Fight Club is The Incredibles.

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]This is Bob and this is Jack. Did you know Jack is a tee version of Bob? Don't believe me?

[00:00:06]>> I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.

[00:00:08]>> Well, let me explain.

[00:00:16]You see, it all starts with a young creator named Brad Bird. In around 1971, when Brad was just 14 years old, he made a 15-minute animated short of the tortoise and the hair and sent it directly to Walt Disney Productions. The executives and animators were so blown away by his talent that they offered him an unprecedented open invitation to visit the studio whenever he was in Burbank. And it was during these visits to the lot over the next several years that Bird became the unofficial protege of Milt Call, one of Disney's legendary nine old men.

[00:00:42]>> The mentorship was not some program that Disney ran. It was just like, oh, here's this kid. We like him. He should hang around with us. It's like the most bizarre thing. It's like, where did that come from? Fast forward to 1993 and our wonderkin was now a man dealing with the stresses of modern life and writes the Incredibles and it went a little something like this. Our hero works for an insurance company and hates his job because it alienates him from his fellow man. He leads an unsatisfied overly organized life. He tries to fill the void in his soul at night via secret meetings. He uses obsession with things to give him worth. Has a negative view of the softness of society.

[00:01:21]>> Is that what a man looks like?

[00:01:23]>> It's psychotic. They keep creating new ways to celebrate mediocrity.

[00:01:27]>> And things really start cooking after he has a violent outburst in his boss's office.

[00:01:32]>> Uhoh.

[00:01:33]>> Bird tried pitching the movie for a few years, but the production of such a dark, mature, and non-m musical story was fraught with concern, and no one bit.

[00:01:40]>> You're in a lot of trouble, mask.

[00:01:42]>> They need to beat the living [ __ ] out of each other to feel anything. It's so devastating.

[00:01:47]>> He shopped other ideas, but just kept getting turned down even though he had some serious pedigree. He was a director and consultant on the TV series The Simpsons.

[00:01:56]>> He was rejected.

[00:02:00]You see, Brad was contemplating the same themes as many other artists of his time. And to understand those themes, we need to understand Fukuyama's the end of history and the last man. You see, Fukuyama argued that Western liberal democracy paired with free market capitalism had definitively defeated all rival ideologies and that it would eventually become the universal standard across the globe. But by this point, Gen X was not so quietly pushing back against the liberal paradise's hollow and stifling nature.

[00:02:24]>> Don't fall down the step. You might hurt your mom.

[00:02:29]They had done everything right, everything they were told modern life was about, yet were still drowning under the effects of corporate emasculation, suburban numbness, loss of masculine, anti-consumerism, resentment towards safety, yearning for physicality and danger. Serious [ __ ] >> Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives.

[00:02:50]>> Luckily for our boy, by 96 he scored a directing gig for the Iron Giant, and The Incredibles took a backseat while he worked on that.

[00:02:56]>> Ben Diesel.

[00:03:00]>> Unluckily, at the same time, one such contemporary was a Portland diesel mechanic named Chuck, who was writing basically the same story, and his book Fight Club was adapted into a screenplay. And here's the gist of that story. One day, our hero answers the call to adventure and dons an alter ego that is more viral and actionoriented.

[00:03:18]Basically, everything he isn't right now. His alter ego takes on a large corporation. He realizes he's been working to help the villain's plot to destroy the city all along and then tries to undo the damage he helped cause. The villain's manifesto is an ideology about destroying hierarchy/individuality.

[00:03:34]>> And when everyone's super, no one will be. You're the all singing, all dancing crap at the world.

[00:03:46]>> A mysterious woman whose name starts with an M helps him along his journey at varying points. She ultimately flips sides to the protagonist when the villain goes too far. There's a big twist identity reveal.

[00:03:58]>> Same person.

[00:03:59]>> And it ends with our hero watching the big corporation explode.

[00:04:02]>> Get on with it.

[00:04:06]In comes David Fincher, who worked at the time at Lucasfilm in 1984, the same time that John Lacader, who you'd know eventually as the co-founder of Pixar, was still there. Fun fact, Lacer and Bird are famous friends from their Cal Arts days. Brad and I met at college. We were in the very first year of the character animation program at Cal Arts.

[00:04:25]>> So that means there is one degree of Kevin Bacon between Bird and Fincher.

[00:04:30]Ask yourself this if you dare. Is it possible that Lacader let the bird movie idea slip over the next decade? Is it ontologically a possibility that Fincher was incepted to want to direct a movie like Brad's? Only Lacier, Fincher, and the Holy Spirit know for certain. Skip ahead to 97. Fincher is still relatively new on the scene, coming off of a failure with Alien 3, but also having a huge success with Seven. So, by the time the screenplay for Fight Club was getting passed around, Fox, who Bird was still attached to at the time, went for it. the story and also how the story has has developed is it's got Brad Bird all through it.

