Other Media Review

Movie Review: Big Hero 6

My daughter and I saw Big Hero 6 and we loved it so much that it’s almost ridiculous. It’s a great family movie, and it’s a great comic book movie. It’s very loosely inspired by a Marvel comic, which makes it technically a Marvel movie, which is why you want to stay until the end of the credits. It’s one of the funniest movies I’ve seen in a long time, and it’s deeply moving, and artistically it’s glorious – it’s like being dropped into a toy store where all the toys are made of candy. It’s also one of the most diverse movies I’ve seen in a long time. It’s the kind of “two thumbs up” movie that makes me wish I had more than two thumbs.

Big Hero 6 is the story of Hiro, a fourteen year old boy who is drifting a bit, gambling on fighting robots in the back streets of the imaginary city of San Fransokyo. His big brother Tadashi points him towards “Nerd School,” where Tadashi and his friends study chemistry and robotics.  When disaster strikes, Tadashi’s friends have to help Hiro fight a bad guy, with the help of Baymax, a robot Tadashi designed.

Baymax is a robotic medical assistant, designed to help people recover from injury, whether physical or emotional. Having adopted Hiro as his patient, Baymax is determined to help Hiro “improve [his] emotional state” by winning the day.  Baymax is the soul of the movie.  The filmmakers aren’t afraid to take their time with Baymax, which leads to very funny stuff plus refreshing pacing.  Everything else in the film might whiz at lightning speed, but as Baymax says, “I am not fast.”  Baymax is naive but completely focused on helping his patient.  He a funny, poignant, heroic, and utterly irresistible character.

Big Hero 6 is the kind of movie that you could write a lot of essays about. You could write thousands of pages just about the movie’s design – it’s truly joyous. If you need topics for film school, feel free to use any of these:

Essay Topic #1: What is the deal with Pixar’s eternal plot problem? The movie starts as a character-based dramedy about dealing with grief. It reaches a point at which the basic conflict is essentially resolved. This point occurs about 2/3 of the way through the movie. Suddenly, it switches to a more conventional superhero film about stopping the bad guy, learning that with great power comes great responsibility, and saving the world. This second movie was fun, but not as original.

Essay Topic #2: What’s the deal with Pixar’s ability to make me sob unashamedly in a room full of people? There are several DreamWorks animated films that I like, but the only ones that touch my soul on a Pixar level are the two How To Train Your Dragon films. Is Pixar manipulative? Or are they just very, very good at distilling emotion to its purest form? And if so, how do they do it? Discuss. See also: the trailer for Inside Out.

Essay Topic #3: Why do kids love Pixar movies given that they are almost always on some level about how to be a parent? In Big Hero 6, the narrative is different but it’s still very adult – it’s about how to use your talents, and how to deal with loss and grief. This movie clearly affected even the youngest moviegoer on a serious level. I know, because a toddler was sitting right behind us and at one pivotal point yelled, “OH NOOOOOOO!” Meanwhile, I was sobbing and laughing and basically just being a big soggy puddle of emotion. Don’t even get me started on the short that precedes the movie, Feast. I won’t spoil anything about Feast but I will tell you I was cracking up and simultaneously bawling my head off.

And for the winner, I’m going to focus on Essay #4: YAY DIVERSITY WE LOVE IT!

One of the great things about Big Hero 6 is how diverse it is. All the main characters are scientists or “science enthusiasts”. Of the core group of human characters, Hiro and Tadashi are Japanese-American, Go Go is Korean, Honey is Latina, Wasabi is African-American, and Fred is white. Of these characters, two are female (there’s also Hiro’s aunt plus a female pilot). I was over the moon about this. The Latina is not the spicy one, the black guy is physically large but does not have a tough guy persona, and the white guy, who fits a stoner dude stereotype (without any actual, um, stoning going on, of course), has certain hidden depths. One of my passions is challenging the idea that scientists are all bunch of white guys, so watching a theater full of kids see a lab full of college students of multiple ethnicities on screen was thrilling.

big-hero-6-immersedIt turns out that some people feel the casting is racist because the original comic book features all Japanese characters. Their feeling is that Asians are so poorly served by Hollywood that to replace the Asian characters with other ethnicities, even non-white ethnicities, is essentially whitewashing. This is the practice of casting minority characters with white actors, or replacing them with white characters altogether, as seen in Avator: the Last Airbender and Edge of Tomorrow. I feel strongly about whitewashing and I understand why people’s gut reaction to the changes would be, “Great, we just lost more Japanese parts”.

