Also saw this today. loved it - I must admit, I think even a little bit more than the first. I thought the first was very Randian, this one felt a bit like the opposite in some weird way.
My two kids thought *Bao *was sweet, they didn’t find it too adult or offputting.
I remember thinking when she ate the dumpling baby that the story had taken a dark and abrupt turn.
Its the argument every parent has with their kid that ends with an abrupt door slam.
I was pretty much expecting that the dumpling was going to get eaten eventually. I mean, that’s what happens to dumplings.
And having attempted to teach non-family members how to seal up pierogis, I can sympathize with the kid’s misshapen efforts at the end.
I just got home from watching this with my kids and I enjoyed it as much as the first one, though the first one touched me more than this one. There were a lot of great scenes and the train chase was particularly cool. I enjoyed how they were able to incorporate family life and dynamics in the midst of everything else without it becoming tedious or slowing down the pace. I don’t know if I want an Incredibles 3 though. Just having one was fine, and I am ok with 2, but a 3? A tv series might be better if they want to continue.
//i\
When I first saw Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, I was upset that they had taken this grand, epic battle and reduced it to nothing but a trade dispute. The grand themes explored in the original movies became something mundane. I felt the same way when I saw The Incredibles 2. This kids’ movie was about the legal status of super heroes? Really? I wanted to see super heroes kicking butt, not fretting about their relationship with the local governments.
My wife and I took our two grandsons, ages 6 and 3. The six year-old had a tough time sitting through it. About twenty minutes before the end, he said, “Can we go home now?” The three year-old, however, sat still through the whole thing. To be fair, the older boy has ADD. He can sit to focus on video games, but he doesn’t have much of an attention span for a long-format program.
I narrowly missed who the villain was, though, in hindsight, it was perfectly obvious. Having only 25 miles of track for a 200-mph maglev train seems a bit premature for the opening ceremony. Twenty-five miles isn’t much of a trip.
I thought the Bao short was awful. We’ve recently gone through the empty-nest thing, so the theme hit us right in the feels, but it was poorly done. We are excited that our son has a steady girlfriend, whom we think he’s going to marry soon. Our daughter (the one with the aforementioned boys) is moving far away, so we’re struggling a bit with this. We’ve never thought of eating her, though. That was a shocking development in the story. Since the short is animated, it was not immediately evident that the dumpling was a metaphor for an actual child. Also, where was the dad in all of this? He appears briefly at the beginning and the end, both times with a scowl on his face. This is ironic given that the main feature was very much about breaking out of gender roles.
You realize all of the bits with the dumpling were the Mom’s dream, right? That’s her subconscious perception of her relationship with her son. She’s a stay-at-home older Asian mom, is it any wonder her subconscious is still stuck in old gender roles?
And I didn’t think the Dad was scowling at the end, he seemed sad.
Yeah, I thought the short was beautifully done. Her pride, protectiveness, and ultimately destructive possessiveness of her creation in her dream felt like a very real analogy for a parent who is struggling to let go of a child. She knows that she has to let him go, but her instinct is to keep him, even if that means destroying him. It worked well for me.
There was only 25 miles of track in the wrong direction. We don’t know how far the train would have gone if it had gone forward like it was supposed to. If anything, the odd part was that there was any track at all in the wrong direction: I’d have expected the ceremonial first trip to start at the terminus.
Just saw the Incredibles 2 this weekend. I loved it, although I’m not sure if I like it better than the original or not. I’ll need to watch it again. The Incredibles films have replaced the Kung Fu Panda films as my son’s favorite movies.
I love the little details it gets right. When the family was eating Chinese food, I could see the dad was holding his chopsticks wrong, and sure enough he was failing to pick up food well. I’m sure there’s lots of other little inconsequential bits Pixar gets exactly right.
Character development was good, although Dash was underutilized. But that’s okay, stuffing even more into the film would have been too much. The next Incredibles film needs to focus on Frozone. Maybe a Frozone-Dash team-up.
I liked the sibling-rival villains. Mr Deaver precisely orchestrated the train and plane hijacks to further his goals. But then his sister hijacked the ship to further hers. And she ultimately took the fall for their crimes, leaving him looking suspicious but without clear evidence incriminating him.
The Bao short was interesting. The new Wreck-It Ralph movie trailer we saw seemed to be precisely targeted at my kids; it’ll be hard to avoid seeing it.
You are absolutely the only person I’ve heard this take from.
Really? He’s the obvious villain. For example, the knowing look that he and his sister exchange when Elastigirl talks about how her husband used to listen to police scans waiting for crime. They knew what was going to happen.
I must admit that the idea struck me as well. “Welcome back, Elastigirl” appears on a screen in the train’s cabin then Win says the same line a few minutes later.
It’s all a red herring, though.
She’s listening to a police scanner in a high crime area. Win knows she’s bound to pick something up but only Ev knows exactly what.
Remember, Ev is the genius gadgeteer and Win is PR/sales. She’s the one how knows how to work all the tech.
Win certainly had motive for staging the hijackings, and I briefly considered the possibility that he was behind them, but it was Eve who had the Screenslaver tech, not him.
I absolutely thought that Win staged the train bit -what better way to help the supers get back into the limelight?
I thought we were supposed to think it was Win at first, but it was actually Evelyn.
Exactly. His sister did the gruntwork of hypnotizing the pilot, but it was his plan. He was in charge setting up all the pawns for his marketing campaign, until his sister decided she didn’t want the supers coming back and messed things up.
Remember when she rescued him from the forward lounge (and how cool was that!)? He didn’t express amazement that she was hypnotizing everyone like Screenslaver. He knew she was doing that. Instead he says “what have you done?” because he didn’t understand her motives. He thought they were working together to bring back the supers, but she betrayed him.
Ev did say that her brother knew nothing at all about it (and suggested that if he had, he would have been hypnotizing people to by his products). I suppose she could have been lying, but she had no reason to lie at that point - she had every reason to think she would win.
She showed that she cared about her brother when she rescued him. I expect she was lying about that. Even if she was winning, she’d want to protect her brother.
Also, I don’t think her brother would actually want to use the hypno-technology for sales. He thought of himself as the best salesman, who didn’t need that sort of cheat. He already had everything in the world he wanted, except for supers at his beck and call, like his dad did.