Projects #025 - "I renounce my renouncement!"
The homoeroticism within Incredibles 2!
Project Updates 6/23-7/6/25
Hope everyone had a nice weekend! I spent a lot of time playing Death Stranding 2, which I’m about halfway through. I find building the highways deeply relaxing, especially while I’m catching up on podcasts. Summer is in full swing. Monster May fans - do not fret, the Singer dossier is on its way.
Watching
2025 Films
Heart Eyes (2025) dir. Josh Ruben
Quite charming! One of the better Scream ripoffs these days. Would love to get Jordana Brewster in more comedic roles.
M3GAN 2.0 (2025) dir. Gerard Johnstone
I feel like an IDIOT writing anything about this movie two weeks after no one gave a FUCK… but I had fun. M3GAN does a Mission: Impossible, why not! Should have come out in late March. They should still do a third one. M3GAN deserves to kill more people with Allison Williams’ body.
Sorry, Baby (2025) dir. Eva Victor
ASMR: John Carroll Lynch talks you off the ledge. Good, funny, sweet story about a case of pseudo-arrested development. Agnes’ life is way better than Liddy’s it’s not even funny… she married they/them Fran and had a baby in like, what, a year and a half? Hope Agnes keeps a spare bedroom for ya!
Finishing Filmographies
52 Films by 52 Women
The Old Guard 2 (2025) dir. Victoria Mahoney
Completely nothing - what HAPPENED here? Why did it take five years for a sequel to drop? What were the reshoots? Why does it end with a cliffhanger when everyone involved knows that this is never getting a conclusion? Uma Thurman claims to have been present at the crucifixion, which makes sense as she is God. You guys see that Charlize is just running around fucking 26 year olds? Love her.
Woo (1998) dir. Daisy von Scherler Mayer
Good bad NYC indie jaunt - Jada needs to be in movies again! She is Woo!
TV
ER Season 15 (2008-2009) (Final Season)
PROJECT: COMPLETE. *Kirby Air Ride achievement noise*
Please refer to last week’s ER bonanza for all thoughts and feelings on the series as a whole. While it was lovely to see so many returning characters in the final season and a genuinely great series finale, the actual remaining cast members get Grey’s rip-off plotlines and emotional drama. It was worth it for Carter’s final arc. Probably going to be rewatching random episodes for the rest of my life!
The Bear Season 4 (2025)
Have already forgotten anything that happened. What is the point of this show. Stunt casting of Brie Larson was so disgusting I wanted to cry. They really got away with two full seasons of literally nothing happening. kind of ballsy! Bring back real TV!!!!!
Best First Time Watches, June 2025
Freeway II: Confessions of a Trickbaby (1999) dir. Matthew Bright
His Motorbike, Her Island (1986) dir. Nobuhiro Obayashi
Strangers in Good Company/The Company of Strangers
Harakiri (1962) dir. Masaki Kobayashi
The Sword of Doom (1966) dir. Kihachi Okamoto
Videos Game
Silent Hill 2 Remake (2024)
Another childhood fear conquered! Sam and I never got far in the PS2 version - far too scary! The remake is far more playable, especially with all the lights on. Silent Hill is a great vibe, and I remain fascinated that you can keep hitting the monsters long after they’re dead. Now THAT’S psychological horror. What is it “about”? Self-harm, I think. The hardest boss fight was Eddie, somehow. Harder than any pussy monster writhing my way. At the end of the game, I was informed I opened my map over a thousand times. Sorry that I like to check where the fuck I am! It’s so dark in these apartments!
I’m deep into Death Stranding 2 now and I’ll have more to report soon. Dollman sounds like Hank Azaria.
Hank Happenings
As you can see, the young man has really taken to the guest futon.
Pixar Project #020 - INCREDIBLES 2 (2018) dir. Brad Bird
Another year, another Pixar sequel. This is at least one people were begging for. Incredibles 2 has a LOT of ideas, but is it at all coherent? Sort of! The upgrade in animation is genuinely astonishing, and there’s still plenty of Brad Bird action sequences that could never be attempted in live action, but the production as a whole leaves something to be desired. The Incredibles is such a perfect object, no follow-up could compare. But they tried! It should also be noted that the film was pushed up a whole YEAR, swapping release dates with Toy Story 4. How Bird even got this done remains a mystery to me.
The film starts in an interrogation room with Violet’s crush, Tony Rydinger, who no longer looks disgusting. Thank you, fourteen years of technology improvement! Tony is speaking with Rick Dicker (Jonathan Banks), who asks him about what he witnessed during the Underminer’s attack on the city. We simply HAD to pick up with the Underminer (John Ratzenberger), even though he clearly can’t carry a sequel on his own. Is he a super or does he just look like that? It’s not important. What matters is the devastation accidentally wrought upon the city, though the Parr family does stop the giant drill. Not sure where the Underminer escapes to - probably some disgusting cave.
It’s a nice way to get reacquainted with everyone’s powers, and Tony’s framing device shows how much this film will focus on Violet (Sarah Vowell). Dicker wipes Tony’s memory so he forgets that he saw Violet without her mask… but also forgets his date plans. Naturally, this drives Violet insane. We will return to this. The government is shutting down the superhero relocation program, leaving the Parr family in the lurch (and a tiki-themed motel). Bob (Craig T. Nelson) is back to square one - the original film’s ending has been undone in some ways. Sure, the public supports the return of supers, but they’re still illegal. However, one man has a plan. With Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson) by their side, Bob and Helen (Holly Hunter) meet with a benevolent businessman named Winston Deavor (Bob Odenkirk) who has grand designs, alongside his sister Evelyn (Catherine Keener) to make all supers legal again. For this to work, he needs Elastigirl.
