Specifically, The Incredibles follows Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson), his wife Elastigirl (Holly Hunter), and their three children, Dash (Spencer Fox), Violet (Sarah Vowell) and baby Jack-Jack. Dash has super speed, and is kind of a show-off, while Violet is a shy and introspective girl who can turn invisible. Jack-Jack, on the other hand, appears to have shown no special abilities as of yet. The three kids have grown up not knowing what it was like in the world's golden age and are constantly told to not show their powers because it would result in yet another government relocation and starting over.
Bob (aka Mr. Incredible) has super strength and he used to use that ability to help people all the time, but for the past 15 years, the only way he has been able to help people is by giving them some ways to cut through the red tape at the insurance company he works for, much to his boss' (Wallace Shawn) chagrin. When he gets fired the same day he receives a secret mission to help save the day on a small island, Mr. Incredible jumps on the chance to be a hero again.
Of course, he doesn't tell Helen (Elastigirl) and when he goes missing, she starts to look into what exactly he has been up to. What results is a fun ride where the two older super heroes discover a new villain, Syndrome (Jason Lee), and the children of the family learn how to use their powers like never before.
In the end, the movie's general messages of "be who you are" and "don't try and hide what makes you special" come through loud and clear.
As with most Disney/Pixar Blu-rays, The Incredibles comes jammed packed with tons of special features. Not only does the box contain both a digital version and a standard definition DVD copy of the movie, but there is also a second Blu-ray filled with the special features that couldn't fit on the main disc since that one contains two commentaries, both the Boundin' and Jack-Jack Attack shorts and a picture-in-picture commentary for Jack-Jack Attack along with a bit of a retrospective on the full film. So you can see why they added an extra Blu-ray of special features since those few items merely scratch the surface of what this release contains.
This extras disc contains tons of new features like some stories told by Pixar employees (something that has been showing up in past Pixar Blu-rays). This time, the Paths to Pixar interviews storyboard artists and the Studio Story talks about how the employees were getting fed up with birthday parties every other day and just decided to have one big party for everyone in the company. Instead of the cake saying "Happy Birthday Everyone" it said "Happy Birthday Gary" and there was no Gary at the company at the time. So, they said "fine, Gary is everyone" and had a big party. What resulted was an event they could throw whenever morale went down enough and it allowed the employees to blow off a bit of steam occasionally.
There is also a lengthy segment on the movie's deleted scenes that were taken from the DVD release, but remastered in HD, as well as the original Teaser in HD. The last of the new content includes a feature on creating the end credits and how the designer used the original concept art as the credit's visuals as well as an interactive menu depicting Syndrome's island as a renovated tourist hot spot and spa. There are a dozen or so locations around the island that you can click on and see how major locations in it were converted into everything from a shooting range to a self-defense training arena to a massage parlor.
As for the old DVD content, you can bet its all here. Everything from the original making-of to the shorter featurettes on the character and set design, to the effort that went into designing the stylized humans to music and lighting can be found here. There is also an old-style cartoon depicting Mr. Incredible, his partner Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson) and their bunny, as they save the day from Lightning Bug Girl. This short feels like it is pulled straight from the low budget cartoons of the 1950's where there is very little actual movement on the screen and the animation of the mouths is handled by actual people's lips being placed on the cartoon's faces as they read the badly written dialogue. This combined with the old and distressed look of the film really sells the feel.
One of the featurettes I really enjoyed was about one of Pixar's animators who left traditional animation to work for Pixar in 1990. Bud Luckey is not only the man who came up with Woody's design for Toy Story, but he also wrote, directed, narrated and composed all of the music and performed all of the voices in The Incredibles' associated short, Boundin'. One of the comments he muses over in this featurette is the fact that the kids he taught numbers to via animation on Sesame Street are now teaching him animation by numbers (i.e. computers).
There are tons of additional special features in this release and they go over everything from an interview with Violet's voice actor to a musical montage featuring the film's doors, buttons and explosions to all of the DVD's easter eggs which are now exposed under their own menu item.
Any Disney/Pixar fan should jump at the chance to not only see this film again in brilliant HD and surround sound (a feature that really pays off when Dash is running through the jungle being chased by Syndrome's lackeys), but they should also want to soak up every little bit of information that comes out of this exhaustive list of special features. For those fans out there, The IncrediblesBlu-ray release is simply a must-buy.
