Story Perspective: How A Great Script Makes ‘The Incredibles’ Function Cinematically
Story, story, story if you’re making a film, or animation, drama, comedy or any kind of fiction, we hear it again and again. Story rules. With the amazing potential of 3-D CGI animation, wiser wizards of the craft are fully conscious of the fact that a bad story, or a poor script, can make great animation fall flat. The CGI must serve the story, not the other way around, or you get a light-show with all kinds of great images that dazzle the eye, with no appeal whatever so to the heart. So for you Skwigly readers out there who may have wondered what gives a really successful animated feature story elements that fly high with the broadest possible appeal, that special something that people respond to, let’s look at Pixar’s ‘The Incredibles’, from the perspective of writer-director Brad Bird’s script.
If you haven’t seen the film, which opened Nov. 5 in the U.S. from Pixar and Disney (among the last that Pixar will do under their old contract with The House of Mouse), be warned beforehand that this article may contain a few ‘spoilers’. This is hard to avoid, given the prospect of actually analyzing the story from beginning to end. But having seen the film, rest assured that you will definitely enjoy this ‘incredible’ piece of work, whatever you read here. For the record, this is a masterful film on every level, with amazing animation, dead-on voice characterizations, and exactly the type of heart-tugging story, yet with balls-out action and humor, which Brad Bird may become well-known for, as he has been in the past. So, if you really don’t want to know any plot elements of ‘The Incredibles’, pick another Skwigly article, if you please.
The first aspect of a big feature story like this, or even a smaller animated work, is the premise. As wild as artists can get with CGI, there really is only one way to go, which is high-concept. You don’t film ‘Kramer vs. Kramer’ in CGI, and you don’t film ‘My Own Private Idaho’ in CGI (although astute students of animation might take note of the recent release of Richard Linklater’s ‘Waking Life’ (2001), an animated film with a more common-man view). Rather, we have seen the genre and format bringing us films set in fantasy worlds, under-water, a world populated by living toys, and things of this sort. The key for those who produce such works, is a premise that at once captivates with a simple and understandable idea or notion that seems revelatory or insightful, and simultaneously offers artists all kinds of opportunities for exciting action, rare and unusual settings or worlds, and genuine, lovable or perhaps rotten characters we can get into.
You can go all over the place trying to define ‘high-concept’, but few types of stories are higher concept from the outset than the wacky and weird world of the mythological ‘super-hero’. With ‘The Incredibles’, Bird jumps in with both feet with a premise that might read like this: A valiant if slightly awkward super-hero’s life is thrust onto the rocks when his own exploits and those of other heroes become the target of extensive law-suits and public outrage at all the destroyed buildings, etc. Exiled by something called the Super-hero Relocation Act, he enters middle age in the boring role of an insurance policy writer, caring for his family, but still yearning for his ‘glory days’, as his ex-super-hero wife keeps an eye on him. Things change when a mysterious stranger tracks him down and lures him out of retirement for secret work, and soon his wife and his entire family (all with special ‘super’ endowments) are called upon to fight and defeat a powerful enemy.
Just consider this premise on its own, as an animator or a writer. The awkward super-hero is the protagonist—someone we may even feel we grew up with, in a way. Besides being lovably goofy, he can also knock over a train with one hand or leap down the side of a mountain hurtling toward death, only to save himself at the last minute by grabbing the trunk of a palm tree, swinging towards his goal like a huge, graceful ape. All this in a flashy red suit. So, we can like this guy, and that’s critical. And with this kernel of a plot, Bird further endears us to Mr. Incredible, by later showing him in the lowly and pedestrian role of an insurance salesman. So—that’s pathos, you might say, or at least sympathy. Likewise, the premise by itself gives us all the other super-heroes and colorful characters (including bad guys), and we have a chance to see some super-hero family life, which is hilarious. And then, with the ‘coming out of retirement’ idea, we have a great opportunity for lots and lots of action. BIG action. So it all works, and for the writer trying to imagine up such a feature, the premise is the place to start to invent a scenario that brings all this together.
On a deeper level, it’s important to acknowledge that this is a comedy, something super-heroes in general tend to avoid. A washed-up invincible white dude with super-powers and a beer-belly? He sells insurance and drives a Metro? Obviously Bird is using the juxtaposition of the traditional idea of a hero, particularly one with incredible strength or what have you, with what those of us over 40 already know about life. And he uses this for humor, which works like gold (and might be thought of in the same vein as writer Neil Cuthbert’s film on the same topic, ‘Mystery Men’(1999), which was a true laugh riot at the expense of anyone who feels they might really look good in spandex). The point is, it’s a topical cultural thing that reaches us, especially men or male teens. We all have heroes, at least until we lose them, and it’s this feeling about ourselves and those we look to for hope in the modern (or ancient) world that makes ‘The Incredibles’ meaningful.
