THAT'S `INCREDIBLES'.

Byline: - Glenn Whipp

``The Incredibles'' establishes a number of firsts for a Pixar animated movie. It's the first PG-rated Pixar film. (Remember the opening scene in ``Finding Nemo'' where Marlin lost everyone but Nemo to a hungry barracuda? It's more intense than that.) It's the first Pixar movie to be directed by someone who hasn't been with the company since its formative days. (The helmer is Brad Bird, best-known for directing the beloved ``The Iron Giant.'')

And it's the first Pixar movie to arrive in the aftermath of company CEO Steve Jobs severing contract negotiations with Disney. (Though Jobs hasn't signed with anyone else and, at this point, anything goes.)

Bird, a classmate of Pixar creative director John Lassetter at Cal Arts, is just a little bit nervous about the whole thing after spending four years putting together this movie about a family of retired superheroes who are suddenly pressed back into service.

``I know if this movie makes one dollar less than 'Nemo,' the headlines are going to be: 'Bird Screwed Up - They Should Never Have Let Him In,' '' Bird says, laughing. ``But the great thing about Pixar is that they're willing to let a guy like me in and totally support him. They're not remaking the same movie all the time. Just the opposite, in fact.''

The Incredibles may be a family of superheroes, but they're also a family, which means that much of the movie will play off the kinds of dynamics present in any household.

``When your teenage daughter can turn invisible, it makes it a little more complicated to send her to her room,'' Bird says. ``The rule was, you don't do the fantastic very long without doing the mundane, and vice versa, which I think is true in just about every walk of life.''

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(color) ``The Incredibles,'' opens Nov. 5