As I sit at my laptop, uncertain of what I want to write about, I find myself browsing through my feed of movie sites I follow and read only to see another post related to the internet’s desire for a sequel to The Incredibles where Brad Bird himself is quoted claiming that he’s been thinking about it. Which is the beginning of a thought that’s more than enough for the blogosphere to go on a ranting rampage of why we haven’t gotten this film yet, how much we want it and such and another.
I love The Incredibles. I actually used to own in it on DVD, until my cousin (then three-years-old) raided my movie collection for any and all Disney things and I happily contributed it to her cinematic upbringing. I had — and still have — every intention of reacquiring it, on blu ray of course, but somehow haven’t quite found the day of the week where my mouse clicked ‘add to cart’ on Amazon just yet. However, this post is not about me crying that I don’t have it anymore or that I really like the movie; this post is about the idea of sequelling and this constant need for more and more canon to exist of these things we love.
With it now being two weeks into summer and the world and a half having seen Iron Man 3 for the fifth time each (it seems like it based on the numbers). I wonder why it is that audiences are always so fascinated with the idea of more of these set of characters that (hopefully) they just finished watching complete a full arc not a couple years ago. Now they have to check back in to find out that they’re still messed up with more issues to get over.
I guess more than the idea of serialization of cinema it’s the trapping of filmmakers that’s on my mind. Today when people utter the name Batman they immediately think of Christopher Nolan. With the final of his trilogy of Batman films, The Dark Knight Rises, having been released last year you can only imagine that within the next two or so years Warner Bros is going to look to somehow continue the legacy of that series and audiences are going to be walking in with a loaded gun called “not as good as Nolan” before a frame is even shown. Which leans us towards the discussion of people starting to BEG for Nolan to come back just so we can recapture that moment where we all smiled because it was good. This notion of trapping a storyteller into a box of a franchise bothers me.
Which is why the notion of Brad Bird talking about The Incredibles 2 bothers me. Not that he should never be allowed to reach into that bag ever again, but maybe it’s that I always find NEW so much more interesting than continuations. If he’s just continuing something previous then all my brain can imagine seeing is that very thing, a continuation as opposed to a reinvention that’ll make me feel just as gleeful as when I first saw The Incredibles and didn’t know what to expect. I had only an idea of what it could be and when I was shown what it was it wowed me so much that I couldn’t believe it. Doing a part two allows for less of my imagination in attempting to create the idea of what it could be so much less as I already know the template now.
This is quite possibly me rambling on for no reason whatsover, because more than likely this is just an off comment Bird is making in the five millionth interview he’s done where some journalist is pretty much forced by his/her editor to ask about the film. But it’s a thought none-the-less.