But of course there’s much more to the actual writing of a screenplay like this than the premise alone. For example, any student of the modern action-film will tell you that the story should almost always open with an action-set. True to form, Bird does exactly this. The first moments of the film actually show old news footage of interviews with Mr. Incredible and his wife-to-be, Elastic Girl, which are very funny. But once the story starts to actually play out, the very first moments take us immediately into a thrilling sequence involving Mr. Incredible and his ethnic-African and very cool pal Frozone (who seems to be able to freeze things), chasing some guys in a car shooting machine guns at the cops. Bird is very inventive with almost every moment of the film, and with the dazzling CGI hitting us square-on from the moment we start, we first see Mr. Incredible in his car (not the Metro but a larger one he had in his ‘glory days’, complete with jet-engine assist) as if he were listening to a police scanner, he learns about the criminal activity on a computer in the car and leaps into action, transforming before our eyes into his colorful original costume, and then on the run. Of course he is forced to stop to help an old lady get her cat out of a tree (accomplished by yanking the large tree out of the Earth by its roots), and then using the tree to swat the bad guy’s get-away car, crushing it like a big bug.
Bird moves very fast. At first, when we see Mr. Incredible is approached by a young kid in a hero-costume of his own, with a pair of boots he has invented that will allow him to fly, we don’t think much of it. The kid informs our hero that he wants to be his side-kick and is calling himself Incredi-Boy. This turns out to be a critical bit of foreshadowing. Within moments, Mr. Incredible meets Elastic Girl on the job, now after another bad guy in what may be thought of as a typical evening of crime-fighting. The dialogue is bright, witty and fast.
“Don’t worry, I’ve got him,” says Mr. Incredible.
“Sure you’ve got him,” says Elastic Girl. “I just took him out for you.” And then she adds cleverly as the spark of romance ignites, “I think you need to be more flexible.”
You just can’t have super-heroes without witty dialogue, usually offered during the action. Also in the opening, which sets up much more, Mr. Incredible saves a suicidal man who jumps from a tall building. This involves crashing through a wall or two, and the man says, “I think you broke something.”
“With counseling, I think you’ll come to forgive me,” our hero quips.
A villain named Bomb Voyage is simultaneously setting off explosions, etc. And there is a great sequence with an elevated train that Mr. Incredible must stop before it falls through a gaping hole in the tracks high above the city, created by our hero’s own fierce battle. But the key to this sequence, again, is the kid who wants to be Mr. Incredible’s side-kick, who he now must save from a bomb attached to his boot (shoe-bomb, anyone?). Of course he does, with much smashing about and spectacular action, all in the first ten minutes. He then hands this kid over to the cops with instructions to take him home.
“You’re not affiliated with me,” Mr. Incredible tells the disappointed Incredi-Boy.
But Bird goes just a bit further with this early action, as we next see Mr. Incredible, in his civilian role, getting hitched to Elastic Girl in a church, as though this was all quite normal and was happening in a condensed time-frame. So the plot is very fast, and the audience is just wondering what’s next.
“Hey, we’re super-heroes,” says Elastic Girl. “What could happen?”
So the point is that as a writer, looking at how Bird put together the script, all of the above happens very quickly with lots of excitement and stunning visuals in the first fifteen minutes or so. If you’re going to write action, humorous or not, modern audiences will feel bored quickly if the writer spends a lot of time setting things up in the critical first moments of our film experience. You want action, you get action. It draws the audience in, relates plot points that are important to the rest of the story, and introduces the characters in violent or adverse situations immediately, where the audience would care about them whoever they were. Bird does very well by adhering to this rule with his script for ‘The Incredibles’.
Much of this early action is fairly meaningless, and in the second half of the first act we see what might be thought of as the real ‘problem’ our characters must face. That is, with all of this crashing around destroying expensive architecture, vehicles, and so on, the public in this imaginary metropolis is somehow suddenly less interested in heroes than before, and now there are law-suits everywhere. The law-suits lead to outrage and the media spot-light on super-hero violence, and very quickly we are cast into the future, where the government has clamped down on all this, and heroes like Mr. Incredible and Elastic Girl are ‘relocated’. Out of sight, out of mind. Again, for dramatic plot structure, by the end of the first act, the audience needs to know what the hero’s real problem or conflict is, to keep interested. In this case, it’s pretty simple—Mr. Incredible is a has-been, washed up, now over-the-hill, out of a job saving the world. What’s a super-being to do?
So begins the second act, traditionally a bit of a challenge for a writer. What Bird does for the beginning of this is a character-profile, where we see Mr. Incredible in his civilian role of Bob Parr, punching the clock in a drab cubicle at a boring insurance agency. He wants to do good, such as prompting insurance policy holders to get better deals with competing companies, but his boss is a very short control-freak, and Bob seems to long for the days of his action-packed past.
“Go save the world—one policy at a time, hon’,” says his wife. She too is out of the crime-fighting scene, and now tends to her kids, Dash, Violet and the infant Jack-Jack. Dash, who apparently inherited a super-ability to run with amazing speed, is in trouble at school. Violet is kind of a young Goth girl, in her teens, with very little interest in anything resembling a super-hero life-style. They all just want to ‘fit in’.
