Why ‘Incredibles 2’ Takes Place Right After the First Movie

When Incredibles 2 hits theaters this summer, it will have been almost 14 years since Pixar released the first installment of the series. A lot has changed in our world since then but, in the world of The Incredibles, everything will be exactly the same.

The new movie is going to pick up exactly where the first one left off, with the Parr family suiting up to fight the Underminer outside of a school track meet. Despite the 14 year wait, not a minute will have passed on the screen. Why is that?

During a recent visit to Pixar Animation Studios, ComicBook.com had the chance to hear from writer/director Brad Bird about the making of Incredibles 2, and why he chose not to let any time pass heading into the new film.

“I thought about aging everyone the way everyone does and then I thought, ‘No, that sucks.’” Bird continued, “What it is, is one of the conceits of the original film is that I tried initially when I was first starting to work on the project long before Pixar or anything like that. I went to a comic book shop and thought, ‘I’ve got to pick up new power.’ And after about a half an hour in a comic book shop I realized every power has been done by somebody somewhere, even if it’s only self-published, 100 issues in Ohio. Everything has been done.

“And right after that little epiphany, I realized I’m not very interested in the power. That’s not the part that interests me. What interests me is the idea of having a family. Having there be a reason to hide the powers. And once I had that insight into what I wanted to do, I picked the powers based on who they were in the family. And so men are always expected to be strong, so I had Bob have super strength. Women, 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 unknown, 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 Incredibles you find out that he’s the wild card, and that he’s sort of the Swiss army knife of powers. And that to me reminds me of the way babies can grasp languages really easily and adopt them easily.

“So, that idea changes if you age the characters up. The insight into those periods of your life and those particular perspectives disappears once you age them up. I’m not interested in a college-aged Jack-Jack. I’m just not. I’m interested in my sons, you know growing up. But in terms of the interest for me in this movie, it stays more iconic if everyone kind of situates themselves. I also was on the first eight seasons of The Simpsons and that’s worked out rather well for them. I’ll say for that.”

It’s all about the characters. Bird felt that, if we skipped ahead in the lives of the characters, we’d be missing out on quite a lot, including the evolution of Jack-Jack. Who wants to miss that?!

Written and directed by Brad Bird, Disney/Pixar‘s Incredibles 2 is set to hit theaters on June 15.