It's been 14 years in the real world between the events of The Incredibles and Incredibles 2, but in the fictional universe of the stories? Almost no time has passed at all. Incredibles 2 picks up nearly exactly where the original leaves off for one very simple reason.

"I just thought it was kind of bold and weird," Brad Bird, writer and director of both films, said with a shrug at the press junket for the movie on Thursday in Los Angeles. "I think people take the time that passes in the real world very literally and they think that, linearly, the characters should have aged. But if they aged, their superpowers wouldn't reflect the part of life that they're in and the role they play in the family. I worked on the first eight seasons of The Simpsons and the Simpsons haven't aged a day and they're still on the air, so it's worked for them, why not us?"

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Of course, time was anything but suspended when it came to the march of progress in animation technology between the two films.

Producer Nicole Grindle spoke to the leaps and bounds made between the two films in terms of actual production. "Honestly, the advancements have allowed us to make the film look more like what Brad had intended the first film to look -- the characters are much more finely nuanced and developed, we were able to build a lot more sets, we populated the world with more characters that have hair and clothing. And that's stuff that most of y'all wouldn't notice but actually it makes the world feel richer and more alive. We've also had a lot of artists who have had 14 years to get better at their craft -- and a lot of artists who were kids when the first film came out for whom it's a dream come true to work on this one."

Disney Pixar's Incredibles 2 hits theaters June 15, starring Samuel L. Jackson, Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Bob Odenkirk, Sarah Vowell, Huck Milner, and Catherine Keener.