bloodshed, nudity, and existentialism in something to enjoy it (at least I hope they don’t) and children over the age of 5 aren’t the brain dead zombies incapable of understanding well developed stories that adults make them out to be (for kids 5 and under, you’re on your own).

My word processor is telling me I’ve spent 250 words just on this one topic, although it once told me that “lime juice” should be spelled “limejuice,” so I’ve gotten in the habit of not trusting it. Either way, there is a point to all of this: I recently hat the chance to see The Incredibles, and I have to say, treating it seriously, it is one of the best superhero movies I’ve seen in a while. It’s yards ahead of Green Lantern, if only for the fact that in The Incredibles the characters actually do something.

Quickly getting the plot out of the way, for anyone who hasn’t seen it: The Incredibles is a movie in which people with superheroes are forced to retire and keep their powers a secret, including Mr. Incredible and Elasti-Girl (or rather, Reed Richards), our protagonists, who marry and have two superpowered children, and all struggle to adapt to a normal life. Then they take turns getting kidnapped, as a guy named Syndrome tries to get his revenge on superheroes. Oh, and Samuel L. Jackson goes skiing. It makes more sense in context, but if you want that much context, you might as well watch the movie.

I’ve generally believed for a while that superhero movies are better suited to animation than live action. With the likes of Zack Snyder leading the way in the industry the two seem to be becoming synonymous. As for whether Pixar’s animation is suited for a superhero movie, let me put it like this: Catwoman had CGI fight scenes, Green Lantern had CGI costumes, and Watchmen had CGI rain. Midway through watching The Incredibles I thought to myself as I saw a shot of a rocket ship “that looks like CGI,” then had to wait a moment before I remembered I was watching a Pixar movie. It seems that by being fully CGI, all the movie is really doing is cutting out the middleman.

Also, the villain is some sort of evil troll doll. Or rather,

to avoid being redundant, some sort of troll doll.

I don’t know if I would call The Incredibles a comedy, but it certainly has a good amount of humor in it. From scenes of the Mr. Incredible working in a satirically unethical insurance office to an ambiguously German (or is it Japanese?) fashion designer, who I am just now discovering was voiced by a man, the whole thing is a barrel of monkeys (or is it laughs? I forget). For this reason, too, I consider The Incredibles to be better than many of the superhero movies I’ve seen in recent months. With the trend towards “dark” takes on the superhero genre still in vogue, a lot of movies are fairly humorless, but even worse, the concept of “comedy” is becoming synonymous with “farce,” or, worse yet, “parody.” This is what hurt movies like The Green Rogen, which could have been great, had the plot and protagonist not been reduced to absurdity for the sake of “comedy.” The Incredibles, on the other hand, shows that a movie can be funny while still having a serious plot with high stakes. This is a movie that has children getting shot at with machine guns. The fact that it knows when to play a scene for laughs and when to play it for serious, and can make both work, is a testament to the importance of balance in any movie, comic, or adventure story.

And then there’s the question of story structure. It seems to me that a great many of the superhero movies we see are based off comic books (brilliant observation, right?), and as a result, filmmakers are taking characters who have over half a century of backstory and character development, and try to recreate that on film, so we’re left with an “origin story” that takes up the first two thirds of the movie and clouds the plot. The Incredibles, instead, seems to realize it’s a movie, and gets the exposition out of the way as painlessly as possible, instead giving us an actual story to focus on. And it works, too!

I’m not saying The Incredibles is a perfect movie, or even the ideal superhero movie, but it’s certainly a refreshing break from the usual live-action fair. In terms of plot, tone, and visual style, it covers all the necessary bases, and more effectively than a lot of other movies I’ve seen lately. In terms of story, themes, and structure, which I may talk about some other time, it goes it its own unique direction, which is a direction I have mixed feelings about. Even so, while every movie should ideally go in its own direction, you need to cover the basics, and this is something The Incredibles handles very…competently.

Keeping Up With a Crazy Catwoman

When people ask me the plot of the movie Catwoman, I have a tendency to describe it as “Halle Berry’s breasts.” This has always seemed like the best answer to me; after all, it’s not about the DC Comics superhero of the same name, it’s not about any sort of action hero at all, and the protagonist’s costume provides the audience with a considerable amount of breastage. However, I’ve realized lately that there is a problem with this conveniently simple description, since it implies that the entire movie is meant to entice horny male audiences with the cleavage of its star, much like every movie Pamela Anderson has ever been in. Unfortunately, Catwoman is something far less simple. I will still firmly insist that Halle Berry’s breasts give the best performance in the entire movie, and I will defend that position against anyone who says otherwise. Still, as it turns out, a movie like this is actually more than the sum of its breasts. Catwoman is something far worse than a breast fest. Catwoman is a chick flick.

