Movie Reviews - Big Hero 6

I don't enjoy math, and I don't see the point of it a lot of the time, but even I understand that sometimes the simple application of addition can improve a product or situation exponentially. This movie, which I saw the local premier of earlier tonight, embodies this statement. This movie is almost entirely made up of seemingly unrelated things added together to create something better. Marvel Comics plus Disney Animation Studios equals a brilliant new medium for telling great stories to a broader audience. San Francisco plus Tokyo equals a vibrant, visually interesting story setting. A moving story of dealing with loss plus a really action packed, fun, and funny superhero origin equals Big Hero 6.

 

This movie was an interesting one, in a very good way. From the same studio which created both Wreck-It Ralph and Frozen, this is the first, and very likely not the last example of a true blending of the Marvel and Disney brands. Something of an experiment, Big Hero 6 tried to tell a (pun intended) big kind of story, one which Marvel has been telling for years, the success of which would allow Disney to repeat this formula in CG animated form. With a fantastic blend of Disney and comic book styles to the designs of the characters, and to the environments that they visited, nearly everything about this movie was unexpected and fresh.

Yes, I said almost everything.

On the surface, Big Hero 6 is an adventure story of good versus evil. It is the story of fourteen-year-old Hiro, a robotics genius who graduated from high school the previous year and now spends his time gambling on battles between small robots. He is being pressured by his brother Tadashi, who is also a talented robotics engineer studying at a local tech college, to enroll at the college despite his young age. He takes Hiro one evening to meet some of the other students at the college, and Fred, who is the mascot. Each is more eccentric and loveable than the next, and they're projects start to sway the young intellectual.

Then Tadashi shows Hiro his personal project, a personal medical droid named Baymax, who is artificially intelligent, is a bit naive, plush and pillowy, and only wants to make people feel better. Just try not to fall in love with Baymax. Hiro certainly does, as after a tragedy, Hiro ends up with Baymax in his charge, and the two become fast friends.

So I'm going to come right out and say it (SPOILERS): Hiro's brother dies. Hiro, with the help of his brother and their friends from the school, builds a fleet of brain-controlled microbots, which can assume any form. They are his admittance project, and he nails it. Just as he rises as high as he can, he falls lower than he ever has been, as there is an explosion, and his brother, his new professor mentor, and his microbots are all lost to the flames. With no other real connection to his lost brother, Hiro bonds with Baymax, who serves to help fill the void.

Then Hiro learns that someone stole his microbots before the fire, and probably set the fire to cover his tracks. Hiro and an upgraded Baymax, along with their friends, who have developed practical applications of their individual projects, set out to find this masked individual and catch and expose him. Then Hiro falls even further, when he learns the true identity of the man who killed his brother. He violates the trust of his friends and endangers them in a quest for revenge that the memory of his brother is able to help him recover from. Hiro and Baymax both risk everything to complete their heroes' journeys, with a tear-jerker of a resolution.

I mentioned that there is one thing that is not unexpectedly fresh, and that is that there is very little about this movie that you don't see coming, but, as it was in the case of Wreck-It Ralph (misunderstanding story) and Frozen (the same), which were likewise unoriginal in many aspects of the story development, it didn't matter. It is a sad fact that every story has been told in one form or another. Now it is not a question of telling a new story, but of telling good stories in new or interesting ways, and that is what Big Hero 6 does. The scenery is vibrant, the emotions are raw and real, the humor is smart and enjoyable for children and adults alike, and the characters are surprisingly realistic and likeable.

Despite the fact that we are introduced to Tadashi's fellow students all in the span of one scene, it is astounding how quickly we learn everything that we need to know about them to feel like they have always been a part of the movie. They are all very well written characters, each one smart, with traits that you like, as well as traits that you find annoying, but not enough so that you don't like them. They feel like people who you might actually meet.

Though devoid of any real twists, Big Hero 6 is fun, more fun than I thought it would be, and my expectation were pretty high going in. This new era of Disney Animation Studios making obscure Marvel movies cannot develop fast enough, because I want to see not only sequels to this movie, but other movies done in a similar vein. Big Hero 6, in this era of superhero movie popularity, came at just the right time, at the phenomenon's height, and promises to become an animated classic. I give Big Hero 6 a 9 out of 10. Go see it, and remember that this is a Marvel movie, so stay to the very end, and come back later for another review.