However, I think the changes make sense given the other changes from the comic to the movie. The comics are only slightly related to the movie, and some of the biggest changes involve theme. The comics involve superheroes with powers that stem from mutations, tech, and the supernatural. The storylines aren’t about science, particularly. The comic book group is also somewhat like the Avengers – some of them are into science and some aren’t, and science is one tool among many and not the focus of the story. If the movie had kept these storylines, then it would have made since to me to keep the characters Japanese, since people of Japanese ancestry are so under-represented in Western media in the heroic crime-fighting team sense.

In contrast, the film version of Big Hero 6 is a love-letter to science. The heroes are college kids – in fact Hiro’s first challenge as a character is to develop an ambition to go to college and then to get in. All their powers come from technology . It’s crazy, comic-booky, sci-fi technology, but still technology. Because of this, it made sense to me to have a diverse cast in the film. I want kids to see that all ethnicities can be scientists. In fact, I think it would have been somewhat harmful to have an all-Asian cast, because of the stereotype that “Asians are good at math.”

In this film, Asians can be good at math and science and technology, and so can Latinos, and so can African-Americans. You can even be a person like me, with no particular aptitude for science, who just thinks it’s neat, and that’s cool too. I loved it that so many kids could see themselves in these heroic scientist characters.

Also, no one falls prey to Trinity Syndrome. Trinity Syndrome is when a female character is given a great introduction and is shown to be amazingly smart and capable only to be completely overshadowed later by the male protagonist (see: How to Train Your Dragon 2 and The Lego Movie – movies I adored but which also drove me bonkers). This is a common problem for ethnic minority characters as well. While Hiro is very much the, excuse me, hero of the story (subtle, Pixar, reeeal subtle) the other characters are elevated, not diminished. Instead of them having to mysteriously de-power to make Hiro look powerful, they level up every time Hiro levels up.

You could argue that this isn’t true at all – if Hiro is the youngest, least experienced member of the group, why does he end up designing all the superhero tech? But it does appear to be true once the tech is put into place. The narrative focus is entirely on Hiro’s emotional journey but his team doesn’t have to become ineffectual to make his triumph possible.

In a lot of ways Big Hero 6 is pretty standard stuff.   There’s a flight scene that’s right out of How to Train Your Dragon, and a superhero training montage set to music that’s right out of…everything, and you’ll see almost every plot development coming long before it happens. But in terms of visual design, the movie is completely fresh and exciting, and in terms of emotional heart, the movie is incredibly powerful. The villain is creepy (at one point he reminded me a little bit of Michael Myers) and the movie might be too scary for little kids, and too sad for some kids who are old enough to understand the emotional import of what’s happening. My theater seemed packed with happy kids, though, and lord knows I was completely blissed out. This movie is worth seeing for the comedic timing alone – I’m serious, it’s the funniest movie I’ve seen in ages, and the saddest, and the sweetest. Also there’s the best car chase since Bullitt. I can’t wait to see it again! Don’t forget to stay for the teaser!

And now, Sarah who didn’t like it as much. 

Sarah: Yeah. Hi. I feel like a gallumphing grumpy pants adding on here, but I didn’t like this movie as much, and I wanted to explain why. Short version: in a recent nonscientific survey taken in my house, four out of four humans (between the ages of 7 and 39) agreed that The Book of Life was better than Big Hero 6. Two out of two canines agreed to whatever I said, so their responses were discarded from the sample total.  Note from CarrieS:  Dear Daughter said she didn’t think Book of Life and Big Hero 6 were comparable, but she liked them both.

Basically, this movie, while visually glorious and truly beautiful to watch, fizzled the more I thought about it. The lack of development of the posse behind or with Hiro bothered me a great deal. Here are all these characters! They’re as interesting as Hiro and Tadashi, but developed minimally to the point where they might as well at times just be weapons attached to Baymax’s arm. Plus, for the love of everything chemical, there is one scene in the lab where Honey Lemon is demonstrating an experiment and it was all I could do not to yell out loud, “TIE UP YOUR HAIR.”

The driving conflict- which Carrie rightly says is resolved 2/3rds of the way through – rests on Hiro and Tadashi, then Hiro and Baymax. But I wanted, so so wanted, more about the rest of the crew. I was so curious about them, and honestly, by the end of the film, I think you could have removed one, two or all of them, and it wouldn’t have made that much of a difference.

As for the diversity, OH MY GOSH YES – but I have two things to say about that.

First, during the screening I went to, one of the previews was for an upcoming George Lopez movie called Spare Parts. (Awful trivia: it was originally called “La Vida Robot.” Oh, boy.) If you don’t want to watch the trailer, it’s about a new teacher (Lopez) who finds himself leading a group of underprivileged high school kids into a nationwide underwater robotics competition. I watched that preview and was like OK, BUT WHY ARE THEY ALL DUDES? There’s like TWO WOMEN in the whole trailer, and one is the love interest (OF COURSE) and the other is administration (and one is Marisa Tomei and the other is Jamie Lee Curtis). No female students interested in robotics at all? Not from that trailer anyway.

