Interview (Written): Brad Bird

The writer-director talks about The Incredibles 2.

A Den of Geek interview with Brad Bird, whose writing-directing credits include The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Tomorrowland, and The Incredibles 2.

So what was the point, then, where you knew you had the right idea to go ahead into full production? The trigger.

The core idea of the role switch between Bob and Helen. I had that 14 years ago when we were promoting the first film. Then I knew I had the unexploded bomb of Jack-Jack — the fact that the audience knew that he had multiple powers that the Parr family did not. I knew I had that. But the superhero aspect of it, the villain plot, was always changing. When I finally felt like I had the idea that made it all work, I pitched it, everyone went for it, it got a greenlight, it got a release date, we got producers, everybody started moving.

And I got about five months in and realized that idea wasn’t going to serve the core idea very well. So that villain story was always changing. It was kind of like the first film, where the villain was the last character that we had.

On the first film, we were in motion, I’d sold the idea, we had all the characters designed before I came to Pixar. It’s the only outside project that’s ever been brought into Pixar. But we had a different villain, and we got going with a different villain. Then I did an alternate opening where I introduced a villain that I then killed off, and everyone, including myself, liked that villain better than the one we were intending to have as our main guy. So that became Syndrome, and we created the backstory for him and all that.

I wasn’t aware until about a week ago, when I was talking to somebody like this, that I realized we didn’t have the right villain in our first movie either. It just happens to be a feature of making these movies — the villain that we started out with inevitably gets discarded, and a new villain comes in.

But the core of the story in the first movie is not about the villain. The core of this movie isn’t about the villain either — it’s about the family and what’s going on with them. Their reaction to the situations that are happening to them. That’s where we live. The superhero part is really a way to comment on the family.

Here are all the movie clips and trailer for The Incredibles 2:

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Twitter: @BradBirdA113, @denofgeek.

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