Writer-director Brad Bird’s long-awaited sequel to his 2004 hit is fun and stylish, with slick, polished animation and an upbeat, jazzy score from the prolific Michael Giacchino. (N.B. The film contains flashing lights.) The Incredibles 2 also explores some interesting themes, with a villain known as the Screenslaver trying to upend what they see as society’s over-dependence on superheroes and technology. They blame these things for people becoming lazy and passive, rather than being proactive and solving their own problems.

This raises interesting questions about what it means for people to relate to each other as individuals, and to society, in a healthy way.

Ben Hardy writes “All parties need to be healthily independent of the relationship so they can create interdependence where transformation and growth can happen.”

The Incredibles 2 explores this most directly in terms of The Incredibles themselves (aka the Parr family). Where the first film affirmed the idea that it’s okay to be extraordinary, the second builds on this to look more closely at the problem of how you use those extraordinary abilities to save the world and help people, in the context of a world with a tendency to either villify you or put you on a pedestal, with the accompanying unrealistic expectations.

The Incredibles are a believeable family (who also happen to be a superhero team), with clearly defined, distinct, individual personalities and superpowers. They each want different things, and tend to deal with problems differently, but ultimately they care about each other, even in the tension of navigating the messy reality of life.

Bob (Craig T. Nelson) tries to support Helen (Holly Hunter) as she goes out and does heroic things to try and win round the public’s perception of superheroes. To this end, he has to succeed at looking after Violet, Dash, and Jack-Jack; the latter being a baby with a ridiculous number of superpowers which he can’t control.

Bob is completely out of his depth, but desperately tries to maintain the idea that he’s got it all covered.

He amusingly (and sympathetically) plays out Ben Hardy’s lesson that: “Perfectionism isn’t about you. It’s about an unhealthy need for approval. It’s about a fear of failure and looking incompetent. It’s the opposite of courage. And it’s the opposite of mastery.”

At the point of exhaustion, Bob learns to accept help from others when he needs it, asking Edna Mode (Brad Bird) to babysit Jack-Jack – which, in addition to giving Bob the long, refreshing night’s sleep that he needed, also leads to another unexpected positive outcome: Edna designing Jack-Jack a suit to help him control his powers.

The Incredibles 2 is thought-provoking and nuanced. For instance, the main villain, the Screenslaver, is partly right in that sometimes it’s possible for people to put too much faith in things like technology and other people, which will, eventually, inevitably fail to live up to these expectations. And this also places too much pressure on the people who have these expectations put upon them, which can lead to resentment on both sides.

By contrast, maybe hope can be found in faith (in the true sense of the term). Trusting in God’s faithfulness and love is a good starting point (and takes the pressure off other people and things), so we can relate to other people in a healthy way.

Ben Hardy says, “If you want to get good at something, you can’t NEED approval from other people. The people who matter will love you anyways.”

The villain’s tragedy is that they’re stuck in the past, defined by what went wrong and blaming others (in this case superheroes and people’s reliance on them) for it. They try to fix things not by actually fixing them, but by tearing things down – effectively undermining them just like The Underminer.

By contrast, the Parr family learn to overcome their tensions, not by fighting against each other, but together. Life will go on, and continue to have challenges, but despite their differences, they’re all on the same side, and that makes all the difference. There may be setbacks, but ultimately they move forward in a redemptive way; like the film’s dynamic action sequences.

Healthy interdependence isn’t a magical, instantaneous thing; it’s cultivated over time, with grace and patience.