[00:05:08]They did not give it to Brad Bird.

[00:05:10]>> In 1999, David Fincher adapts Chuck Pollenick's subversive novel Fight Club.

[00:05:15]>> So, poor Brad would have had to watch essentially his idea explode on the silver screen as his Warner Brothers project, The Iron Giant, was failing due to the poor management and marketing by the studio. It's like you're going, you're tinkering, and then the door goes.

[00:05:31]>> What we going to do right here is go back, >> way back, >> back into time.

[00:05:37]>> In January 1999, Disney had to recall 3.4 million copies of The Rescuers on VHS because someone had spliced a photographic image of a topless woman into two background frames of the movie during post-prouction. But this wasn't noticed until the 99 re-release. And guess who the directing animator for Madam Medusa was? You guessed it, good old milk.

[00:05:56]>> It was before Disney had a mentorship program, an official program where they taught young people how to do it. So they thought, who's like one of our strongest guys, and they thought Milt.

[00:06:08]They gave me a temporary office in there, and I actually had a desk and a phone, and >> I was 14.

[00:06:16]>> This was Milt's final film before retiring in 76. That means Brad Bird's direct mentor was working on the exact movie in question. and Bird was regularly visiting him at the studio while it was being made.

[00:06:28]>> This is actually at one point, this was my room. Jerry Reese and I, we were named the Rats Nest.

[00:06:35]>> His buddies were uh directing a lot sooner than him because he's, you know, he's a handful >> and we were considered punks.

[00:06:42]>> It potentially puts Brad at the scene of the crime in 76. Coincidence? You tell me. Now bringing it back to 1999 and the rescuers have to do a recall for pornographic vandalism. Fight Club comes out the same year and what does Tyler Deran do? Like splicing single frames of pornography in a family film.

[00:07:01]>> Perhaps just yet another coincidence. So now potentially furious he had to do something.

[00:07:07]>> And I actually walked around the back lot and cried.

[00:07:16]Well, the latest entry is about to hit movie theaters, and the genius behind it is a man named Brad Bird.

[00:07:22]>> Currently, he's promoting a new 3D computer animated film, The Incredibles, which involves an outofshape superhero with a gut so big he can barely get into his costume.

[00:07:32]>> I always looked at Brad and said, "That guy's great." Good old Jay Lassie, possibly motivated by deep regret for giving Brad's idea to Fincher, gave Brad a chance by greenlighting his movie, even though the Iron Giant just ain't Stinky Turds.

[00:07:45]>> Brad Victoria.

[00:07:48]>> And Brad's limited experience in the field.

[00:07:50]>> Take him and put him into a medium that he has never worked in before, computer animation. You would have the person walking through the scene intersecting his body would be a dummy of another version of the person with clothes on and you're just going, "Is this the film?"

[00:08:08]>> What can happen?

[00:08:09]>> But the kiss. Yeah. It's good. Yeah.

[00:08:13]>> Yeah. Glad that it sticks a little bit.

[00:08:16]Yeah. Just a little bit.

[00:08:17]>> Okay.

[00:08:17]>> That's good. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:08:19]>> They're very endearing. are flawed and you know they have you know these quirks and um >> I did not come to Pixar to to to do a CG film but most suspiciously is that for reasons unknown he decides to animate it >> will tell you if you ask about his motive for creating animated worlds not to read anything too deep into it >> could one reasonably guesstimate that animating it would have separated it from the liveaction version and avoided a copyright infringement lawsuit >> uh I I'm not. You know, the thing is is that's one of those uh sucker questions where >> it's impossible to say for sure.

[00:08:59]>> How could any human being deal with Brad Bird?

[00:09:01]>> That is not what we're doing. Well, you're throwing potted soil on our fat guy and no one has ever argued with the fat guy.

[00:09:09]>> He had a real chip on his shoulder.

[00:09:11]>> He's uh strong coffee. You cuz I go crazy with him. I can't I don't know about you, but I makes me nuts. He said, "Hey, man. I feel like I'm at a smorggas board and all you guys are offering me is bean dip.

[00:09:26]I mean, he's a mad man.

[00:09:27]>> Just trying to get us across the line, man.

[00:09:32]>> I'm trying to get us across the line in first place.

[00:09:35]>> After years of development and rewrites, it comes out in 2004 and makes six times what Fight Club did. Brad had done it.

[00:09:43]>> The Oscar goes to The Incredibles.

[00:09:47]His alleged plan complete, his alleged enemies thwarted, his vengeance >> um allegedly sweet to know that that's the only one that's the original in the universe.

[00:10:05]There's some unexplainable magic in that.

[00:10:17]There's a new one I'm working on. This is called the 800 lb gorilla.

[00:10:21]He's big. He's got red hair. He likes to scream in the morning.

[00:10:28]He's the 800B gorilla making this movie.

[00:10:32]>> Yeah.