Where did the superhero movie genre peak? Was it when Tony Stark sacrificed himself in Avengers: Endgame? When The Dark Knight introduced Heath Ledger’s Joker? When countless Spider-Men variants joined forces from across the Spider-Verse?
Arguably, the answer goes back to a movie that didn’t need any comic book source material to tell a compelling story. It still feels like it’s in a league of its own 20 years later, but it’s about to get another sequel... with a big change behind the scenes.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, The Incredibles 3 is a go at Pixar. The threequel will be directed by Peter Sohn, who previously handled Pixar’s Elemental and The Good Dinosaur. The Incredibles came out in 2004, while The Incredibles 2 was released in 2018, so a third movie less than a decade later is actually a shorter gap for the franchise.
Incredibles 3 was briefly mentioned during last year’s D23 presentation, but we now know that this will be the first movie in the series not directed by Brad Bird, who also gave us The Iron Giant and Ratatouille (and Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol). This is a risk for the franchise, as one of its biggest strengths is its classic 1960s retro-futuristic tone, which another director may not be able to replicate.
That said, Bird isn’t completely uninvolved. He’ll still write the script, just like he did for the first two, and will hopefully deliver another sophisticated, high-stakes superhero story that resists the temptation to spoon-feed the audience. Sohn, for his part, is a veteran creator picked personally by Bird to continue the series, so it’s not as if the Parr family is being thrown to the wolves.
At this point, those who grew up with The Incredibles are now adults who may be starting families themselves, so this upcoming movie could keep the story alive for another generation. Pixar has been churning out the sequels lately, but even with the change in directors, this sounds more promising than most.
