Brad Bird is, to date, among a handful of mainstream filmmakers with a Midas touch. Though his new film Tomorrowland represents the closest thing to an exception to the rule–it’s big, bold, messy, and never quite able to deliver any kind of satisfying payoff to its massive buildup–his previous four features have all been widely praised as high points of their respective mediums and genres. The Iron Giant (1999), his debut, is now a cult animated classic, but his two films for Pixar Animation Studios, The Incredibles (2004) and Ratatouille (2007), are rightly highlighted as being among the studio’s very best. After the critical and commercial success of his work at Pixar, Bird made the leap from animation to live-action with equally confident results (unlike his colleague Andrew Stanton’s foray into live-action with John Carter). Bird’s Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol (2011) managed to not only be a rousing action spectacle, but also a worthy fourth entry in a sprawling franchise. If all of those credits aren’t enough, Bird’s early career included a lengthy stint as a consultant and sometime-director on The Simpsons (it may or may not be sheer coincidence that the show’s quality began to slowly dip upon his departure after its eighth season).
Bird has proven over the past two decades that he is a truly exceptional filmmaker, and one who often chooses to mine his own belief system for material. Those beliefs, though, have often been subject to debate. The majority of his films have a streak of exceptionalism, similar to what comprises the readings and teachings of famed Objectivist Ayn Rand. Bird has previously suggested as politely and directly as possible that such readings, specifically in reference to The Incredibles, are a wholly inaccurate way of interpreting the material. But even if it’s not tied to a specific political or social belief system, there is an undeniable sense in his films of championing characters whose talents are impossible to ignore and often superior to anyone else.
“Everyone can be super! And when everyone’s super…no one will be,” the villainous Syndrome cackles at a key moment in The Incredibles. His nefarious plan is to first destroy all prior superheroes, including his old idol Mr. Incredible, then unleash a monstrous robot of his own creation called the Omnidroid, essentially making a problem that only he can fix, thus becoming the people’s new hero. But Syndrome’s true evil plan, at least as presented by Bird, is less the destruction of heroes and more his attempt to imbue regular people, non-supers, with powers they could never acquire honestly. (That said, Syndrome is guilty of dishonesty himself, using his scientific gifts to essentially acquire superpowers for his own gain.)
By this point, we’ve already heard Mr. Incredible, known in the film’s present day by his regular name Bob Parr, grouse about the pointlessness of the elementary school system awarding students for the most minimum of honors, such as moving from one grade to the next. In the eyes of the ultra-heroic and selfless main character, people in this world are being praised for something they don’t deserve. Giving them the ability to have super-strength, flight, or any of the other powers on display in The Incredibles would be, the film suggests, truly terrifying because the non-supers wouldn’t earn them. It’s not difficult to hear Bird—who, per the David A. Price book The Pixar Touch, used his own creative and familial frustrations as the basis for the film’s conflicts—speaking here, as well as voicing his own fear through Syndrome’s plan. Bob Parr ranting that “people keep coming up with new ways of celebrating mediocrity, but if someone is genuinely exceptional…” while arguing with his equally powerful wife sounds like he’s echoing his creator.
There’s a similar thread in Ratatouille, specific to the general message imparted throughout: “Anyone Can Cook.” This mantra, spoken first by the late Chef Auguste Gusteau, gives our lead character Remy hope in the darkest of moments. If it’s true that anyone can cook, then surely even this tiny and talented rodent has a chance to prove his greatness. But the conflict in Ratatouille has nothing to do with whether or not Remy is as good as or better than his idol; he proves himself early on, in the guise of his human helper Linguine, to be exceptionally gifted. His only problem is his upbringing, and whether the humans he encounters in a Parisian kitchen can accept Chef Gusteau’s guiding principle to the most extreme end.