Summarizing the plot machinations of Incredibles 2 is a strangely cumbersome deal. But again, the animation looks unbelievable. The character animation and styling feels way more in line with what Brad Bird wanted initially, but was unable to fully realize due to technological limitations. I don’t want to give Disney any ideas, but it would be very interesting to see a remaster of the original film with the sequel’s lighting and renders. Video games do it all the time! But I imagine it’s much harder for a computer animated film from twenty years ago.
While Helen is out being a hero in ‘New Urbem’, one of the worst comic book city names I’ve heard, Bob plays Mr. Mom in Deavor’s fancy retro-future house. This is not particularly interesting or groundbreaking, except for when he finally discovers that Jack-Jack has several unstable new abilities. Violet, spurned by Tony, attempts to force her supersuit down the garbage disposal, to no avail - Edna Mode’s designs are no joke! I appreciate that Violet’s character development from the first film hasn’t been undone. She’s no longer a wallflower, and far more confident in her abilities, but she’s still a teenager being driven crazy by boy drama and superhero drama. Dash (Huckleberry Milner) doesn’t get much to do besides be a kid. I am still so annoyed that the film’s climax takes place on the open ocean and Dash doesn’t get to run on water again!
It’s great fun watching Helen maneuver with her stretchy body1, flying around the city on the Elastibike, which she can split in half at will. Helen’s stretchiness is not bound by physics like Luffy, who has to wind up a rubber punch in order to send people flying. She can manipulate her size and shape at will, making her perfect for infiltration and rescue missions. She’s also incredibly smart, figuring out the Screenslaver’s plans on the fly and protecting the ambassador for the ULN (United League of Nations?) voiced by Isabella Rosselini. Her pilot skills even get put to good use during a dramatic helicopter chase.
The Screenslaver is hypnotizing his victims with glowing swirling images, attempting to sabotage the super legalization process. Helen tracks his signal to an abandoned building, where he traps her in a cage filled with flashing lights. Did you see this in theaters? I felt like the Japanese kids who got got by Porygon! During this strobe light attack, all I thought was “This looks so cool! So many people are going to have seizures!” I saw the film a second time the week after release (thanks Moviepass!) and there was a brand new seizure warning. Crazy! They toned it way down for the Blu-Ray release… obviously.
Helen captures the Screenslaver and celebrates with Evelyn and some new supers, all of whom have awful, disgusting looking designs. Except Void (Sophia Bush), I like her. But I am also extremely susceptible to anyone with portal abilities. Helen and Evelyn have a sexually charged conversation about optimism vs. cynicism, an ideological debate that Bird is clearly interested in2, but there’s no time for it to go anywhere. The real takeaway is how bad Evelyn wants to fuck Helen, even as she IS REVEALED TO BE THE SCREENSLAVER HERSELF! Evelyn traps Helen in a frozen chamber, keeping her from stretching. She could shatter!
Evelyn thinks relying on supers makes people weak. She thinks her father was a coward for believing in supers who couldn’t even show up to save him from an armed robber. She had no way to know that the hero her father called was likely already dead by Syndrome’s hand, but no matter. She wants people to fend for themselves, and plans to masacre the world’s leaders3 with her hypnotized minions. There is so much happening in this movie. The kids and Frozone get attacked by hypnotized supers, everyone ends up on the giant Deavor ship where Evelyn unleashes her minions.
This is a crowded climax that gets away from itself, with hypnotized supers, Jack-Jack running wild, and a giant boat speeding towards destruction. Violet’s new application of her powers is the most impressive aspect - she tears open metal walls with her force fields AND uses them on her fists like Barto in One Piece. Go Violet! Bob and the family encourage Helen to finish her mission and go after Evelyn, who’s trying to escape by supersonic jet. They have a deeply sexually charged fight as Helen gets lightheaded in the altitude, but pulls herself together in time to shoot Evelyn with a flare. Evelyn gets LAUNCHED out of the windshield, which is brutal to watch. Since Helen is a good person, she rescues Evelyn with the help of Void’s portals, and the day is saved.
No one’s dead! The International Superhero Accord is signed and supers are legal again! Evelyn’s going to jail, but Violet notes that she’s too rich to stay locked up. Not to be like “how did Disney let her say that”, but don’t expect such a Daria-esque comment in Zootopia 2.
Incredibles 2 is a bit of a mess, but I can’t deny the style and flair of the action sequences. Brad Bird knows how to animate superpowers, always finding interesting new applications of stretchiness and other abilities. Edna Mode feels a bit shoehorned, but we need her so it’s fine. This thing made SO much money. Incredibles 3 is now in development, though without Brad Bird as director. What will it look like? What’s next for the Parr family? Will there be a bit of a timeskip? Only time will tell.
Incredibles 2: Three out of five bouncing lamps.
From the archives
Incredibles 2 was my first Pixar review for Boston Hassle!
Links and Recommendations
Some reporting on what the fuck happened with Elio… I will do some digging for my own analysis later this summer.
RIP Michael Madsen - thanks for making a website to review all your movies.
NOT SEXUAL!!!!!!
Anyone seen Tomorrowland? No?
The super ban was GLOBAL?