I first saw Catwoman when it came out, during the summer of 2004. Considering that this was a full seven years ago, my memory of it for a long time consisted pretty much of Halle Berry getting killed by someone, then putting on a silly cat outfit, drinking cream “straight up,” and walking around on some buildings for 40 minutes. It’s not a movie I think about often, so I’d have been perfectly happy with that vague image floating around in my mind, were it not for the fact that recently I saw the DVD on sale at Barnes and Noble for less than five dollars. If you happen to speak price tag, you’ll know that a recent Hollywood movie going for less than five dollars roughly translates to “we fucked up and we’re desperate; please help us,” so, being a glutton for punishment, and being the owner of a B&N gift card with considerably more than five dollars on it, I threw the store a bone and bought a copy.

Uh...got milk?

On a second viewing, I found my previous idea of what Catwoman was to be pretty accurate. The plot is that a woman gets killed by the evil boss of a cosmetics company to stop her from revealing that their new miracle product is toxic, but is later resurrected with ambiguous superpowers, and sets out for revenge. This alone isn’t a terrible idea for a story, although it also happens to be the exact same plot as a two-part episode of Batman: The Animated Series called “Feat of Clay,” which is the closest the movie comes to adapting any DC Comics material. The problem is that without any other elements to develop this plot (and there aren’t any), there’s enough material for a thirty-minute movie, maybe 40 if you add some Batman.

Considering that Catwoman is an hour and 40 minutes long, there must be something else going on here, since even Halle Berry’s breasts can’t fill an hour of screen time. It all begins to make sense when you add the story elements that men have been trained from birth to ignore, which are written in an arcane language called “periphery demographic” and collectively make up the dreaded romantic subplot. In this case, the romantic subplot involves Patience Phillips (the supposed name of this Halle Berry character) falling in love with a handsome police detective after he tries to save her life because of a wacky misunderstanding, only for him to discover that her secret Catwoman persona may be too hot for him to handle. Or, since the action story alone takes up less than half the movie, it might be safe to say that this is the main plot of Catwoman.

Yes, Halle Berry playing basketball is

 the best action sequence in the movie

Catwoman has all of the hallmarks of a generic, shoddily scrapped together chick flick. It stars a beautiful young woman who has the good looks of a supermodel, yet other characters don’t recognize this because her hair is frizzy (seriously, the only women who ever have frizzy hair in movies are those who are unsure of themselves, so that later they can have a makeover that releases their inner beauty). She’s the best artist in town, but isn’t appreciated by people because she doesn’t assert herself. She has a supportive but less glamorous female friend, and a sassy gay male friend to tell her she’s worth it. Or, in the case of the sassy gay friend, to describe the handsome detective as a “man sandwich,” which I assume is supposed to be some sort of sassy gay compliment. And most importantly, she gets a makeover halfway through the movie that allows her to assert herself, take charge of her life, and win over the sweet, caring man of her dreams. It just so happens that this makeover comes in the form of ambiguous cat powers. If I wanted to be kind I would say that Catwoman was two different movies rolled into one, but in all honesty, the fact that the scene of Patience Phillips on a date at an amusement park is longer and probably better than the final climactic fight scene (or rather, the only fight scene) tells me that the action subplot is just there to stop the people who wanted a movie about Catwoman, or at least a movie about a superhero, from rioting.

I’m not bothered all that much by the fact that Catwoman is a chick flick, because in all honesty, a bad chick flick isn’t much worse than a bad action movie. However, what does concern me is what this means for the future of superhero movies. Although it has virtually nothing to do with its source material, Catwoman is still one of the few superhero movies to star a female character. I’ve heard people express concern that should a Wonder Woman movie ever be made (and after Batman, Superman, and Green Lantern, that’s probably the biggest draw DC would have at the box office) Wonder Woman might be mischaracterized by being made into some sort of sex symbol. I think that if anything the bigger risk we run is Diana being turned into a Patience Phillips who spends the movie learning to believe in herself.

Hollywood seems to believe by and large that women enjoy watching bad movies. There’s always the slight chance that women really do love bad movies, in which case they shouldn’t be allowed into movie theaters for the good of society, but somehow doubt that to be the case. Putting women in the superhero role raises a question: are movies about women somehow inherently girly enough that women become the main demographic? And as more female superheroes hit the screen, are producers going to take it upon themselves to dilute the genre with more unnecessary, supposedly girly elements?

And on that note, where’s my Jennifer Government movie?