The Incredibles Is A Better Cinematic Watchmen Than Watchmen

The Incredibles is the closest we’ve ever got to a cinematic equivalent to Watchmen – closer than even the comic book’s own film adaptation. It’s deconstructional yet functional, encapsulating yet unreplicable.

Of course, The Incredibles many influences. Fantastic Four is the most commonly-cited, with the Silver Age superheroics feeling ripped from the page at points – most obviously in the driving family dynamic and powersets, but also in more subtle ways like their next foe being Mole Man-riff the Underminer – but nearly every aspect of the film has some rooting in the contemporary media of Brad Bird’s childhood: Syndrome’s hideout is one gyrocopter away from Blofeld’s base in You Only Live Twice, and there are undercurrents of Ayn Rand to some of the villainous ideas (that’ll become important later).

Related: Read Our Incredibles 2 Review

But while those all come together to make a Pixar great, they’re not the closest relation. Running through the veins of The Incredibles is Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ seminal graphic novel that simultaneously critiqued and reinvigorated the comic book medium. It may not be as prominent in the design-side as some of the other calling points – indeed, the pair are actually inspired by the same things – but on a narrative, thematic and cultural level, they can’t be disassociated. In fact, if you put The Incredibles side-by-side with Zack Snyder’s 2009 adaptation of Watchmen, it’s the Pixar animation that actually hits closer to the book.

Up front, we’re not saying that The Incredibles was necessarily made to be an animated Watchmen. Brad Bird hasn’t really discussed the book at all, only ever saying any connections are unintentional. However, while there may not be authorial intent present, there are some unavoidable links that lead to a very interesting conclusion.

• This Page: How The Incredibles Is Really Watchmen
• Page 2: What Incredibles Does That Watchmen (The Movie) Doesn’t

The Watchmen Parallels In The Incredibles

Watchmen is noticeable in The Incredibles‘ DNA from the very premise: retired superheroes are pulled back into the fray by a nefarious scheme that will see their kind wiped out for good. And, for all the familial backbone, the worlds are very similar. Both are, to varying degrees, alternate realities that diverge from our own some time in the 20th Century centered on the emergence of costumed vigilantes, and in the “present” of the stories (1962 and 1985 respectively), superheroes are illegal in the wake of a major public opinion switch, forcing the once supermen into mediocrity, hiding in middle-age. Even the underlying hero distaste starting with the police is there; the cops who Mr. Incredible helps in the first scene of The Incredibles begin to scowl when he ditches chasing Bomb Voyage for a prior engagement, a mirror of Watchmen‘s Keene Act.

As well as being rooted in some derivation of our present mired in political strife, both stories go to great pains to delineate themselves from other fiction: Helen Parr explains to her children that the men they’re fighting are not like the “bad guys on those shows you used to watch on Saturday mornings“, while Watchmen has an entire in-universe comic industry of its own. The reasoning is ostensibly different – The Incredibles uses it more to power the children coming into their own than direct commentary – but the rooted realism of both compared to their contemporaries (The Incredibles released the same year as Spider-Man 2, Blade: Trinity, Hellboy, Catwoman and The Punisher, only the first of which comes close to the mark).

Related: Wait, So What Is the Watchmen TV Show Actually About?

If you drill down into the micro-elements of The Incredibles, you find copious Watchmen artifacts too: Edna Mode’s infamous and influential anti-cape tirade is essentially an expansion on the death of Dollar Bill in Watchmen, a Golden Age hero gunned down when his cape was caught in a revolving door (an event subsequently dramatized in Zack Snyder’s iconic opening sequence); the fire that Mr. Incredible and Frozone end up in early on also has several structural links to Nite Owl and Silk Specter’s first mission after returning to their suits.

But if we’re saying The Incredibles is Watchmen, then the biggest connection has to be in their villain. Adrian Veidt and Syndrome are both written as twists on the “Republic serial villain“, with plans that center on tricking the fearful general population with an unimaginable threat against a metropolis to manipulate a new status quo. They have vast means, immense secrecy, and an unshakable will that overwhelms the heroes. The “alien” and Omnidroid weapons they use are dehumanized threats, both villains sacrifice loved ones for their cause (Bubastis and Mirage, although the latter doesn’t die by nature of it being a kid’s film), and the discovery of their plan chillingly comes after it’s already in motion. Ultimately, for all the self-position – Ozymandias is inspired by Alexander the Great, Syndrome wants the glory of Mr. Incredible – both want to level the playing field of the world, removing their perceived imbalance.

Page 2 of 2: What Incredibles Does That Watchmen (The Movie) Doesn’t

About The Author

Alex Leadbeater
(1121 Articles Published)

Screen Rant’s Managing Editor, Alex Leadbeater has been covering film online since 2012 and been a permanent fixture of SR since 2016. Based in London, he oversees a global news & features team based in NY, LA and beyond. You may have also seen/heard him on the Total Geekall podcast, unaffiliated YouTube channels, BBC Radio and CBC News.

Growing up in the English countryside on a mixture of Star Wars, The Simpsons and Aardman, Alex is a lifelong movie obsessive. Despite a brief jaunt in Mathematics at Durham University, film writing was always his calling. He’s covered a wide range of movies and TV shows – from digging out obscure MCU Easter eggs to diving deep into deeper meanings of arthouse fare – and has covered a litany of set visits, junkets and film festivals. He once asked Tom Cruise about his supposedly fake-butt in Valkyrie (he swore it was all real).

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