So contrasting that trailer with the scenes of Tadashi’s school lab, where so many minorities were included was amazing by comparison. That’s part of why I wanted more to be said about them. Because there was so little development of the group with Hiro (except for Fred, he got a lot of development, probably to justify his being there in the first place), I was bummed. Minorities Can Be Sidekicks Too was not the crew of scientifically brilliant individuals I expected.
That said, I love love LOVE Go Go Tamago. She was my favorite – I mean, she’s short, smart, somewhat snarly and more curvy than most animated heroines.
Go Go Tomago, who has very curvy legs and body, and wears capri leggings under a pair of shorts

 

I didn’t need the film to be All About Diversity – that’s not what I’m trying to say. But I wanted those super interesting, super brilliant individuals to be more fully developed characters in their own right, and that didn’t happen.

My biggest complaint about the movie echoes Carrie’s points about the plot. It was a lot of pilot, with not enough story for me. This was a nearly-two-hour first episode of a tv show, not a movie that wrapped up and fulfilled everything that it introduced.

I do have two more essay topics for you, though.

Essay Topic #5: What does it mean that in this world, American and Japanese cultures have been combined to create San Fransokyo? How did the artists merge recognizable and subtle elements of Japanese culture and American culture (clue: very well and it was visually stunning)? What would the result be if these cultures could actually merge?

Essay Topic #6: Baymax is created with a software chip that is all about health care. This chip is programmed by Tadashi, and lives in a port that is basically a little northwest of where Baymax’s heart would be if he weren’t, you know, an inflatable robot.

When the health and caring – and underlying pacifism – of Baymax’s programming are not sufficient after Hiro and Baymax discover The Bad Guy Doing Bad Things, Hiro programs a second chip which loads parallel to the first – and yes it is TOTALLY a red chip HOW DID YOU GUESS – that adds fighting maneuverability and offensive strategy to Baymax’s abilities. In a nutshell, Hiro downloads all the best fighting techniques and boom, Baymax is an inflatable nurse who can rip your teeth out without anaesthesia.

While the plot deflated (har har) for me the more I thought about it, I’m still pondering the underlying messages of having two very separate programming chips for Baymax: health care vs. fighting the bad guys, or, more simply put, care vs. war. Using just one is insufficient for the story, and creates a massive amount of tension, too, and the balance of both is required for the plot and their abilities to collectively advance. What are all the possible meanings of that duality? Like I said, essay topic, and I’m still pondering it.

(And Essay Topic #6.5 – Baymax scans everyone he mets. It’s a default setting. And so everyone he meets – every person – is an individual who needs care in some way.)

Carrie is giving this one a solid A, and this is her review, which she was kind enough to share with me. I’m leaving her grade, but mine would be a solid B, maybe a B-.


Big Hero 6 is in theatres now, and you can find tickets (in the US) at Fandango, AMCtheatres.com, and Moviefone.

Add Your Comment →

  1. John says:

    I went to see this and The Book of Life and had Very Mixed Reactions to this in my post-Book of Life haze (although The Box Trolls was by far the best animated film of the three released in the past few months, but that’s besides the point.)

    Big Hero 6 was so beautiful. I have to agree with Sarah in that the visuals were stunning. They took my breath away. So did the visuals for The Book of Life, but they are very different.

    I found myself a bit confused, underwhelmed, and disappointed with how some of the diversity was portrayed.

    1) The fact that most of the diversity was in a team of side characters that rarely get portrayed did not help. I had no idea that Honey Lemon was Latina, for instance, because her character development was so nonexistent.

    2) Some of the diversity also felt stereotyped and/or shallow as a result of this. For instance, using the phrase “woman up” would have been SO MUCH BETTER if I got to know the side character enough to remember her name, and her strengths, and see her in the context of herself versus the context of the main male character.

    3) While I liked that Fred got so much development, I ultimately think there is a huge problem that the one character that gets developed so much on the team is in fact a rich white male. He may not act like a rich white male – but he is.

    4) I think the idea of Sanfransokyo was really solid, but I found myself wishing that I saw more of the cultural distinctions beyond the visual imagery. The visuals made a clear indication that the cultures were mixed in an awesome, futuristic way, but the actual world-building in terms of the behaviors and the characters was weak. I didn’t see how the hybrid culture affected the people, just their living conditions.

    5) Sometimes the script had excessively long action/flight scenes that seemed to exist just to accommodate the visual proficiencies of the film. Those extra minutes could have been used to develop the other characters, but instead it felt like the film milked the visuals rather than making the characters and their diversities more developed.

