Superhero Nonsense is NOW’s weekly column delving into all things superheroic. Check out previous columns here.
Things are a little quiet on the cape front this week. Netflix took a break from cancelling Marvel shows, the DC TV series are all prepping for December’s big crossover event (you know, the one that will introduce Ruby Rose as Batwoman) and sure, there’s a new Avengers 4 poster but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
I used the lull to revisit a couple of this summer’s superhero pictures that are now available on Blu-ray: Peter Rida Michail and Aaron Horvath’s Teen Titans Go! To The Movies and Brad Bird’s Incredibles 2, which arrived within a week of one another and nicely demonstrate how flexible the genre has become.
And yes, the superhero movie has become a genre unto itself. It’s been happening for a while, but things really clarified last year when James Mangold’s Logan delivered the first elevated X-Men movie (a term I use only half-sarcastically) and the one-two punch of Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 and Thor: Ragnarok gave James Gunn and Taika Waititi free rein to expand the Marvel Cinematic Universe both narratively and stylistically.
What does this have to do with the Teen Titans and Incredibles movies, which both exist outside the Marvel projects? Why, I’m glad you asked. First of all, both of these movies use their isolation from larger franchises as a feature, not a bug. And second, they’re animated, which allows even more latitude in navigating worlds we sort of know.
Teen Titans Go! To The Movies is spun out of the Warner television series in which a handful of young heroes – Robin, Beast Boy, Starfire, Cyborg and Raven – goof around their clubhouse with each other in their off-hours. The characters were a lot more serious in their original comic-book incarnation – and will apparently be serious again in a new live-action series coming next year – but Teen Titans Go! treated the characters as children, the better to appeal to young viewers. But of course the writers were adults who couldn’t resist the opportunity to tweak the characters they knew so well, which made the show fun for grown-up viewers.
Teen Titans Go! To The Movies takes the self-reflexive silliness of the series and amps it up to feature length, with Robin (voiced by Scott Menville) deciding the team needs its own movie to be seen as a legitimate entity by the grown-ups in the Justice League and trying to convince A-list director Jade Wilson (Kristen Bell) to make it. Naturally, things escalate disastrously, with the Titans pitted against Deathstroke The Terminator (Will Arnett) while the fate of the world hangs in the balance – but all that stuff is just background for a string of fun DC Universe gags, some weird songs and a parade of delightful voice cameos. (Nicolas Cage finally gets to play Superman, and it’s everything you could hope for.)
I managed to miss this theatrically, so I was very happy for the chance to catch up to it on disc. Warner’s Blu-ray is a modest special edition, throwing in a deleted scene, a Lil Yachty music video and three featurettes, including The Late Batsby, the delightful short that preceded the feature in theatres. (I love Lauren Faust’s Super Best Friends, sue me.)
On the more serious side of supering, there’s Incredibles 2, which finds writer/director Brad Bird picking up exactly where he left off when The Incredibles ended 14 years ago, and exploring what comes next for his super-team family. Where Teen Titans Go! uses the sibling dynamic to encourage prank wars and musical interludes, Bird’s movies steer into the more serious examination of a superhero family, and what it means to exist apart from normal people while still trying to help them.
It’s the same question Stan Lee and Jack Kirby asked when they created Marvel’s first super-team, the Fantastic Four – and Bird’s clearly conscious of the parallels, distributing most of the FF’s powers among his own characters – but Bird leans into it immediately, exploring the way his heroes negotiate (and internalize) the petty irritations of domestic life while tackling life-or-death crises.
I was a little underwhelmed by the movie when it opened this summer: I liked it fine, but Bird doesn’t really break new ground as much as reverse the character dynamics of the first film – this time, Holly Hunter’s Elastigirl goes off on missions while Craig T. Nelson’s Mr. Incredible stays home with the kids – and resituate the action scenes in an urban setting rather than on a remote island. (Also, the motivation of the villainous Screen Slaver is exactly the same as Syndrome’s in the first movie, which just seems weirdly blinkered from a filmmaker as creative as Bird.)
On a second viewing, though, I could put aside my disappointment with the familiar story and just enjoy the craft of it. The voice performances are wonderful – Hunter, in particular, is just amazing – and the creativity with which Bird and his team have designed and executed their action sequences is genuinely amazing. The mid-film set piece involving the Elasti-Bike and a runaway monorail is as good as anything Pixar has ever done – and looks and sounds fantastic in Disney’s 4K edition. (The whole movie does, really, with the additional resolution and colour range allowing for more texture and detail, and a Dolby Atmos soundscape that brings the environment to active life, especially when the supporting supers join the climactic fight aboard the Deavor’s cruise ship.)
As with most Pixar releases, the Blu-ray set (which is also included in the 4K edition) is stuffed with supplements – and there’s some really interesting material amidst the usual Disney promotional fluff.
An audio commentary with Bird and members of his animation team Dave Mullins, Alan Barillaro, Tony Fucile and Bret Parker is basically a master class for budding CG animators, and over half an hour of additional scenes are included on the second disc, presented as storyboard animatics rather than as finished animation. There’s also a featurette focusing on the “retro-futurist” production design, which gets far more complex in the sequel.
There’s a new short, Auntie Edna, featuring more time with Bird’s eccentric, Edith Head-inspired designer, but I was happy to see Domee Shi’s Bao (which accompanied Incredibles 2 into theatres) given its own making-of featurette. Shi – who was raised in Toronto, as you may recall – made a weird, wonderful little thing, and both the artist and her film deserve all the attention they can get, even if there isn’t a single superhero in it.
@normwilner
