SOUND REPLY - THE INCREDIBLES | KAIROS GLOBAL | MAY 2019

Author: Joseph Anthraper

The human heart finds it extremely difficult to live with mediocrity. Our soul yearns for excellence, for grandeur and for larger than life experiences. This striving for a “better way” is most pronounced when one is in his/her youth, and as we get older, most of us invariably learn to settle down to the “realities” of life – getting accustomed to the mundaneness of life. Yet deep down, the longing of the heart is still alive beneath the ashes.

The Incredibles (2004) is an extremely funny and joyful superhero animation movie, which also explores motifs as the inherent yearning to greatness of the human heart, the self-sacrificial nature of true heroism and finding the meaning of life in the ordinariness of one’s family. Directed by Brad Bird and produced by Pixar, the movie was a runaway success with the sequel Incredibles 2, being released last year in 2018.

The Incredibles narrates the story of Mr Incredible and Elastigirl –superheroes with superpowers, who are always ready and willing to use their powers to help save the world. The movie begins with the sequence of events that leads to Mr Incredible being sued, and with one lawsuit leading to another, the government quietly decides to relocate the superheroes, forcing them to retire and live as ordinary citizens under secret identities. Fast forward fifteen years and Mr Incredible is now just Bob Parr, working for an insurance company. His wife, Elastigirl or Helen, is the doting mother to their three kids. Helen has fully accepted the transition and is trying her best to get the family integrated into society as a “normal” family. Whereas Bob, frequently reminiscing about his past glory, despises the ordinariness of day-to-day life, and longs for a return to his superhero days.

After an altercation with his boss, Bob is fired from his day job and at that point of despair, he gets a call from a woman (Mirage) who gives him a mission to destroy a powerful self-learning robot, the Omnidroid on a remote island. Mr Incredible gladly accepts the challenge and without Helen’s knowledge, goes to the island and destroys the robot. He finds the return to action exhilarating, and for a brief period all is well, with more money and a much better family atmosphere. However, he soon realises that Mirage is working for Syndrome, whom Mr Incredible had rejected as his sidekick long back. The pain of that rejection had turned into hate, anger and spitefulness in Syrdrome, and he had been perfecting the Omnodroid to kill Mr Incredible and other superheroes of the world, so as to become the new and only superhero. The rest of the story tells how Mr Incredible, Elastigirl and the whole family pulls together to fight the evil schemes of Sydrome and save humanity from Omnodroid and Syndrome.

It’s a wonderful movie that is well paced and has something for everyone. On the one hand is the restlessness that Bob endures day-in day-out, being forced to live as a normal person when he feels the desire and the longing to go out and make a difference in the lives of people around. This is a yearning that all of us have deep within us – the call to greatness in Christ. As St John Paul II says, “Jesus stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal”. Yet on the other hand is Helen, who willingly has let go of her previous life, for the much bigger calling, as the mother of her children. And the great thing with “The Incredibles” is that it balances these apparently contrasting perspectives, subtly yet beautifully finding just the right note in the end.

Joseph Anthraper lives in Southampton with his wife Mahima and kids Anna-Claire, John-Paul and Samuel-Joseph, and loves reading, movies and theology. He is part of the Kairos Global Editorial Council.