Review: Big Hero 6
BKAllmighty As requested by user Garythesnail, I present my two cents on Disney's 'Big Hero 6'.Big Hero 6 marks the 54th animated film to be produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios (previously known as Walt Disney Feature Animation) and is the first of Disney's movies to be based on properties that originate from Marvel Comics (Disney purchased Marvel way back in 2009 and, up until this movie, focused its attention primarily on Marvel's live-action films - so it was about time).
After re-watching Big Hero 6 (for the first time since I saw it in theatres) I found that the tone of the film very-much reflects the colourful, adventurous, intelligent, heartwarming, and original nature of every post-2007 animated Disney film (the Disney Revival, or Disney Neo-Renaissance, is the "era" that these films - presently and will hopefully continue to - categorize under) while it also carries all the traits of your average modern Marvel movie (I'm speaking of the good ones - not the movies like 'The Amazing Spider-Man 2' - yuck). And with influence coming from both sides, it's hard to imagine an end result that is anything but a complete success. Thankfully, you're imagination can remain unchallenged thanks to the fact that a complete success is exactly what we got.
Our film is centered around Hiro, a 14-year-old boy (who happens to be a genius inventor) living in the futuristic city of San Fransokyo (a fictional hybrid of San Francisco and Tokyo) who is trying to cope with the recent death of his beloved older brother Tadashi (also a young genius inventor). Thankfully he is not alone. Hiro is accompanied in the film by new friends Fred, GoGo, Wasabi, and Honey Lemon (Tadashi's former college friends who are also genius inventors) and Tadashi's last and greatest scientific creation, Baymax, a big, white, balloon-like medical droid designed to detect and treat any ailment ranging from small cuts and bruises to cases of cardiac arrest (and probably many other things that exceed the boundaries of our imagination). But Baymax also contains the capacity to sense emotional trauma and, after detecting it in Hiro, becomes dedicated to curing his heartache through helping him and his friends solve the mystery behind a villainous masked man. The very man who was behind the theft of Hiro's prized micro-bots and the death of his brother. How do they plan on catching this new-found super villain? Well, thanks to their genius-level intellect and high-tech resources, they manage to create fully-functional (and colourful) superhero outfits! That's how. But can they catch the masked man before he completes his mysterious and dangerous evil plan of destruction and mayhem? That's for me to know and you to find out.
Of course, being a product of both Disney and Marvel, you know that the finished product is going to be awesome. It was just a question of how awesome. Well, awesome enough to earn as much praise as Disney's 'Frozen' and Marvel's 'Captain America: The Winter Soldier', two movies from each studio that immediately preceded 'Big Hero 6' that were expected to remain unchallenged, critically, for a decent length of time. Good job, Big Hero 6.
A huge part of the success can be rewarded to the writers. The characters we well-developed enough for us to be invested in them, and experience a complete cycle of emotional drama that reflects a real-life struggle with grief. After all, if we didn't care about the loss of Uncle Ben in 'Spider-Man', would we really feel as strong of a connection between Peter Parker and ourselves? Probably not (even 'The Amazing Spider-Man' got that element right) The villain turns out to have sufficient motivation for his actions, also (not that we forgive him for almost killing a bunch of innocent teenagers / young adults - that's too far, bud) so we're getting a compelling villain as a bonus (they're hard to come by - even in the MCU). Add a story that's engaging enough to keep all ages interested and visuals that are worth the price of admission, alone, and you have another modern Disney animated classic (with a satisfying splash of Marvel).
And for all those of you who STILL don't know how Marvel movies work, you NEED to wait for the post-credits scene at the end of the movie. This one happens at the VERY end. It's not a mid-credits scene. It's a post-credits scene. And it's worth seeing.