Right before Remy fiddles with and vastly improves a soup at Gusteau’s for Linguine, he has a sharp exchange with the ghost of Chef Gusteau, who reminds him that “anyone can cook.” Remy’s response is telling: “Well, yeah, anyone can. That doesn’t mean that anyone should.” His dismissiveness toward Linguine is, of course, not ill-placed; Alfredo Linguine may be Gusteau’s long-lost son, but he appears to have received none of his dead father’s culinary genes. Remy’s—and thus, Bird’s—point is clear: While a talented artist can come from anywhere on the planet, not everyone has the ability to be a talented artist, and we should stop pretending otherwise.
This is an offshoot of the argument essentially espoused by Bird in all of his films. Greatness exists in anyone and can proliferate anywhere, but it is a unique quality, one that cannot be replicated easily or consistently. (The antagonist in Ratatouille, the sniveling Chef Skinner, wants to use the image of Chef Gusteau for a line of frozen-food products, valuing capitalism over creativity.) Remy and Mr. Incredible, as well as the rest of Mr. Incredible’s family, are great not because they worked on their skills over time or because they were plucked from obscurity from someone wise enough to spot their talent. Their greatness arrived at the same moment they were born.
Brad Bird’s characters, as impressively talented as they may be, often go through complex and mature arcs, so that they can arrive at a place of acceptance of how to balance their own skills with a world barely able to handle them. Mr. Incredible and his family become more comfortable by the end of The Incredibles as being both super and a somewhat traditional nuclear family. Bob’s big shift is representative in encouraging his super-fast son Dash to either come in second at a track meet or barely win, instead of running as quickly as he’s able to. Remy begrudgingly acknowledges that he’s not the only creature in Gusteau’s kitchen with talent; in a nice twist, it’s not Linguine who impresses him, but the loose-limbed doofus’s love interest Colette who gains his respect.
There’s even a strain of exceptionalism—though to a far lesser degree, in part because Bird functioned only as director—in Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol. Tom Cruise, whose status as an extremely intense and focused performer allows him to be inextricably tied to the character of Ethan Hunt, is known for performing as many stunts as possible in his films. That predilection for ultimate plausibility reaches a fitting high point in the 2011 film, in the centerpiece sequence set and shot at the Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Abu Dhabi, where Hunt is forced to break into the building’s security system by climbing up its walls thousands of feet above the ground while a sandstorm approaches. The sequence, especially when displayed on an IMAX screen (Bird shot portions of the film, including this one, with IMAX cameras), is not only a vertiginous delight, but proof that, in at least this arena, Tom Cruise/Ethan Hunt is at the top of his game.
But the film’s just as much about Hunt accepting that he can’t complete his mission solo and embracing his makeshift family of secret agents, as it is about him stopping an eastern-European baddie from destroying the world. When Ghost Protocol opens, Hunt is a stranger in his own organization, putting himself in jail to protect his wife. Upon his quick release, Hunt tries to adapt to his new situation, with a former colleague (Simon Pegg) known for his technical prowess appearing in the field; soon, he’s one of only four remaining IMF agents, saddled with what amounts to a trio of strangers (he’s familiar with Pegg’s Benji, but is instantly confused at his presence away from a computer screen). It’s only by the end of the film that he realizes the mission was successful only with the help of his friends; granted, only Ethan Hunt could climb the Burj Khalifa, but he still couldn’t do everything by himself.
In essence, all the lead characters of Brad Bird’s films conclude that they are all exceptional in their own ways, but not quite perfect enough to achieve every possible goal without a bit of help. Even the heroes of Tomorrowland, George Clooney’s Frank Walker and Britt Robertson’s Casey Newton, learn that their unique abilities–his naturally inventive spirit and her boundless enthusiasm–make them individually special, but still in need of outside aid. This also applies to Bird himself. More than anyone else from the Pixar Animation Studios group, he is the easiest to define as an auteur: One of his films is instantly easy to identify, visually or verbally. Like his lead characters, Bird is exceptionally talented, and seems to have been born this gifted. But there is a begrudging awareness on his part that in cinema, even if you ascribe to (or identify as part of) the auteur theory, you can’t actually do everything yourself.