Author: Keith Phipps / Source: Vulture
The Brad Bird origin story begins outside a Montana movie theater where, after a screening of The Jungle Book, the 10-year-old Bird asked his parents, “How do I do that?” “Something in me snapped,” Bird recalls in the 2016 documentary The Giant’s Dream: The Making of the Iron Giant — and that snapping propelled him along the course he’d follow the rest of his life.
Through family connections, Bird was able to tour Disney the following year, meeting its famed animators and saying he’d like to do what they do. It’s a declaration a lot of kids might make in the excitement of such a moment. But Bird wasn’t like a lot of kids. He taught himself animation basics and sent his work back to Disney, earning an internship at the studio at the age of 14, the first of its kind Disney had ever offered. There, he was mentored by his hero, animation legend Milt Kahl. He kept up the relationship with Disney, too, attending CalArts on a Disney animation scholarship and then going to work for the company.
The Brad Bird origin story ends a short time later, not with success but frustration, thanks to an experience that seems to have charged his creative drive and locked in some of themes he’d explore with his work. Bird joined a Disney in decline, one he felt was failing to live up to standards created by the old masters, most of whom were retiring. “These bunglers,” Bird recalls of those taking over, “tended to play everything so safe, which is a bore.” In time, Bird’s conflict with his superiors prompted them to fire him, not long after he worked on the 1981 feature The Fox and the Hound. They turned him into a creator with something to prove. The kid who asked “How do I do that?” set out to show others how it ought to be done.
With Bird’s latest, Incredibles 2, soon to hit theaters, Vulture has ranked Bird’s six features, a task not made any easier by the brevity of his rich filmography. Bird’s perfectionist tendencies are evident in his films. Every detail matters, from the beautifully realized landscapes of the worlds in which they take place to the smallest expressive details of the characters who inhabit those worlds. Yet they’re too kinetic, and too emotionally rich to feel fussed over. Those talents didn’t develop overnight, however. So before we get to the ranking, let’s briefly look at the years leading up to his feature debut.
7. Shorts and Sneak Previews
An alternate filmography could be made of the projects Bird wasn’t able to bring to the screen, including an animated adaptation of Will Eisner’s influential comic strip The Spirit, a project Bird developed with Eisner in the early ’80s. (An intriguing pencil test still survives.) Instead, he knocked around TV and animation for a while, working on projects like the Steven Spielberg anthology series Amazing Stories. There he wrote and directed an animated second-season episode featuring designs by fellow CalArts alum turned Disney refugee Tim Burton.
When it aired in February of 1987, “Family Dog” earned the struggling series more attention and acclaim than it had received in a while. It also featured, along with cleverly constructed gags and an occasionally macabre sense of humor, animation of a quality rarely seen on television in the ’80s.
Later that same year, Bird earned his first screenplay credit as one of four credited writers of *batteries not included, a Spielberg-produced movie about the residents of a New York apartment building who resist the efforts of an unscrupulous real-estate developer — shades of Trump — with the help of some tiny extraterrestrial machines. The film began as an episode of Amazing Stories and might have worked better in that format. Directed by Matthew Robbins, it lays on the sentiment way too thick. But the creatures are endearing and one character — an artist who wants to defend the building because it embodies the values of an past age with higher standards — foreshadows Bird heroes to come.
The success of “Family Dog,” which was later turned into a short-lived series sans its creator, gave Bird a chance to put his stamp all over the TV animation renaissance of the ’90s. During that decade he worked on King of the Hill, The Critic, Rugrats, and, most significantly, The Simpsons, a show Bird called home for eight years. But what he really wanted to do was make movies.
6. Tomorrowland (2015)
Of those movies, only one counts as a misfire. Working from a screenplay he co-wrote with Damon Lindelof (with story work by Jeff Jensen), Bird looked to the Tomorrowland attractions at Disney’s theme parks for inspiration. (Bird had come back into the Disney fold by way of his work with Pixar.) But instead of imagining a possible future waiting just around the corner, the film looks to yesteryear’s vision of a better tomorrow and wonders why it never arrived. George Clooney plays Frank Walker, an inventor who first visited a secret, scientifically advanced utopian city as a child but has since become exiled from it. To save the world, he must return with the help of inventive teen Casey Newton (Britt Robertson).
Tomorrowland has all the parts of a great Brad Bird film, but it can’t seem to figure out how they fit together. It’s beautifully designed and features both clever action sequences and an intriguing concept that allows Bird to explore some of his pet themes, including a sense that we’ve lost touch with older, better ways. The central message — that even in the face of gloomy news and potential catastrophe, we should maintain a sense of hope — is sweet and easily digested by an all-ages audience (it’s also really tough to miss). But instead of inspiring, it comes off as grumpy and chiding, a long, visually stunning lament that things just aren’t the way they used to be. The occasional swipes against dystopian entertainment illustrate the central problem: Bird doesn’t have the taste for their…
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