(DISCLAIMER: This blog is not for profit. All images and footage used below are property of their respective companies unless stated otherwise. I do not claim ownership of this material. New to the blog? Start at the start with Snow White.)
And so, like putting on an old comfortable pair of shoes, I return again to the Disney canon. Good to be back everyone, feels like I never left. Unshaved Mouse doing what he was always meant to do, reviewing Disney movies! Put the Disney dance party album on repeat because the whole gang’s here! Including my collection of traitorous good for nothing maps who betrayed and abandoned me the very second things got rough and have now come crawling back like the worms they are.
“Hooray!”
“Ah, don’t be like that, Mouse.”
“Don’t talk to me.”
“‘S only ever love, M. You know that.”
“Where did you go anyway?”
“We just hung around with Rubber Lotus for a while. At first it was fun, but then it got a little weird. He kept asking us to call him “Mouse”. Did you know he has a shrine to you in his wardrobe?”
“Yeah. Shrines. Never not creepy.”
And of course, sine I’ll be reviewing a Disney movie that means the return of our old pal Walt Disney!
“Hello folks! Good to be back, Mouse. Glad to see there’s no hard feelings over that whole “brainwashing you to do my dark bidding” thing.”
“None. What. So. Ever.”
“Glad to hear it. Say, you keep gritting your teeth like that you might chip your incisors.”
After the marriage of Disney and Marvel, the two companies did what many couples do in this situation; put their children from previous marriages in a room together and try to force them to like each other. In this case, Disney CEO Bob Iger told the Disney animators to look through Marvel’s back catalogue to see if they could find properties that would make good animated movies. Now, people who’ve followed my blog from the beginning know that when Disney adapts other properties, fidelity to the source material is not usually high on their list of priorities. Marvel fans, conversely, have a list of priorities that reads
Marvel fans tend to get a little…um….Rain Man-esque…about movies changing even small details about their favourite characters, and films that don’t respect the source material tend to get eaten alive like a cow being dipped in a vat of piranhas.
Poor bastards never had a chance.
So it’s not really surprising that the comic that Don Hall (director of Winnie the Pooh and writer on most of the Lost Era movies) chose the comic Big Hero 6 to adapt instead of a better known property because…well, no one gives a piping hot shit about Big Hero 6 and this way they could mess around with it as much as they needed to. In the comics Big Hero 6 is a Japanese superhero team that operates as a parody of Japanese pop culture tropes. I haven’t read the comic myself but reading up on it raised a few red flags for me, number one being that the mini-series they first appeared in was written by Scott Lobdell, a writer whose work is (if I may be horribly blunt) not my cup of tea.
Secondly…Okay, there are those who would consider this kind of broad cultural parody to be racist in and of itself. I’m not one of them. Irish people come in for a good bit of this kind of thing and I think as a nation our general attitude is…
But…some of the details about this book, like the fact that one of their enemies is the embodiment of all the people who were killed in the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki…
Yeah, I think we can all agree that “loose adaptation” was probably the way to go on this one.
So much for the book. What about the movie? Oh, and while I’m not in the habit of putting up spoiler warnings I’m aware this movie only came out in 2014 so yeah, I will be discussing all major plot points just like I always do. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, get on that. The rest of you? Let’s roll.
So our movie begins with an introduction to one of its most important characters:
Ain’t she beautiful?
This is San Fransokyo, an absolutely gorgeously rendered amalgam of San Francisco and Tokyo and one of the movies greatest artistic and technical achievements. Basically, the animators fed ordnance survey data for the entire city of San Francisco and re-rendered the entire city from the ground up complete with 83,000 buildings and over 100,000 cars. It’s stunning, but it does raise some rather disturbing, Man in the High Castle implications so let’s put that one to bed. No, Big Hero 6 is not set in a world where the Japanese Empire won the war. The backstory here is that San Francisco was utterly destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and then rebuilt by Japanese immigrants using architectural techniques and materials from their homeland. And now San Fransokyo is a beautiful, technologically advanced utopia. See? There are advantages to an open immigration policy.
This man is standing in the way of you getting a robot.
