The Incredibles 2 – Brad Bird’s long-awaited sequel to his popular 2004 Pixar movie – doesn’t arrive in theatres until July 2018, but it’s already breaking records. With the release of its first teaser teaser this past weekend, the film has broken the record for most viewed trailer of all-time for an animated feature.
It’s not terribly surprising, either, since Disney announced its intention to release the preview ahead of time – a move that created a vast swell of excitement across social media. Fans of the original film in particular not only looked forward to seeing the first footage from the sequel, but also responded to the promotional snippet pretty positively. While it contained very little information about the movie as a whole, it provided reassurance that the very specific tone that made The Incredibles such an enjoyable film would be fully recaptured, 13 years on. As a result, the teaser has been viewed over 113 million times, in 72 hours.
In case you need a refresher, The Incredibles told the story of a superhero couple – Helen/Elastigirl (Holly Hunter) and Bob/Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) – who get married. When the world turns against those with extraordinary powers, however, Helen and Bob must settle into ‘regular’ life.
They have three children – Violet (Sarah Vowell), Dashiell (Spencer Fox), and Jack-Jack (Maeve Andrews) – and Helen stays at home while Bob attempts to hold down a job in insurance. When a terrible threat presents itself, though, the family must come to terms with its superhero status and save the world – with the help of their friends, Lucius/Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson) and Edna Mode (Brad Bird).
The finer details of the plot for The Incredibles 2 are unconfirmed at this point, but the action will unfold around the fact that Mr. Incredible is taking the primary caregiver role for infant son Jack-Jack, while Elastigirl takes the lead on the superheroics. This would be in-keeping with the first film, which ended with the reveal of Jack-Jack’s emerging superpowers, and featured Elastigirl coming out of retirement to save Mr. Incredible when he gets out of his depth with a supervillain.
We can undoubtedly look forward to several more trailers as marketing for The Incredibles 2 kicks into high gear ahead of its July 13th, 2018 release date. And if the giant success of this first teaser is anything to go by, Disney is set to have a very good year.