Big Hero 6 Review

The Iron Giant (1999) is an animated movie about a boy who meets a robot that he did not create and teaches the robot to be a hero. As the boy’s life starts to go downhill, he pours his heart and soul into the robot and finds he has a new best friend in him while the robot learns the meaning of love, self-sacrifice and heroism from the boy. When an evil villain wants to take a piece of technology from the boy, the boy, his outcast friend and his robot must work together to stand up against him. Now, here is a review of Big Hero 6.

Big Hero 2+4 is the new Disney 3D animated movie following Tangled, Wreck-It Ralph and Frozen. Although it is based on a Marvel comic, the film changes a lot from the comics including everyone’s origin story, some powers and even Wasabi’s race. The film is almost nothing like the comic and because of this, Marvel has refused to do any sort of marketing for the film. Nevertheless, Disney received very little backlash from the comic book community as the fan base of the series is not that big to begin with. Most of the changes Disney made was very kid-friendly as, for example, the original Baymax in his Dragon form would probably have given kids nightmares. Also, for example, Fredzilla is probably better off being a guy in a costume then a guy who can actually turn into a dinosaur-like monster.

Was Disney wise to change how
Baymax looked?

All eyes are on Disney after Frozen became the most financially successful animated movie of all time and the question is whether or not Disney can replicate their performance from Frozen. In terms of financial success it will certainly succeed, especially in merchandise sales. Toys of Baymax will easily fly off the shelves as he is one of the best supporting character in a 3D animated film since Jessie in Toy Story 2. Most of the marketing for this film is based on Baymax and it is easy to see why as he is likable, enduring and absolutely huggable in every scene he appears in and is easily the star of the show. His fist bump joke, though done in almost every robot movie in history, is still adorable and funny and actually pays off at the end. A great change of design from the comics, he is one of the very few ‘cute’ characters in animated films that I actually enjoyed seeing on screen. He is the best part of the film and is a great addition to the Disney universe.

The ever-lovable Baymax is not the only strong character in the film. Main character, Hiro Hamada, is a combination of two characters in the comic and is voiced by Ryan Potter who does an amazing job playing a very good character. Hiro is a genius level kid who is joined on-screen with his brother Tadashi, who is just as likable as he is. After Frozen did a good job creating a strong sister relationship, Disney yet again succeeds in this time making a great brother one. The two brothers played off each other perfectly with Hiro emulating the charisma of the likes of Aladdin and Tadashi being the greatest brother anyone could ever dream of.

Nuff' said.

There is, however, one character that is overlooked by many but is my personal favourite. Honey Lemon, aka blonde thin nerdy girl with ball throwing powers, may well be one of my favourite female characters in an animation since characters from the 90s like Belle. Though greatly underused in the film, she exemplified perfectly what a female character should be in film. First of all, she doesn’t look like every other 3D animated female Disney character. Elsa, Anna, their mum, Rapunzel, Aunt Cass and GoGo Tomago all look exactly the same and this is probably a gimmick by Disney to try to make the audience draw subtle nostalgic connections between the films. She was also the only character, other than Hiro, that looks and acts like she is actually smart. She isn’t an annoying stereotype like Fred being a lazy silly comic book loser or GoGo Tomago being the badass biker chick or Wasabi the cool buff black dude. She is a very new kind of character. She is smart although blonde, her power requires calculation and chemical input into her purse, while also being pretty and maintaining her girly side. She isn’t a girl who is trying to be one of the guys. She isn’t a girl slobbering over a guy. She isn’t a crazy, loud girl or a quiet, emo girl. She isn’t a character who runs around caring for no one and nothing other than accomplishing her goal. She is simply a girl who acts like a real girl, cares for her friends and is still smart and does cool things. She is the only one smart enough to put the chip in Baymax when everyone else just pushed him and she is the only one who I actually believe cared about Hiro. Though she has so little screen time, she is a huge character that many people overlook and I hope she will have a bigger role in the inevitable sequel.

