"I can avoid the crowds, I don't think people these days can afford to pay 11$ for a child this late.", I thought, though I can hardly afford it myself.
Per the norm, I get there about 45 minutes ahead of time...and see a family of about 5 kids, older, milling about at the concession stand.
They certainly weren't there to see Hereditary.
"Oh. Hopefully they will be quiet."
There are seats near the front - There are more families already seated near the back - and hope that the crowd stays this size.
T-Minutes 30 minutes...some people sit directly behind me. Why? I think to myself. The theater is maybe 35% full. More than I expected, but still open enough so that you don't sit directly behind someone.
Putting in my earbuds, I listen to a podcast and scroll through social media, head down, and look up to check the crowd size.
Which has swelled to around 70%. The crowd is mixed now, I see college age people, lone adults, more families, some with very small children, and old people.
By the time Bao, the short, plays, the stadium is at around 90% capacity.
But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?
Spoilers, obviously.
I like that Lucius had a far bigger role. He helps out the family a lot, and there's a few moments where he and Helen are laughing at Bob's bluster as old friends. There's no line as cool as "I know, I know, freeze.", but I'm okay with that. We still never see Honey, which makes, once again, the most iconic character be a voiceless black woman for a joke.
The same for Violet. She's kind of a non-entity in the first film, but that's the point of her character. Here, she's more self assured and actually has a personality and allowed to be a animated female character who gets angry and embarrassed.
This film's non-entity is Dash. That's about it.
Even Jack Jack has more screen time and meaningful interactions with Edna - They could have overused her, emphasizing the extreme meme she became in fourteen years. Luckily, they tone it down and use her just a small amount. I loved how fond she was of Jack Jack.
The two biggest character motivations and arcs get a little dropped, oddly enough.
Bob has to come to terms with Helen doing what he wants to do - and I understand that very well. Everyone else gets jobs easily, and I'm still waiting. He doesn't feel that it's fair when you're competent but your last superhero job was, well, working for a spiteful maniac.
However, he doesn't really come to terms with it, because the story starts like "Oh he's going to whip out some sexist thinking", but it just misses going all the way with that.
Though Bob grows more comfortable in his role as a parent...he never hated the idea of being a parent, he had and wanted to connect with what his kids were doing. There's a step into bumbling 'I was so busy working that I left my wife establish relationships with the children and I don't even know them', but that's inconsistent with the original film.
Evelyn's motivations sound like an allegory for the populace to take up arms, but it feels very awkward.
Her alterego says everything short of "Wake up, sheeple.", lamenting on how people are lazy and want everything instead of living life.
She's angry at superheroes for not rescuing her father during a robbery, when they were undercover and presumably not around their hotlines, and advocates for people arming - I mean, rescuing themselves. Her goal was to turn people against Supers.
The population was already against them, and most were still in hiding. Her plan, essentially, already happened! What does that have to do with insulting the populace? How is this plan helping Evelyn extract revenge?
The film could have used heavier emphasis on the idea that Non-Supers aren't helpless to stick that point, on top of rearranging her entire motivation.
Those are two different ideas in my head, and as themselves, they would be pretty good. Together, it's strange. I loved her fashion though, that was slick.
The movie looks beautiful, of course. You can really tell in the faces and hair - Violet no longer looks like a frog. Some of these shots are astonishing. The cinematography in some points is just so clever when it's not seizure inducing.
Narrative wise, I feel like they cut up segments of each story and then rearranged them - there's perhaps less than five minutes for a lot of these sequences. It's the same problem I had with, of all things, The Female Brain.
As for the rest of the story, there are plenty of moments where the tension is ramped up and I was shielding my eyes. One moment I legitimately almost went "Oh, shit!" until I remembered that there were children present.
This movie didn't have to be the best thing ever. I didn't want or need it to be. This could very easily rank among my favorite Pixar movies - definitely my top five, and definitely below The Incredibles and Coco.
I had nitpicks, but I was never bored. You will check this movie out, you've been waiting all this time.
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