But San Fransokyo isn’t all glittering Starbucks Pagodas and wind-power generating zeppelins. The city has a seedy underbelly where low-lifes gamble on illegal robot fights in back alleys. One of these lowlifes is Yama, whose robot Little Yama is undefeated. He’s just finished off his latest opponent when he gets challenged by Hiro Hamada (Ryan Potter), a fourteen year old boy with a little bunny shaped robot around the size of your thumb.
Daaaaaaw.
Yama mockingly agrees to the fight and kicks Hiro’s ass in short order. But when Hiro challenges him again (with an even bigger stake), Yama falls for it and suddenly realises his mistake when Hiro’s robot tears Little Yama’s arm off and beats him to death with it.
“JESUS CHRIST!!!!”
Furious that he’s been hustled, Yama tells his goons to rough Hiro up but then at the last minute Hiro is rescued by his brother Tadashi (Daniel Henney) who spirits him away on his scooter. The relationship between the two Hamada brothers is the heart of this movie and it is just beautiful. The script and Henney’s performance do a terrific job at making Tadashi pretty much the perfect big brother while also being a believable and relatable character. He’s like the Mufasa of big brothers.
“Yeah. He’s amazing. Probably why theres so much Hidashi porn out there.”
“So much what now?”
“BURN THE INTERNET BURN IT TO THE GROUND IT IS TAINTED BURN IT DOWN AND START AGAIN!!”
As they speed away from Yama’s thugs Tadashi chews his little brother out over betting on bot-fighting, which is illegal. It’s at that moment that the police descend on the alley.
Hiro and Tadashi have to spend a night in the cells before being bailed out by their Aunt Cass (Maya Rudolph). Cass is an awesome character who’s proven to be something of a fan favourite but she confuses me a little. See, I thought that she was the boys’ aunt on their mother’s side, but the Disney wiki gives her name as “Cass Hamada” which would mean that she’s their father’s sister. But then…well, Cass? Why are you white?
“Oh my God, Mouse! You can’t just ask someone why they’re white!”
Sorry, sorry. Anyway. After being taken home Hiro goes right back to looking up bot fights online so Tadashi says that if he can’t stop Hiro from going he’ll at least go with him to make sure he doesn’t get into too much trouble. Instead, Tadashi takes him to his university to show Hiro what he could do with his genius if he actually put his mind to it. Tadashi obviously hopes that he can steer Hiro away from the unsavoury path his life might go down if he continues bot-fighting. My Dad actually did something similar with me when I joined a biker gang in my teens.
Dad took me down to the old blogging mill, an told me that if I dedicated my life to blogging I could make something of myself the lying bastard. Tadashi, however, is on the level and introduces Hiro to his fellow students: Wasabi (Damon Wayans Jnr), Honey Lemon (Genesis Rodriguez) and GoGo (Jamie Chung).
“So, you like GoGo?”
“Meh, she’s fine. Why?”
He also meets Fred (TJ Miller), who’s not a science student but just kinda hangs around hoping that he’ll somehow get super powers from proximity to all this science weirdness. Which, considering this is a Marvel movie, is pretty darn astute of him. And lastly, Tadashi introduces Hiro to Baymax (Scott Adsit), a robotic nurse that he’s been working on. Baymax is an absolute work of art both as a character and as a visualisation of what the next generation of robots will look like (the animation team met with engineers who are actually working on inflatable robots). The heart of this movie is the relationship between Hiro and Tadashi and later Hiro and Baymax. Because of this, the other members of the 6 don’t really get that much development (we don’t even learn their real names) and as a result can be a little one note. I don’t mean that in a bad way, they’re certainly likeable, but we don’t really learn a lot about them beyond each member’s one big trait; Wasabi is nervous and anal-retentive, Honey Lemon’s sweet and enthusiastic, Fred’s an idiot with really poor hygiene and GoGo is pure distilled badass sex appeal walking around like a person.
Hiro is amazed by Baymax but the two brothers are interrupted by Tadashi’s tutor Professor Callaghan (James Cromwell), a kindly, avuncular soft-spoken gentleman who VILLAIN.
