One of the movies announced at D23 this year was an Incredibles threequel, which I think is a fine idea. The original The Incredibles from 2004 is a masterpiece of both animation and superhero storytelling. It’s the best Fantastic Four movie ever made, and it’s one of the best superhero movies ever made. It’s great. The Incredibles 2 came out in 2018 and it’s good, but it’s not the original. The sequel felt like everybody got together 14 years later and decided to make another Incredibles movie, so they did. It’s really just another entry in the series.

So the threequel should be something of the same. I wouldn’t be trying to recreate the glory days of Pixar, I’d just be trying to make another Incredibles movie with a good story and solid, relatable themes.

Apologies in advance, I’m probably going to write this thing like a stream of consciousness and just ramble my ideas onto this post. Or maybe I’ll clean it up later and it’ll be nicely presented. But I’ll mostly just riff. I’ve got ideas and I want to get them down on digital paper!

So join me after the jump for how I would write and plot The Incredibles 3. And feel free to share your own ideas in the comments below.

Definite Time Skip

The Incredibles 3 needs to take place in the future. Everybody loves the kids and the family dynamic, but kids and families grow up and there are a lot more stories and themes to explore with the kids grown up. We’ve already learned a lot of lessons with the kids as kids, it’s time to move on. Plus, I just really want to see the kids grow up and become their own people. That would be the most interesting thing. All the real world kids that watched the original Incredibles are grown up, so capitalize on that.

I would set our new movie to the time when Jack Jack is going away to college. He’s 17, he’s got full control of his myriad of powers, and he’s the last of the Parr children to leave the nest. Dash was 10 in the first film, so now he’s 27, and Violet was 14, so she’s now 31. They’re both adults and established/beloved superheroes.

So the main focus of the film will be Bob and Helen’s Empty Nest Syndrome. It’s a common, relatable experience for parents, and we can push the envelope further by tying in the superhero elements. Because none of the kids want to stay in the family superhero team. They’ve ditched the red costumes and become their own, unique superheroes. I don’t have codenames picked out, but I’m sure they’d be fun to brainstorm.

Mr. Incredible is still the focus

Even though Violet and the others are grown up, there’s no reason to take the focus off Mr. Incredible. He had a lot of lessons to learn in the first film, he had some lessons to learn in the second film, and now he’s got new lessons to learn in this third film. Like I said before, Empty Nest Syndrome is the first one. The house is empty for the first time in nearly two decades, and the superhero team is empty as well. He’s nobody’s mentor anymore. Plus he’s getting old and his body/powers aren’t what they used to be. Maybe it’s time he needs to retire for real.

We could easily throw in some other hurdles as well. Helen can be taking the Empty Nest quite well. Maybe she’s some kind of superhero overseer, either solo or for the government. Maybe she teaches at a superhero school.

It’s a well-worn path in Hollywood to have fathers butt heads with their children’s partners, so why not explore that a little? Violet or Dash could be dating a normal person without powers, and they need to be introduced to the family secret. Or maybe they’re dating a super-villain or the child of a super-villain from Mr. Incredible’s past. Now that I actually type that out, it feels more like a Shrek or Despicable Me style gag…but maybe it could work.

To say nothing of maybe Violet or Dash is married and has children of their own and now they’re grandparents! Or maybe that’s an Incredibles 4 sort of thing.

Actually, a lot of those ideas sound a lot like Hotel Transylvania. Would we want to stay away from those? Or would we want to do them better?

Super Friends vs. Legion of Doom

As for the story itself, I would do a superhero team. In all those superhero flashbacks in the first movie, none of them mentioned a premiere superhero team like the Avengers or the Justice League, so let’s go ahead and assume there wasn’t one. Mr. Incredible said, quite clearly, that he worked alone. So now in the future, with the resurgence of supers, there’s going to be a team. And Violet and Dash are founding members. It’s maybe not their idea, maybe some new super is planning the team, but they immediately recruit Violet and Dash.

And Mr. Incredible wants to join as well. He’s not retired yet, he’s still doing his thing, and boy oh boy, he wants to join the first ever superhero team.

But he’s old and they’re young. They’re not trying to purposefully exclude him, but Old Man Incredible just can’t keep up or be on the same wavelength as the young supers. Helen gets it, because she’s in that overseer role. But Bob insists that he can still roll with supers, still work the streets. And this amplifies the Empty Nest/Getting Old conflict.

There could be a super-villain team, and that’s why we need a team of superheroes. I would have a full-on villain for the movie, and not reveal that the guy who puts the team together is secretly evil. The superhero team is fully on the level, full of real, good superheroes. And the super-villain team is filled with real, evil bad guys (other than maybe…Violet’s husband? Or Dash’s girlfriend?). And they all go to battle, and in the end, maybe Mr. Incredible does need to come out of retirement to save the young heroes and he gets one big final hurrah.

So he learns that the time has come to hang up his mask and leave superheroing to his kids and the new generation, while also teaching them that he doesn’t need to disappear completely and can still show them a thing or two from experience.

And then The Incredibles 4 is about being grandparents!

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