    6) That being said, I loved the characters when I did see them. I loved the focus on science as being something fun and creative, though I did find the science itself to feel very glossy. I also loved the relationship between Baymax and Hiro, which I felt was the strongest part of the film for its thematic depth.

    7)
    Spoiler////// I also appreciated how mourning and grief were handled. IMO, it was one of the best Disney/Pixar depictions of it, both in the emotional journey and the cinematography used to convey it in the film. /////////End Spoiler

    Sorry for all of the thoughts – Big Hero 6 is a *cough* big movie in a lot of ways, and it’s great to see it being talked with this level of depth and consideration.

  2. CG says:

    Haven’t actually seen it yet but just wanted to point out Big Hero 6 isn’t actually a Pixar film.

  3. Kristin says:

    I saw Big Hero 6 while already super emotional and was *not* prepared for all the grief. I didn’t know much about the movie at all – my parents wanted to take the 5 year old to a movie and he insisted I tag along. Had I known more than just the name, I wouldn’t have taken him. He was too young. There were some scary parts that made hm uncomfortable and explaining death in a whisper to him in a crowded theater was not on my top 10 list of things to do. He loved parts of it – laughed really loud and got excited about some scenes. It’s on me for not researching it first to make sure it was appropriate for him.

  4. CarrieS says:

    It’s a Disney-Pixar movie. Pixar is owned by Disney. John Lasseter, the movies’ producer, is one of the co-founders of Pixar. This movie was not produced by Pixar but Pixar did a ton of work on it. If by “Pixar film” you mean “a film that has no fingerprints on it other than those of Pixar” you are correct. Most online writing about the movie has mentioned Pixar’s influence on Big Hero 6 because it’s huge, in the sense that Pixar worked on it extensively, making it a joint project with Disney Animation Studios.

  5. Elyse says:

    But Sarah, what did the cats think?

  6. SB Sarah says:

    The cats thought we were late to feed them and were disinterested in anything we had to say about them being Haiiiiiiiry baaaaaaabies.

  7. LovelloftheWolves says:

    Drunk Baymax was the best! Scratch that, every scene with Baymax was THE BEST. Even the scenes where I teared up.
    I guess I’m just excited that the movie lived up to my expectation. Thats getting harder to do these days. And while I agree the supporting characters had little more than two notes to them, I think thats okay. After all, there are most definitely going to be sequels. (Or at least a tv show). They’ll get their time to really delve and shine.
    I will add that though, thanks to the many trailers for Big Hero Six, I knew what was going to happen for the first part of the movie. Even then, I still wasn’t prepaired for it. I mean, the way it resonated throughout the whole emotional arc of the film? And the emotional climax? I’m still reeling from it. I cant imagine being a 7 year old kid (or marginally older) trying to deal with that resolution.
    (I also felt that The Book of Life, though visually stunning, does not hold up compaired to Big Hero Six – though that may be my undying love for all-ages comic-based movies/tv shows.)

  8. SB Sarah says:

    @LovelloftheWolves:

    My 7 year old was having trouble with the climax, too, and was stuck on the idea of…being stuck (trying to avoid spoilers here). But that led to a neat conversation about what makes Baymax real, what makes him alive, and what makes people who they are, too. But the resolution was tough for him and I wasn’t entirely prepared for that part, either.

  9. Nicole says:

    Loved the movie, but I was waiting for Honey to whip out the pink potion to solve the immediate physical challenge posed by the antagonist. Why show us that at the beginning, then not use it?!

  10. Quynh says:

    I don’t think Go Go is Korean. Her last name is Tamago, sounds Japanese to me. And she doesn’t have Korean looking eyes. I’m talking about natural, pre-surgery. Actually, I was hoping she’d be Vietnamese like me!

  11. glee says:

    So, I’m not a movie person so most likely won’t see this movie but I want to say for Question 6.5 that scanning everyone without their permission/knowledge is not a good thing, even if for purportedly good reasons. The retired privacy officer speaks 🙂

  12. Jikie says:

    Like Quynh @11 said, Tamago’s not a Korean last name (too many syllables for starters)but more likely Japanese. However, her voice actor is Korean American.

  13. sarita says:

    I think everyone who brings up issues with the movie makes very good points.

    Also I loved it so hard you guys. So hard. There is this moment when the good guys first confront the badguy as a team, and he does this little motion with his head, and despite of not making a sound and having his face completely covered, that motion alone completely effectively conveys this sense of ‘goddamnit. Really?’ Like if you stepped into the shower and then the doorbell rang, and then it turned out to be a Jehovah’s witness. I am so inspired by this, just the craft and the artistry put into something so thoughtful and good-hearted.

  14. Ryo says:

    01/10/2014

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