With The Incredibles being one of Pixar’s best movies, it’s one of the few outside of Toy Story to have a sequel that is arguably better. Not only is the sequel one of the most stunning looking animated movies ever made, but it brings back everyone’s favorite characters, gives them more depth, and features some of the best action scenes of the 2010s.
Because Incredibles 2 is so great, it has led to a lot of speculation about a third movie, and it’d make a close-to-perfect trilogy, but it’s easy to forget that the original movie laid the foundations for the success of the second film and introduced the world to these beloved characters. Both movies are so great that deciding which one is better could come down to the flip of a coin, but there are still things that each of them does better than the other.
Original: The Family Dynamic
In the first movie, Bob and Helen had to balance being partners in crime-fighting and being married and having a family. It led to a lot of clever crossroads to which they couldn’t agree on, such as arguing about directions in the middle of a car chase, and it felt like a conversation that would totally take place in that scenario.
On top of that, the kids constantly fighting for control and making fun of each other is strikingly familiar to what would happen around the dinner table in real life.
Sequel: Elastigirl
Incredibles 2’s lead character is one of the reasons it’s the very best Pixar sequel. As Bob and his alter ego, Mr. Incredible, was clearly heading the crew in the first movie, the hUte superhero is actually sidelined in the sequel, as Elistigirl takes the reigns. She even has her own motorbike that can split in two to accompany her stretching superpower.
Elastigirl leading the movie is exciting not only because she’s a great character, but also because Bob haphazardly trying to look after all three children by himself is hilarious.
Original: Buddy’s Evil Lair
The Incredibles is celebrated for the way it goes against the genre’s tropes, but one of the ways it plays into Superhero tropes is by giving the supervillain his very own evil lair, but just because it’s a trope doesn’t mean it’s bad.
Buddy Pine, a.k.a. Syndrome, has his very own Bond villain-esque island that’s full of traps and robots to protect the land, and it looks like an incredible getaway with its jungle, hidden caves, and beach.
Sequel: The Voice Acting
The first movie was terrifically cast, as Craig T. Nelson and Holly Hunter’s voice acting as Bob and Helen is irreplaceable, not to mention Samuel L. Jackson as Frozone, but the sequel has all of that and more.
What tips the sequel over the edge when it comes to voice acting is Bob Odenkirk and Catherine Keener as the siblings who attempt to bring back superheroes into the public consciousness.
Original: Unique Take On A Superhero Movie
The movie is clearly an animated version of the Fantastic Four, as the only thing that separates the two franchises is literally the name.
However, The Incredibles is better than any on-screen version of the Marvel characters for so many reasons, but mostly because of how no other superhero movie approached the source material in the same way that Incredibles treats its own material. Between the family dynamic, the children's superheroes, and the villain’s motives, Incredibles is one of the most original superhero movies.
Sequel: The Animation
When the original movie was released in 2004, the animation was fantastic and better than any other animated movie released at the time, as Pixar is the gold standard when it comes to the way animation looks.
But as the sequel was released 14 years after the first movie, there had clearly been some major advancements in the industry at that time. The way the animation looks in Incredibles 2 is absolutely stunning and every single frame is complete eye candy.
Original: The Villain
The villain in Incredibles 2 is fascinating and voiced wonderfully by Catherine Keener, but her motives and her reasoning behind them are almost completely the same as Syndrome’s and totally recycled themes from the first movie.
Syndrome became a supervillain because of the way he was treated by Mr. Incredible when he was younger, and similarly, Keener’s Evelyn wants revenge on superheroes based on what she saw when she was a child, and it’s played out much better in the first movie.
Sequel: Jack-Jack
In the original, Jack-Jack was sidelined for the most part, as the family believed that he was born without powers, only for it to be revealed at the end that he has several powers.
Well, in Incredibles 2, director Brad Bird cashes in on that, as the baby is responsible for the two very best scenes of the movie, with the first being his fight scene with a raccoon, and the second being when he is getting fitted for a super-suit by Edna, another amazing character.
Original: The World Building
The world is one of the reasons it’s the best-animated superhero movie, as it's so expansive and full of interesting superheroes and villains, and the second movie builds on the foundations of the first movie.
But Incredibles 2 doesn’t add anything as great as Edna, a fashion designer who designs super-suits for heroes, and it doesn’t feature any superhero as cool as Frozone.
Sequel: Teamwork Makes The Dream Work
Staying true to the characters is one of the things the sequel got right, and as the family teamed together marvelously to invade Buddy’s evil lair in the original, the sequel takes that one step further.
The whole final act on the boat sees the group band together in creative ways, and as Jack-Jack now has a ton of powers but can’t quite act on his own, he is used hilariously as a weapon by the family.