VILLAIN. HE’S THE VILLAIN.
“Who told…I mean, no he’s not!”
“Uh huh. Sorry Walt. You got me with Prince Hans, I admit it. But I’m not falling for it this time.”
“How could you possibly think such a stand up gent like Callaghan is the villain?”
“Because he’s a seemingly nice older mentor figure with grey hair and an Irish surname. You did the exact same thing in Atlantis.”
C’mon, they could be brothers!
Anyway, Tadashi introduces Hiro to Callaghan, and Hiro is awe-struck when he learns that Callaghan designed the technology that his battle bot runs on, and is also the author of “Callaghan’s Laws of Robotics.”
Callaghan mentions that his daughter used to love bot-fighting and says that Hiro must fight it very easy given his skill. He gives Hiro some parting words of advice and leaves, supposedly to do non-villainous things. Uh huh. Sure. I’m watching you Buddy.
Hiro is now dead set on getting into nerd school and Tadashi tells him that he just needs to create some kind of new tech that will mpress Callaghan. Hiro reverse engineers his battle bot to create thousands of tiny little microbots.
“Ahem!”
Yes, yes, they’re not actually microscopic sop technically they should be called “macrobots”. Well done Nit, you’re living your life to the fullest. Hiro’s demonstration goes down a treat and Callaghan offers him a place in his school, but Hiro is also approached by Alistair Krei, a smarmy businessman who wants Hiro to sell him his tech for, get this, MONEY.
“BOOOOOO!!! HISS!!”
“Well there you are! He’s obviously the villain!”
“Do you take me for a fool, sir? He’s voiced by Alan Tudyk!”
“Alan Tudyk plays villains!”
“Yes, but only when the character doesn’t SEEM like a villain. When he’s playing a character who seems obviously villainous, he’s never the villain! It’s Tudyk’s law!”
“Dammit! Foiled by Tudyk’s law!”
Tadashi tells his brother how proud he is of him but they’re little moment gets cut short when a fire breaks out on campus. Tadashi runs into the blaze to save Professor Callaghan who was still inside. Tadashi goes in…and doesn’t come back out again.
Hiro, I’m genuinely sorry for your loss but this is a Disney movie AND a Marvel movie, there’s no way you were getting through this without a mentor figure dying.
Stay away from fridges, Cass.
With Tadashi and Callaghan both dead (riiiiiiiiiight) Hiro falls into a deep depression despite the best efforts of Cass and Tadashi’s friends to bring him out of his funk. But when he drops his battlebot on his foot he accidentally activates Baymax who diagnoses his emotional state as puberty. Before Hiro can deactivate Baymax he finds one of his micrcobots which is still active despite the fact that all the others were destroyed in the fire so that’s weird. The two follow the mircobot to an abandoned warehouse (how many times in movies do you see warehouses that are actually being used?) and find vats and vats of Hiro’s microbots that have been mass produced. They also meet this guy:
So this guy is Yokai, our villain (even though he never gets called that in the movie). My opinion on Yokai as a Big Bad is basically this: Good look, not much else. Yokai is part of a larger problem with villains in Marvel’s screen offerings, namely that, with the exception of the odd Loki or Kingpin, the villains tend to not be that interesting.
Maybe he’ll get out of his chair. Maybe he won’t. The suspense is killing me.
But you know what? I don’t tend to get too worried about it because it’s a actually a sign of how much superhero movies have improved over the last few decades. I mean it. The reason why villains in modern Marvel movies tend to feel a little under-cooked is because those movies are far more interested in the heroes and what makes them tick. I remember the days when the heroes were inevitably bland ciphers playing second fiddle to the villains and I don’t much care to revisit them, thank you very much.
Anyway, Yokai attacks and Baymax and Hiro only barely escape with their lives. Baymax’s battery starts to run low which gives us Drunk Baymax, a gift from the beneficent comedy gods.
The Adventures of Hairy Baby and Baymax. Six seasons and a movie, please.
Hiro gets Baymax back in his charger and Baymax notices that Tadashi is gone. Hiro sadly tells him what happened and Baymax is confused.
“Tadashi was a young man in excellent health, he should have lived a long life.”
