INCREDIBLES 2 is officially on its way, but the former movies’ director Brad Bird says there’s not going to be a time jump. So Baby Jack Jack isn’t losing that diaper anytime soon.
Bird told The Direct that to age up the characters would mean losing the “archetypical aspect of it,” he explained. “And that’s something that is important to me. In other words…They were meant to represent parts of life that you go through.”
He directed movies the first two INCREDIBLES movies but will hand the reins to ELEMENTAL director Peter Sohn for the third movie. Bird will still serve as a writer and executive director on the project.
Each of the children’s powers is relational to their ages and roles. Bob, the father, represents strength. Helen, the mother, represents how a lot of moms feel—stretched into a lot of places at once; they have their hands full.
Violet is a teenager who wants to be invisible, as many do. And 10-year-old Dash is all about speed and growth. Then there’s Jack Jack, who possesses a multitude of powers.
“Babies are an unknown. They might have all the powers. They might have none of the powers. You don’t know,” said Bird.
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If the characters aged up, those archetypes would shatter.
Bird said, “People just keep thinking that aging them up is going to make them somehow hipper or cooler, or more like them, and it’s like no, it won’t.”
SuperHeroHype pointed out that the second movie picked up almost immediately with where the first one left off. The first movie ended on a small cliffhanger, but the second had a clean wrap-up, which leaves no room for hints as to what the third movie’s plot could be.
Some fans seem to think that the absence of the characters aging will mean that the story will lack something essential.
“What’s the point of a third movie if it’s just going to repeat the same story?” one person complained on X.
A Reddit user said, “Like I get it’s important to represent the archetypes of a point in time but at the same time, aging them up isn’t about being hipper or cooler it’s about exploring the evolution of the dynamics and how said archetypes change as everyone continues to age. It doesn’t feel like a proper characterization so much as an arbitrary self-imposed restriction, one that I think audiences will not go for this third time around.”
Sohn also recently revealed that there’s some difference on opinion regarding direction for the characters and plot.
“There’s a lot of heavy debates on different ideas and different directions to go,” Sohn said. “You want to put your all into it and you want to make it as great as possible [and] that’s something I love about working with Brad. He just always put that bar as high as he could and now as a director, I’m doing the same kind of thing, of just ‘lets get the bar as high as we can and reach for it.’”
INCREDIBLES 3 is expected to be released on June 16, 2028.
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