The Incredibles came out in 2004. That`s four years before Iron Man came out and jump-started the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Before then, superhero and comics-based movies were far more hit-or-miss; 2004 also saw the release of Hellboy (beloved) and Catwoman (less so).It`s now 2018, and the entire entertainment landscape looks very different thanks to the current superhero renaissance. It`s into this new era that Pixar is launching Incredibles 2, and that presents no shortage of challenges, according to director Brad Bird.`It`s kind of like going out to the football field, and there`s been way too many games on it, and there`s kind of this dried dirt with a few sprigs of grass and everything`s kind of clunky. Life doesn`t grow there anymore,` Bird said during a recent press conference at Pixar`s headquarters in Emeryville, California. `There`s that aspect where you feel like, `Oh, Jesus, it`s really been covered.``Bird compared superhero movies now to westerns around the middle of the 20th century. `If you had a television, 95% of what was on was a western,` he said. `We`re in that phase a little bit, and it makes it very challenging on a story level, because not only do you have every superhero under the sun and cross-promoting films and blah blah blah, but you also have a bunch of television shows...It`s easy to freak out and go, `Well, why even try?``He said he ultimately returned to what makes The Incredibles unique: the idea of a family of superheroes living in a world in which they have to hide their powers. And he said they found plenty there to explore still.`When we were trying to sell the idea of the first Incredibles, one of the criticisms of it was, `Well, what is it? Is it a family movie, is it a spy movie, is it a superhero movie? What is it? What is it? You gotta pick one,`` said Incredibles 2 producer John Walker. `And I think that`s been the strength of both the films, is that they are all those things, and that isn`t rooted in just the superher ...
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