“Yeah. He should have.”
Baymax is a hell of a riddle to ponder. Is he actually an intelligent being, or is he just an incredibly sophisticated tool programmed so well that he appears to be sentient? Or, does he start out as the latter and over time become the former? Doing things like petting the cat purely because he wants to would seem to indicate that he has desires and wants beyond what he was programmed for, but again this might just be a behaviour Tadashi programmed him with to make him more appealing. We also never see Baymax do anything that contradicts his programming (with one possible exception that I’ll get to) which would be a pretty clear sign that he’s something more than just a bunch of ones and zeroes. For example, the vast majority of human beings have a very strong aversion to killing other human beings. However, we can disregard this programming if the situation is dire enough. We can consciously over-ride our programming whereas a machine cannot. We never see Baymax do that (or do we?) so the mystery remains unsolved.
Anyway, Baymax sees that Hiro is in pain but can’t diagnose anything physically wrong with him. So, acting on his programming, he starts downloading information on mental health from the internet, although it honestly looks more like he’s downloading the ENTIRE internet.
“Nuclear codes help make me a better health care companion.”
Hiro realises that the man in the mask was probably behind the fire that killed Tadashi and vows to bring him in. Baymax decides to help Hiro, reasoning that it will help his recovery. Hiro builds some armour for Baymax and downloads a load of martial arts movies into his brain.
“I know…ju jitsu.”
“Show me.”
They return to Yokai’s lair on the docks looking to kick some Kabuki-masked butt but find the warehouse abandoned just like every other warehouse in the history of ever. But then they see Yokai emerging from the ocean hauling a massive piece of machinery. Wasabe, Fred, Hiro and Gogo show up at the docks looking for Hiro because Baymax and all six get attacked by Yokai who chases them through the streets of San Fransokyo. There’s actually a very interesting little moment where he appears over them with a massive crate raised over his head to throw at them but he doesn’t. But then Honey takes a photograph of Yokai and he gives this disappointed little head tilt as if to say “Well, I’ve got to kill you now genius.” They manage to escape by driving Wasabi’s van into the sea and almost drowning and Hiro says that they need a place to lie low. Fred says “I know a place and it was at this point that I realised that Fred’s character design is basically a human Tigger from Winnie the Pooh.
Look at those beady little eyes. And that preposterous chin!
It turns out that Fred lives in a palatial mansion complete with a butler named Heathcliff (we love Heathcliff). We also see a picture of Fred’s father who looks oddly familiar.
Fred’s Dad is Larry King?!
The team crash in Fred’s nerd-cave and spit-ball ideas as to who Yokai could be. Fred thinks that it’s Alistair Kreis because he’s a wealthy industrialist who wanted Hiro’s tech and also there’s only like two othe radult characters still alive in this thing and it’s probably not Heathcliff or Aunt Cass. Also, he has a “K” in his name. Always a bad sign. Hiro doesn’t buy it but says they need to find out who Yokai really is. Fortunately, Baymax scanned Yokai so he has all his unique medical data which Hiro can use to track him and jeez Baymax, who taught you data privacy ethics, the NSA?
Anyway, this is a superhero movie and we’ve gone quite long enough without superheroes so Hiro upgrades all his friends with superpowers based on their research prjects. GoGo gets super speed using anti-magnetic wheels, Wasabi gets laser claws, Honey gets…the ability to pull…stuff…out of her…purse…I dunno, Honey’s power sucks. Oh, and they stick Fred in a monster costume and turn Baymax into a Sentinel.
SURRENDER MUTANTS.
You know, it occurs to me that Yokai may be one of the most outmatched villains in the whole canon? I mean, he thinks he’s up against one fourteen year old boy and the Stay-Puft marshmallow man and then turns around to find that the kid has gone and turned his friends into human weapons of mass destruction and is now coming for his head. You really do not want to fuck with Hiro.
By updating Baymax’s scanner, Hiro is able to track Yokai to an abandoned island off the coast of San Fransokyo. The team head over there and find the remains of Project Starling, and attempt to create teleportation. Looking through the research logs, the team finds that Alistair Kreis was behind the experiment which was cancelled by the military after a test pilot was lost in the portal. The team reasons that Kreis is using the microbots to take back his equipment and renew his experiments, meaning that Yokai is in fact Kreis.
