‘Incredibles 2’ Gets an Incredible Blu-ray Edition

14 years is a long time to wait for a sequel. With each successive year that passes, demand grows as do expectations. After all, if you’re making us wait that long it better be something special. That was the conundrum facing director Brad Bird. In 2004, he wowed audiences with The Incredibles, the animated comedy about a family of superheroes. The director then went on to make Ratatouille before making his transition into live action filmmaking. With each successive project, Bird had to hear one question: “When are we getting Incredibles 2?” The answer was Summer 2018, and Brad Bird’s highly awaited sequel delivered the good, meeting all expectations with critics and audiences alike. Now Pixar’s latest super smash hit arrives on Blu-ray with an edition that is, well, incredible.

Here’s a quick rundown of the plot of Incredibles 2: The story picks up right after the original with The Underminer (John Ratzenberg) emerging from the ground and presenting the Parr family with a new threat to battle. Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) and Elastigirl (Holly Hunter) along with their super children Violet (Sarah Vowell), Dash (Huck Milner), and Jack-Jack (Eli Fucile). However, their super-heroics are illegal. Energetic entrepreneur Winston Deavor (Bob Odenkirk) is carrying out a public relations blitz to win the public over in favor of reinstating the superpowers with the help of his technologically savvy sister Evelyn (Catherine Keener). But the arrival of a new supervillain the Screen Slaver has emerged to create a whole new set of complications for the Parr family and many superheroes living in hiding.

The movie is fantastic (you can read my original review of the film here) and the new Blu-ray edition is jam packed with special features that are truly unique and insightful. It comes with the short that accompanied the film, Bao, as well as a new short called Auntie Edna which gives us a bit more time with Edna Mode (voiced by director Brad Bird) and young Jack-Jack. Each of these two shorts present the deft balance between heart and humor that makes audiences go back time and time again for that Pixar magic.

The very nature of that magic and how Pixar produces it is the subject of a number of the film’s documentary featurettes. The lengthiest documentary on the disc, entitled Strong Coffee, looks at Brad Bird’s lengthy history working at Disney and how he was an early mentor of some of the studio’s most celebrated animators. This along with other documentary featurettes gives the viewer incredible insight into the creative process at Pixar as well as Brad Bird. It’s illuminating to watch as seemingly mundane details in the design of the characters tell the audience so much more than they’d initially believe and how masterful Brad Bird is at spotting these little minutiae that create a fully rounded story.

All of these features are fantastic at taking you deep into the world of Pixar and getting a sense of just how much work goes into crafting a movie as special as Incredibles 2. And while these features do spend a lot of time looking at the process of modern legend Brad Bird, plenty of other faces you’ve never seen or heard of before get to add their experiences in these special features. The illustrate not only these memorable characters but how fluid their creative process can be – pitching ideas to the agony of rejection and the ecstasy of approval. Also helping to illustrate the creative process at play are a number of deleted scenes with introductions by Bird, further showing how great ideas are given plenty of time and resources but are jettisoned once it is felt they don’t service the story.

If you’ve seen enough DVD and Blu-ray special features over the years, you mostly know what to expect – everyone on the cast and crew heaps praise upon on another without actually offering insight into the creative process. That’s not what this edition of Incredibles 2 does. This Blu-ray set and its awesome array of special features takes you truly behind the scenes into a creative process that has yielded incredible results. And yet it’s not always a pretty picture, as the special features are willing to present Brad Bird as a passionate, sometimes difficult to please creator who can demand a lot of his collaborators. It’s a complex portrait of the creative process and one that bucks convention.

Incredibles 2 was worth the wait for everyone involved. The audiences got a crowd-pleasing continuation of a beloved modern classic. Brad Bird got the hyper-stylized, hilarious story that he wanted to bring to the screen. And Disney and Pixar got another super-smash hit. Now fans of Incredibles 2 will get an all-encompassing special edition that is truly incredible, brimming with fun new shorts and deep insight into how this superhero adventure found its way to the screen. As far as Blu-rays go, this is nothing short of incredible.