Disney recently released Big Hero 6 in theatres after its inception as a Marvel comic in 1998, giving it a second life. Disney’s recent acquisition of Marvel enabled this film to be made, as they now have the rights to the story. Overall, it was a good, solid film and contained good messages about problems that most people face at one point or another.
The movie focuses on a boy named Hiro who is super intelligent and wants to pursue a career in science. He loses his brother, Tadashi, in a fire after being accepted to a prestigious university, however he finds one of Tadashi’s prototype inventions, Baymax, a healthcare robot designed to help people. The plot thickens when Hiro discovers that Microbots, his invention thought to be destroyed in the fire, are being produced by an unknown villain. In order to stop the villain, Hiro creates technology for himself and his brothers friends, including Baymax, essentially becoming super heroes.
The movie touches on important themes, mainly how to deal with losing loved ones, which is evident throughout the movie from the start. Hiro and Tadashi lost their parents. Hiro does not remember them, and later he also loses Tadashi, and because of this Hiro has to learn how to react to this, whether to seek vengeance or sink into despair, or to try to make the best of life and move on with the help of friends. Baymax also played a key role with Hiro dealing with his brother’s loss as his brother created him and programmed him so he is still with Hiro in a way.
In addition, there is a strong subtheme about safe practices in research and development and avoiding shoddy work. This is an issue today and seeing a movie adress it made me happy as I think not enough companies follow practices optimized with safety in mind.
The animation was superb and I especially enjoyed the lighting effects. The world the movie is set in is futuristic and mixes San Francisco and Tokyo into a single city, San Fransokyo, which was very bright but had shady areas which helped add intrigue and contrast into the world. The technical and background quality of the movie is great and facilitates the immersion.
There were only a few things that I had slight troubles with in the movie, such as originality of ideas and some minor character development. First off, some ideas seemed very similar to Stargate, a science fiction TV show from a few years ago. The microbot technology reminded me of replicators and the teleportation gateways seemed very similar to stargates. This is just something that stuck out to me and it is still cool to see, but I feel some inspiration was taken from Stargate. The other minor complaint that I have is the character development for minor characters, such as Hiro’s aunt and the members of Hiro’s team and friends, besides Fred, is lacking, causing some characters feel one dimensional.
This being said, the development of Hiro and Baymax is excellent and touching. You grow to love the balloon man who appears robotic at first, but seems to gain humanity throughout the film. Big Hero 6 definitely has its moments and reached me emotionally several times.
Overall, Big Hero 6 is definitely worth your time. It has a good story, excellent main characters, an interesting world, and good emotional connectivity. I would say it is worth seeing in theatres, and if you can’t see it then, I would definitely recommend renting it when available.