“Ha!”
Yokai then attacks, flinging a massive piece of debris that is only stopped by Baymax.
Beneath one hundred and fifty billion tons stands BAYMAX. And hes not happy!
The team and Yokai face off and suffer the worst defeat of any superhero team since Chuck Austen destroyed the X-Men. Hiro, however, manages to knock Yokai’s mask off, revealing that he is in fact…OLD MAN WITHERS!
“And I would have got away with it too if it wasn’t for you meddling kids and your meddling robot!”
No, in fact, Yokai turns out to be, of course, obviously, never even a doubt: Professor Callaghan!
Ha! Suck it Walt!
“Walt?”
Huh. Weird.
Well anyway. Hiro is understandably shocked to see Callaghan still alive. He tearfully tells Callaghan that Tadashi died trying to save him but Callaghan simply sneers “That was HIS mistake!”.
And what Hiro does next? Hoo boy.
Hiro orders Baymax to kill Callaghan, and when he refuses, Hiro removes Baymax’s medical chip, essentially brainwashing him, and turning him into a mindless killing machine. As Baymax stalks a now powerless and clearly terrified Callaghan, the rest of the Six try desperately to stop Baymax from killing him. It’s actually kind of remarkable that the most emotionally fraught and tense action scene in the whole movie is our heroes trying to save the villain. I love it, though. I love that these are proper old school, “We do not kill. Period.” superheroes. Anyway, Honey Lemon manages to re-insert Baymax’s chip and he returns to normal. Baymax’s first line after the chip is re-instered is:”My healthcare protocol has been violated.” which seems pretty bland but Scott Adsit manages to give the line a sense of lost innocence that is just heart-breaking. But what about Hiro? I’ve been thinking about this, and I can’t actually think of a single Disney canon hero who has ever done something so morally reprehensible and I’m coming up blank.
Oh yeah, never mind.
Now here comes the bit I was talking about earlier. Hiro, furious at his friends for stopping him from straight up murdering a dude, orders Baymax to scan for Callaghan but Baymax says that his scanner is no longer operable. The big question for me is, is Baymax lying here? If he is, then that’s probably as good proof as you’re going to get that Baymax is sentient. He knows what Hiro is planning, so he has decided to lie to protect his own purpose as a care-giver and also Hiro. But it’s not clear cut. He might not be lying. The scanner might really just not be working. Anyway, Hiro and Baymax fly off, leaving the rest of the Six on the island and back home Hiro tries to fix the scanner. Baymax refuses to let Hiro remove his medical chip, asking again and again “Is this what Tadashi would have wanted?” until Hiro finally breaks down sobbing “Tadashi’s gone!”
Baymax replies “Tadashi is here.” and plays footage for him of Tadashi working on building Baymax, from the early frustration and failure to the final ebullient joy when he at last succeeding in creating him. Finally realising just how close he came to forever tainting his brother’s legacy, Hiro tearfully apologises to Baymax. The rest of the six show up (Heathcliff flew them off the island in the family chopper) and they’re reconciled. Honey shows Hiro some footage they found on the island that shows that Callaghan’s daughter was the pilot who went missing in the portal and that Callaghan blames Kreis for her death. Callaghan is using Hiro’s microbots to enact revenge on Kreis so they hurry to Kreis Corp to stop him.
The Six arrive as Callaghan has activated the portal over Kreis building with the goal of sucking everything he built into it. Hiro pleads with Callaghan that revenge won’t bring his daughter back and almost gets through to him but then Kreis has to open his big stupid mouth and offers him anything he wants, money, power all that he has, everything that he asks for and more…
“I want my daughter back, you son of a bitch!”