“Our powers are nothing to be ashamed of,” Elastic Girl tells her son. “Everyone’s special, Dash.”
“Which is just another way of saying no one is,” Dash responds.
In terms of super-being mythology, Bird is exploring a theme that might be compared to Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.’s famous short story, ‘Harrison Bergeron’ (Welcome to the Monkey House, 1968), in which an individual with some skill or beauty that is greatly superior to that of others, is forced to ‘dumb down’ just to fit in. Or as described by the poet-musician in the pop hit tune from the 1980’s ‘No One Is to Blame’, “….you’re the fastest runner but you’re not allowed to win.” It’s a great theme here and a touching point about human nature. So as the action ebbs a bit, we now see character development, another very important way a screenwriter like Bird can help us care what happens to our cast.
So there is more great comedy along these lines, but by the middle of the second act, we are thinking, what’s going to happen? How is this going to move again? Bird keeps it going with some action as Parr and his buddy Frozone, now also retired, sneak out together to stake out crime activity in their new ‘relocated’ community. Bob has more trouble with his boss, which is very funny, but we begin to realize that he is being watched or observed by a ‘Mystery Girl’, who also happens to be very beautiful and have a lot of high-tech toys. Finally, just as Bob seems to have descended to the lowest level of depression about his life, longing for past glories, the Mystery Girl contacts him in a very clever way. We now learn that she wants to recruit him for special, secret super-hero work. This is what is called a ‘plot-point’, because it changes everything, and now we move forward with a brand new set of circumstances that will allow Bird and company to get us into some heavy action in the third set.
Without totally ruining the story for whoever has not seen it yet, it might be useful at this point to talk about Brad Bird’s feeling about large robots. Perhaps as a kid, like many his age, he enjoyed the popular TV 1960’s cartoon from Japan called ‘Gigantor’. And of course Bird gave us excellent work in the very well-reviewed ‘The Iron Giant’ (1999). Now, in this new film, robots are the bad guys, the ideal opponent for someone like Bob Parr, beer-belly and all, huffing and puffing across the jungle landscape of a mysterious island in a brand new red uniform. Much great action here and continuing through the third act, with a number of key revelations, and the re-appearance of the kid in the opening sequence, still upset but now with a lot more dangerous toys. There are rockets, there are bizarre-looking guards in uniforms ala ‘In Like Flynt’(1967), or ‘Our Man Flynt’, the spy-spoofs of the 1960’s, there are flying saucers, machine gun battles, treachery and betrayal, volcanoes with secret underground facilities ( ‘Austin Powers’?), and on and on. Elastic Girl finally figures out what is going on, and the entire Parr family through happenstance ends up trying to rescue our hero, defeated it would seem by the femme fatale, the ‘Mystery Girl’.
Robot battles loom large, but again in terms of scripting this kind of thing out, what the writer wants is a satisfying third act. For the action script, this means a final climactic confrontation with whatever evil forces may be at play. Bird is very adept with all this, and we have a number of set-pieces with very clever action as the battle goes on. Action writers know, audiences have seen it all today, so each moment and each bit of violence, must hold some special appeal, either in construction of the movements and so on, or humor, or simply gigantic explosions or huge, powerful machines. As this proceeds, Bird is careful to continue to reveal and develop each character’s personality or feelings, or challenges. Again, this is essential for audiences to feel connected in a human way to all the action, and a very valuable skill for any writer to learn.
For instance, in our violent world today, Bird has Elastic Girl discussing what is happening with her kids, now thrust unexpectedly into the super-hero world. Talking about the bad guys, she says, “They won’t exercise restraint because you’re children. They will kill you. Don’t give them that chance.” The bad guys are also shown to have feelings and a philosophy, revealed in their actions, and so on.
The rest I will leave for you to enjoy on your own. Bird carefully resolves things, and does not neglect either the very smart humor and dialogue, or key emotional moments between Parr and his wife, or exactly what fate is met by the bad guy. In the best sense, all of this is just what we have come to expect from a Pixar film. The script might be criticized somewhat as being too long, or holding forth action that although thunderous, may seem at least a bit familiar. It doesn’t really matter, because the wonderful CGI work carries everything out seamlessly, and whatever Bird may have lacked in his writing is made up for in pure, high-action, popcorn entertainment.
Writing like this is something that is both learned, and intuitive. For animation and CGI, one challenge for the writer is to take advantage of the limitless capacity of the medium for whatever worlds, wars, gods and demons we may invent. Truly this kind of writing is a playland for the writer, but by the same token, without knowing the dramatic ropes and how to give audiences that special something, any writer can lose the thread of believability or interest. So when you do go see this film, if you do so with a writer’s eye and ear, consider it a classroom for your own powers as a communicator and screenwriter for animation. And it’s quite a classroom.
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