Though a good film, it is clearly a film for kids rather than for adults. With the most cliché storyline ever in film that hits every note one expects it to hit, it brings nothing new to the table and leaves no lasting impression with the audience other than “Baymax is cute”. The writers, clearly looking for a way to do the minimum work possible, produces the most boring storyline in a superhero movie ever. The side characters, especially the other team members, are so underused that the film should not have even been called Big Hero SIX. The ‘big reveal’ in the film is not shocking in the slightest and will only surprise someone who has never seen a movie in their life. Filled to the brim with cute jokes and long silent shots of someone doing something slowly while someone else watches him, which is apparently supposed to be funny, it is more of a kid movie than anything. The film is like every other film ever made and in fact copied many of its jokes and emotional scenes from different films, especially The Iron Giant and even Wreck-It Ralph, since audiences these days apparently want the same thing over and over again. With a very normal backstory and a weak villain with a normal motivation and a very normal focus on a main character and his non-human friend, the best description for the film is just that. Normal. It’s still good, just normal… and cliché.

The best Disney has to offer.

There are two things I’d like to discuss before wrapping things up. The first is about Disney villains in recent times. The villain in Big Hero 6 is arguably the worst villain in any Disney film ever. The villain from Frozen is almost as bad. Disney is the studio that created the most iconic villains in film history, which includes the likes of Scar, Ursula, Maleficent, Jaafar, Captain Hook, Gaston, Shere Khan, Hades and the Evil Queen in Snow White. Each and every one so different and yet so menacing and pure evil. Why is it that Disney has fallen from those to these very weak villains? Here is a theory. Since the success of the superb reveal of the villain in Wreck-It Ralph, Disney has, for some reason, decided to make all their villains a plot twist character, therefore replacing good character development for the villain with mere shock value. We are never able to see the villain having any sort of a character arc and therefore connect in no way to the villain, causing the reveal to be eye-rollingly boring and making the villain completely forgettable. Though Wreck-It Ralph does it somewhat well, Frozen and Big Hero 6 fails to provide a proper villain and therefore causes the stakes to not feel at all high and removes a lot of the tension from the climax of the film.

#mindblownomgbesttwistever

The second thing I would like to discuss is the controversial topic of emotional manipulation. An emotional scene has to be earned by a film. It cannot just be thrown into a film just to provoke emotions from the audience to trick them into thinking they have seen an amazing film. That is what Adam Sandler does in all of his films. It has to either progress the storyline or develop the arc of a character, much like Mufasa’s death in Lion King, which not only changed the tone and progression of the film but also developed both Simba and Scar into the iconic characters that they are today. Wreck-It Ralph also did it well as it was a profound symbolism of Ralph becoming everything he hates to save the life of someone he cares about. It should not be shoved into a film with no consequence or pointlessly put there with no real effect on the story. If there is no consequence to the story due to the emotional scene, it is a form of emotional manipulation. There are a few emotional scenes in Big Hero 6. Two to be exact. One of them is good, the one in the relative middle of the film. It was well set up and developed more than one of the characters while also being an important step in characters learning the meaning of being a hero. The other emotional scene, at the very end, was bad and is the epitome of emotional manipulation. It occurs solely to make the audience sad and literally does nothing to develop the story or any character in any way whatsoever. The only reason it is there is to make people sad. That is emotional manipulation and it is a form of lazy filmmaking and writing.

Despite the problems in writing, the film is difficult to dislike. It is still very likable and a relatively good film. This is largely due to the likability of most of the characters and the amazing world the animators have built. The fictional city of San Fransokyo is a nearly perfect combination of eastern and western culture. Such a well-built world should be given credit and it is the reason despite the bad writing in this particular film, many people are still attracted to it. The attention to detail is astounding in every scene in the city and this along with their great characters will make for a great sequel. And for the observant fan, Stan Lee does, in fact, have a cameo as it is technically still a Marvel film. There is also an after credits scene which no one in my theatre stayed back for.

At the end of the day, Big Hero 6 is a normal film. It still deserves a positive rating as it is definitely likable and is a film that children will really enjoy. Perhaps it is due to the fact that I grew up on films like Toy Story, Lion King, Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast, but I expect a lot more from animated films, than just films about revenge and cute characters, especially when it comes to Disney. I’d take a good story over cute characters any day and that’s how it should be. If we, as the audience, do not raise our standards and expectations, studios will continue to do lazy work and forgo the potential such great characters present.

Animated Movie Rating: 6.5/10

Superhero Movie Rating: 5/10

Movie Rating for Kids: 8.5/10

After Credits Movie Rating: 6/10