This tips Callaghan off the deep end and he and the Six must kung fu fight. Something interesting that Ms Mouse noticed about this movie is that Callaghan and Hiro use the microbots very differently. Hiro doesn’t need to gesture when he controls them and the constructs he makes are elegant and intricate, whereas Callaghan uses broad handgestures to control the bots and tends to use crude, blunt shapes. Hiro uses them as a scalpel, but for Callaghen they’re a club. Anyway, Hiro is able to beat Callaghan by getting the microbots sucked into the portal, leaving him defenceless. But he doesn’t hurt him, explaining to Callaghan that “Our programming prevents us from harming a living being.”
The portal’s still active though and they’re all about to clear the are when Baymax detects live signs from inside it. Realising that Callaghan’s daughter is inside the portal and is still alive, Hiro and Baymax fly in to save her only to discover too late that the portal leads directly into…
BAHIA!
They find the pod where Callaghan’s daughter is in suspended animation and make their way back to the portal but Baymax is damaged saving Hiro from some floating debris and his jet boosters are smashed. Baymax tells Hiro that he can get them both to safety if Hiro will allow him to sacrifice himself by blasting them itno the portal with his rocket fist. I actually kind of hate this scene but it is such a goddamn cheat. Both voice actors play it absolutely beautiful and it is genuinely heart-breaking. But at the same time, you know there is no way Disney would allow a character as marketable as Baymax to stay dead. It’s galling especially since this is a movie that has dealt with with the irrevocable nature of death and grief in a very mature and sympathetic way up until now. For them to pull the tired old “Oh no he’s dead, oh wait he’s not” trope this late in the game just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Not to mention, it just doesn’t make any sense. See, After Hiro gets back to Earth he find that Baymax placed his chip in the rocket fist which allows Hiro to rebuild him when he gets back to Earth. That doesn’t make any sense for two reasons; firstly, taking out his medical chip should have caused Baymax to revert to his red-eyed, killer-Baymax mode. And secondly WHY NOT JUST TELL HIRO “LOOK, HERE’S MY CHIP YOU CAN JUST REBUILD ME AIN’T NO THANG”?! Sure, it’s good for jerking the audience’s heart-strings, but it doesn’t make sense for the character to act that way.
Well anyway, Hiro tearfully says “I am satisfied with my care.” and Baymax blasts them back to earth while he spends an eternity floating amongst the pink elephants and Brazilian parrots. Hiro rebuilds Baymax and now all of San Fransokyo wants to know who these new heroes could possibly be despite the fact that they use their civilian names as their superhero names and one of them is constantly seen in the company of a robot.
“Authorities have been questioning Mr Clark Kent and his friend Superman to see if they know.”
And so the movie ends with Hiro and Baymax dedicating themselves to making the world a better place by punching people.
“Is this what Tadashi would have wanted?”
“Who cares!”
***
Gorgeous, sweet, funny and a pretty darn good superhero movie to boot, Big Hero 6 is a cracking good fusion of the best of both Marvel and Disney’s respective traditions. And, while I almost never find myself saying this at the end of a canon Disney movie; bring on the sequel.
Scoring:
Animation: 19/20
San Fransokyo is an absolute marvel (pun absolutely intended) and the characters look great, move great and probably smell fantastic.
Leads: 19/20
Hiro is one of the most morally ambiguous man characters in the entire canon, and Baymax is just a total, utter triumph of design.
Villain: 12/20
The movie’s only real bum note. Yokai/Callaghan’s not bad per se but the movie just isn’t as interested in him as it is in Hiro, Baymax and the rest of the six.
Supporting Characters: 16/20
Good to great.
Music: 16/20
The soundtrack by Fallout Boy kicks ass.
FINAL SCORE: 82%
NEXT UPDATE: 17 September 2015
NEXT TIME: A well-meaning American billionaire made a cartoon show where a multi-ethnic team of magic kids and their superhero friend try to resolve the centuries old sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland.
An actual Irish person will now review this episode.
Expect extreme and inventive profanity.
Captain Planet and the Planeteers: “If it’s Doomsday, this must be Belfast” aka “The one where the IRA get a nuclear bomb” is next.
“Uh, Mouse? We…we can’t find Walt.”
“What do you mean you can’t find him?”
“I mean he’s gone. And…we found this.”
“This is bad, right?”
“Oh Don…what have you done?”
TO BE CONTINUED