Behind the making of Jack-Jack, the summer’s breakout star
NEW YORK — The breakout star of the summer moviegoing season isn’t a dinosaur, an Avenger or anyone aboard the Millennium Falcon. It’s a giggling pipsqueak in diapers.
“The Incredibles 2,” which last weekend set a new box-office record for animated films with $182.7 million in ticket sales, has been a coming out party for Jack-Jack, the seemingly all-powerful baby of the Parr family. Jack’s superhero powers were teased in 2004’s original, but, they were, crucially, kept out of view from his family members.
“The Incredibles 2,” though, is a runaway-train of Jack-Jack revelations. Just as infants half-consciously babble and wobble as they feel out their abilities, Jack-Jack’s unknowingly careens through his Swiss Army Knife of superpowers. A sneeze rockets him through the roof. Anger turns him into a purple devil. His crib can be escaped by simply walking through the bars. (Those are just some of his powers. Estimates run as high as 17.)
The New York Times called him “the burbling, gurgling cherry on this confection.” The Wall Street Journal hypothesized that Jack-Jack could be “as valuable a commodity for (Disney’s Pixar) as the Minions who stole the show in Universal’s ‘Despicable Me.’”