Big Hero 6 – Movie Review

The last time I ever mentioned Disney on this site, it was in the context of its theme parks, which I have mixed feelings about. Disney movies, on the other hand, I have no problem adoring. Sure, there’ve been a few we could live without—Home on the Range springs instantly to mind—but even at their worst, Disney films are easily digestible entertainment. At their best, they really are pure magic, carrying away young and old to find delight in the same place.

Now, Disney’s already explored superhero territory before with The Incredibles, which was really a family story gussied up with a pastiche of superhero tropes. That movie proved Disney understood how to use the fantasy of superpowers and the grandiosity of superhero plots to thrill and touch audiences as needed, and that experience shows in Big Hero 6. BH6 is more than just the next step from The Incredibles; it’s an evolutionary leap on par with a fish growing up to become a shark.

It takes The Incredibles about twenty minutes to exercise the full potential of its wonder, but BH6 nails it from the first frame of San Fransokyo, a glittering city that melds Superman and Tezuka Osamu’s Metropolis. This merger of East and West clearly inspired the designers and animators to head-spinning heights of imagination: the pagoda-shaped frame of the bridge, the monorails slipping between the skyscrapers, and especially the costumes of our heroes themselves, being sleek, fun, even cute all at the same time.

But you expect Disney to excel in its animation, if nothing else. What’s really impressive about BH6 is how deftly it weaves and spins the original Marvel source material into something at once more nuanced, grounded, and creative than the Alpha Flight rip-off the team used to be. True, once Disney is through with them, they resemble their comic book counterparts in name only, but after reading the Wiki entries for them, I’d say that’s probably for the best.

Anyway, it’s hard to imagine that the original BH6 could be any more exciting or lovable than the ones dashing across the big screen. This is a remarkable feat when the film takes such pains to make all the characters as brainy as possible (with the exception of maybe Fred), but within that common ground, there’s a wide spectrum of character. Disney has a lot of expertise in setting up broad personalities first, refining later, which especially works in our heroes’ favor.

At first glance, they fit very comfortably into team archetypes—Hiro the wiseacre prodigy, Fred the slacker, GoGo the aggressive feminist (“Woman up!”), Honey Lemon the perky heart of gold, Wasabi the neurotic—but as events proceed and their problems escalate, they’re urged to a higher degree of maturity. It’s a testament to the script’s craft that Hiro, the most intelligent member of the team, its founder and leader, is still its least emotionally developed, something reveals itself in the film’s second act. This gives his older teammates the opportunity to show the wisdom and experience their age has given them, traits they wield gently when he lashes out.

All in all, there’s a remarkable lack of misdirected emotion in what is supposedly a kid’s movie, except where the villain is concerned. In this, Disney improves upon the superhero genre, avoiding its most common clichés. There’s the tragic death of the protagonist’s loved one, without the attachment of guilt. There’s a division within the team, but none of the artificial drama that usually causes such splits.

But perhaps the script’s finest achievement is how it turns its sole non-human character into the one everyone will love the most. There’s a touch of brilliance that Baymax starts as an innocent human health aide and remains one despite all the military upgrades Hiro gives him (a tension that quietly grows over the course of the film). What’s constantly moving about Baymax is everything he does, whether acquiring kung-fu, learning to fly, or giving hugs, is all for one purpose: to help Hiro heal. That loving persistence may be the true heart of the film, which is probably why Baymax becomes its central focus, even more than because he’s often gently hilarious.

BH6 isn’t perfect, though it comes close. For an experienced movie-goer, especially one with a background in comics, it’s too easy to predict the general direction of the plot and the fates of the major characters. Long before a twist reveals itself, you already know that it’s coming and can even sense it coming closer with every musical cue. This does diminish the impact of certain key moments, even if the film manages to pick itself back up afterwards.