Disney Pixar’s Incredibles 2 broke several records at the box office this past weekend, including highest opening weekend for an animated film of all time. After a fourteen year absence, the Parr family is finally back for another adventure that does not disappoint. But among the things broken by the film so far are audiences hearts after Jack-Jack’s family discoveres his powers.
Director and creator Brad Bird had wanted to make a superhero family film for a long time and spent a lot of energy thinking about their powers. “I realized I’m not very interested in the powers. That’s not the part that interests me. What interests me is the idea of having a family. And having there be a reason to hide the powers. Once I had that insight into what I wanted to do, I picked the powers based on who they were in the family.” As the family came together, the lovable Jack-Jack was born.
The powers assigned to each character correspond to their family duties. “Men are always expected to be strong so I had Bob have super strength. Mothers are always pulled in a million different directions so I had her be elastic. Teenagers are insecure and defensive so I had Violet have force fields and invisibility. Ten-year-olds are energy balls that can’t be stopped. And babies are unknowns, maybe they have no powers, maybe they have all powers, we don’t know. So that’s what Jack-Jack was, he was seemingly the first normal one in the family and then at the end of The Incredibles you find out that he’s a wildcard and that he’s sort of a Swiss Army Knife of powers.”
Supervising Animator Tony Fucile worked with Brad Bird on his directorial debut, a 1987 episode of a TV series called Amazing Stories, and also animated on The Iron Giant. His path to Pixar came in 2004 on the original The Incredibles film where he’s stayed ever since, but this was his first time working on a sequel. An even deeper family connection, his son voiced Jack-Jack in the original film as well as the sequel.
“Believe it or not, it was a one-hour session of my wife and I following him around with a boom mic,” Tony recalls. “Just one hour and two feature films and a few shorts and commercials and stuff. It seems like just a couple of years ago, but it’s been a while He’s going to be going off to college in a couple of years.”
Technical advancements necessitated that all of the characters in Incredibles 2 be rebuilt, giving Tony and his team the make alterations to the characters. ”We went back to the source, we got some babies in here and they were really awesome. We have a lot of babies right now around Pixar. It was good to just remind ourselves of what we were trying to do on the first film.”
In addition to Jack-Jack’s design becoming more lifelike, the effects department took the opportunity to redesign some of his powers, not counting the new ones. Effects Artist Jason Johnston shares some examples about the fire effect. “When we first started on the effect, we went back to look at what was done originally. After looking at the original, we decided to take the opportunity to redesign the look. The reason being that while on fire, his role would be bigger in Incredibles 2 and it would have more screen time. And we would need to read his animation, especially in his face, and also because technology has changed so much.”
Getting the fire effect just right took a lot of trial, error, and exploring unconventional approaches including different color flames. One of Jack-Jack’s powers that’s new this time around was actually intended for the original film, but cut. During the hilarious raccoon sequence, look out for what happens when the raccoon finally gets his paws on Jack-Jack, a power that could have been in the original film if all had gone according to plan.
Brad Bird gave the story department one restriction when it came to Jack-Jack: He didn’t want any new powers to be revealed in the third act. However, one of the story artists snuck one in and he loved it so much he couldn’t cut it. Whether you’re seeing Incredibles 2 for the first time or the second, be on the lookout for Jack-Jack, the “Swiss Army Knife” of superpowers.
