Big Hero 6 (2014)

Big Hero 6 (2014)

Release Date: November 7, 2014

Big Hero 6 represents the biggest departure yet from the rest of the films covered, as this is the first animated film covered here. In this case, the Disney influence is much stronger than the Marvel influence, but that’s no bad thing.

14 year old robotics prodigy Hiro Hamada is encouraged by his older brother Tadashi to put his skills to more constructive use at robotics college instead of competing in illegal robot fights and potentially incurring the wrath of Ray Charles. Hiro succeeds in getting a scholarship to attend his brother’s college and be taught by renowned roboticist Professor Callaghan after showing off his Micro-bots, thousands of tiny robots that can come together and form various shapes controlled by a special helmet worn by the user. After the show however, the building burns to the ground, and Tadashi is killed when he runs inside to rescue Callaghan.

After weeks of depression, Hiro finds his brother’s greatest invention, Baymax, a robot built to provide healthcare. Hiro’s last Micro-bot also starts trying to escape Hiro’s room, even though the others were all destroyed in the fire. The duo use the Micro-bot to a spooky abandoned warehouse, where they find that a malevolent masked man has been mass-producing Micro-bots, and uses them to attack Hiro and Baymax. Hiro wants to stop the thief, so he recruits his brother’s friends and they form a superhero group together. In their first attempt at stopping the masked man, they discover his true identity to be Professor Callaghan, who stole the initial Micro-bots and set the fire to cover his tracks. Callaghan mocking Tadashi for throwing his life away makes Hiro so angry he removes Baymax’s medical programming and orders him to kill Callaghan. The rest of the team get Baymax back under control, but Callaghan escapes.

It is revealed that Callaghan’s plan is to destroy the life of businessman Alistar Krei, who invented a teleporter, but the device went wrong and the test pilot, Callaghan’s daughter, was lost, presumed dead. In his grief, Callaghan stole Hiro’s Micro-bots to rebuild the teleporter, use it to destroy Krei Industries, and banish Krei himself to the void. Big Hero 6 are able to defeat Callaghan by attacking the Micro-bots, causing them to scatter and be sucked into the teleporter, but Baymax detects signs of life from inside the teleporter. Callaghan’s daughter is still alive in another dimension, so Hiro and Baymax go to retrieve her, but on the way back to the portal, Baymax is damaged, so he sacrifices himself to save Hiro and Callaghan’s daughter from being trapped in the alternate dimension. Excuse me, I think I have something in my eye…

 Artist's rendition of the effect on my emotions.

Hiro later discovers that Baymax removed his programming chip before sacrificing himself, and Tadashi still has the blueprints, so a new Baymax can be built with the old one’s memories, and Big Hero 6 continue to protect the city of San Fransokyo, Japanifornia from supervillains and fortnightly Godzilla attacks.

Big Hero 6 provides an interesting counterpart to Frozen. Whereas that film examined the relationship between two sisters, this one focuses on the relationship between two brothers. Despite Tadashi only being on screen for a brief period of time, his relationship with Hiro is shown quite convincingly and it is made clear that the two mean a lot to each other, so the grief Hiro shows in trying to come to terms with Tadashi’s death is believable. Perhaps the film could be of help to children who have had a sibling see others coping with the loss and that life goes on, similar to The Lion King with a child losing a parent. Baymax deserves praise here too, both for offering emotional support, becoming an endearing character in his own right, (you saw how I reacted earlier!) and in managing to steal the film out from under everyone else.

The character depth isn’t restricted to the protagonists either. Professor Callaghan has a sympathetic motive, and even if he does entirely the wrong things, it can be seen that he is acting from his grief too. In that respect, Hiro and Callaghan are foils to each other: Hiro channels his grief into trying to make a positive difference, whereas Callaghan dwells on his hate and rage, thus falling to darkness. Callaghan’s supervillain persona works well too, always appearing intimidating and alien thanks to his impressively realised Micro-bots adapting into various menacing shapes offering him complete control over them, (I want him in Kingdom Hearts 3 now because he would make for a fantastic boss fight) as well as his harsher, less animated design setting him apart from both the rest of the film’s cast, and other Disney villains. Hopefully, in a few years Callaghan will get to stand alongside the likes of Maleficent and Jafar in the ranks of iconic Disney villains.

 Yokai's design wouldn't be out of place on Avatar: The Last Airbender.

The animation for the film looks excellent. The film has a slightly different design aesthetic that sets it apart from the art styles of other recent Disney films such as Frozen, Tangled and Wreck-it Ralph, allowing it to forge its own identity. The setting also gives the film a distinct visual style, with the fictional setting of San Fransokyo combining elements of both Western and Eastern designs to create a unique combination, with things such as buildings that look like crosses between skyscrapers and dojos. Such a combination sticks in the mind moreso than either one would individually. For another example, think of the combination of Buddhist iconography and science fiction imagery in Asura’s Wrath.

Like Wreck-it Ralph’s tackling of videogames, Big Hero 6’s superhero subject matter may not seem like a traditional topic for a Disney cartoon, but it provides another pleasant surprise of Disney succeeding outside their fairy tale comfort zone, managing to continue Disney animation’s current run of good form.

Stan Lee Spotter: Stan Lee appears in animated form as Fred’s father, and a superhero in his own right. He also has more in common with Fred than you would expect between Stan Lee and a cartoon slacker surfer dude, including sharing their underwear use habits. Like father, like son, I guess.