Pixar earned $1.2 billion with The Incredibles 2, then let a full decade slide by before putting a third installment on the calendar.
The studio’s D23 announcement in 2024 confirmed that one of its best-loved properties was finally returning. On its own, that news would have been plenty. What makes it more intriguing is the timing, since the third movie arrives precisely at the point where the series can leave behind the story Pixar began telling in 2004.
Screenwriting duties remain with Brad Bird, which preserves a genuine tie to the first two films. Elemental (official site) director Peter Sohn, meanwhile, approaches the material from a completely different angle. June 16, 2028 is the release date, and this is not a case of the Parrs being pulled out of storage for a victory lap.
The kids can carry this one
The biggest hurdle facing Incredibles 3 is also the most apparent one. Violet, Dash and Jack-Jack are now capable of shouldering a film on their own.
Consider their starting points. In The Incredibles, Violet is crippled by shyness, Dash is itching to prove himself, and Jack-Jack is a baby whose powers haven’t surfaced yet. By Incredibles 2, Violet argues back at her parents out loud, Dash is eager to use what he can do, and Jack-Jack has become the least predictable Super in the household.
Nobody has been readier for this than Violet. Her forcefield and invisibility counted during the climactic battle of the first film, but her real arc was about finding the nerve to stop hiding. The follow-up moved her teenage life to the forefront, right down to her frustration at losing a shot at a date with Tony Rydinger once Helen’s secret identity got out.
These days she and Dash slip out to fight crime because they want to show they can handle it. Instead of benching those personalities, the third movie can put them in the driver’s seat.
Jack-Jack is the variable nobody controls
The raccoon brawl in Incredibles 2 ranks among the funniest scenes the franchise has produced, and it doubled as a caution about just how powerful this kid is.
His repertoire covers teleportation, laser vision, phasing through walls, duplication, shapeshifting and morphing into a small demon-like monster whenever his temper slips away from him. If that arsenal is now spiraling past what the family can manage, he stops being comic relief. He becomes the reason Violet and Dash have to grow into the heroes they keep insisting they already are.
Ten years pass for us, a few weeks for them
Ten years separate the movies. Inside the story, only a few weeks have gone by. Violet remains a teenager, Dash is still 10 and Jack-Jack is still a baby.
According to Bird, aging them up would damage the franchise, because the Parr children were built around one specific stretch of childhood. Their ages aren’t incidental trivia attached to the characters. They’re precisely why the personalities and the powers lock together.
Jack-Jack is an infant, carrying all the uncertainty that comes with that, and his expanding set of abilities plays as a joke about how nobody knows what a baby turns into. Being 10 feels exactly like Dash’s speed: restless, impatient, hunting for anywhere to put the energy. Violet is a teenager, and force fields and invisibility turn her insecurity and her urge to shut people out into literal powers.
Being a Super is legal now, which kills the old formula
Two films’ worth of hiding wrapped up aboard the Everjust, where the family’s actions helped get the Super Relocation Act repealed. Bob, Helen, Violet, Dash and everyone else can now operate in the open without getting arrested.
That guts both of the conflicts this series has run on. The first movie followed Bob sneaking back into hero work. The second followed Helen fronting a campaign to make Supers legal again. Neither applies anymore.
Pixar dangled a Superhero League at D23 and showed concept art of Mr. Incredible pulling civilians to safety while a crowd gathered to photograph him. Superheroism is turning back into a normal part of public life.
For the Parrs, legalization is good news. It also hands them a brand new problem, because after years of fighting to be tolerated, the Supers have to work out what happens when everyone wants them to be heroes.
Bob may be the one getting left behind
Bob’s entire struggle in The Incredibles was the sense of being shoved out of a life he loved. The insurance job galled him because he knew he was supposed to be Mr. Incredible.
Per Pete Docter, Bob is confronting that same question again for a completely different reason. Supers are legal, Violet and Dash are out proving they can handle themselves, and Winston Deavor is assembling a heavily sponsored Superhero League.
None of it may have an obvious spot for him. After a first movie spent clawing his old life back, it would land if the third one asked whether he knows when to hand it over.
The villain outguns the entire family
Cleverness is what made the first two antagonists dangerous. Syndrome assembled an arsenal without possessing a single power of his own, and Screenslaver came close to turning the public against Supers without throwing a punch. The third film takes a blunter route.
At D23, Docter teased a villain with more power than the whole Parr family and the rest of the Supers combined. Pixar hasn’t explained what that means yet, but the setup is hard to shrug off. Bob is strong, Helen can stretch into nearly anything, Violet has her force fields, Dash has his speed and Jack-Jack has already flashed a ridiculous number of abilities. Frozone hasn’t gone anywhere either.
Selling all of that as insufficient is the tallest order this series has attempted. Brute force won’t be an option for the Parrs. They’ll have to work together in a way they never have.
Bird is out of the chair for the first time
Incredibles 3 will be the first entry in the franchise that Bird hasn’t directed. He wrote and directed both previous films and is stepping aside for Sohn because of his work on Ray Gunn.
Sohn knows the building, having directed The Good Dinosaur and Elemental, though this is a different kind of job. And for anyone nervous about the handoff, Bird is still writing the script and serving as an executive producer, so Sohn isn’t rebuilding the Parrs from scratch. Bird shapes the story, Sohn decides how it looks and moves.
Fourteen years separated the first two movies. The franchise has already survived one creative transition. This time, the person who invented these people never left the room.