EXCLUSIVE: Samuel L. Jackson on why ‘Incredibles 2’ is for everyone and when he’ll show up in ‘Black Panther’
Jackson is back as FroZone in the Disney sequel that was 14 years in the making.
Disney is readying the release of its highly anticipated film, Incredibles 2 and Samuel L. Jackson is back as Frozone in the sequel that fans have been waiting 14 years for.
This time around, Frozone has a more prominent role than he did in the first installment of the franchise and he’s no longer the only black superhero kids have to look up to. We caught up with the actor to find out how he feels about the rise of the black superhero, why Incredibles 2 is perfect for fans of any age and when we’ll see Nick Fury in Wakanda.
According to Jackson, the fact that black superheroes have taken over the big and small screens in projects like Black Panther, Thor, Black Lightning, and Luke Cage is no surprise.
“It’s the natural order of things. Black superheroes have been around for a while. The fact that these young people are getting exposed to them at an early age and the fact that they’re cinematically viable helps a lot. It changes your outlook on how the world can be for you, I’m sure,” he says. “They were pretending to be Superman and now they can pretend to be Black Panther, or me or Tessa [Thompson]. There have been all these things they can aspire to be now and can relate to. It’s awesome.”
Incredibles 2 is not your typical kid flick and its story is just as relatable for a 38-year-old stay at home mom as it is for a six-year-old first grader.
“What I thought was that Brad [Bird] actually found a way to keep the core audience of younger kids engaged through Dash and Jack Jack and the people who saw the original film fourteen years ago are now older and grown and can relate to the Elastigirl story. He has found a way to engage everybody who comes to see this film from the parents who bring the kids to the kids who loved it before and have been anxiously awaiting the return of this film. He found a way to marry everybody’s interests.”
While we have seen Samuel L. Jackson the on every role imaginable, he has a soft spot for animation and explained how his voice informs everything else about FroZone from his moves to his look.
“Vocally, you invent the character in the realities of the situation. The animators sit and listen to a sentence 150 times and then they figure out how to animate that particular sentence. I asked him if we had one person designated to each of our characters and we don’t. Some people do faces better, some people animate bodies better. Everybody participates in creating the reality that the cartoon character is according to what they hear. Consequently, when our voices work or when we color a sentence in a specific wait helps the animators define what to do and give the character more life,” he explains.
“I love animation. I grew up watching cartoons and some things live in that world very perfectly and specifically so I don’t know that I’m interested in a live action Incredibles. I kind of like it the way it is. I’m like everybody else. I’m totally in love with Jack Jack and fascinated with exactly how many things he might be capable of doing I don’t even think we’ve scratched the surface of what he can do.”
Incredibles 2 is not the only superhero franchise Jackson is a part of. He plays Nick Fury in Avengers and says he’s still a bit salty he didn’t get to go to Wakanda for the first installment of Black Panther.
“I kept saying, ‘When am I gonna show up in this movie?’ Don Cheadle said the same thing. I’m Nick Fury. I know Wakanda is there, I know what Vibranium is, there’s no way in the world that I don’t know any of this is going on,” he says. “In my mind I probably should have been in that Korean casino watching the whole thing go down going, ‘Ok, this is it.’ That would have been perfect without me even being involved in the story. I’ve been assured I will be around somewhere next time.”
Check out the clip below:
Incredibles 2 hits theaters Friday.
