Big Hero 6

I’ve been waiting for Big Hero 6 since the early sneak previews of the art. Admittedly, there was little more to my eagerness than thinking the world looked great and that Hiro was an incredibly cute-looking character. This was also the first time a Marvel property went through the Disney filter, so I was curious to see how that turned out.

I was only familiar in passing with Big Hero 6...largely because someone online had asked why Hiro Hamada wasn’t included in Reed Richard’s Future Foundation – which I followed out of love for Alex Power. Not that he came out of his membership of that little team very well. Anyway, I read the comics, including the utterly terrible original run centred on the Silver Samurai and Sunspot, and while there were a few cringe-inducing elements to the depiction of Japanese people, I was glad the property at least existed. The subsequent mini-serials were rather better, but the main problem was that Hiro was simply not at all likeable.

Thus I was quite glad that Disney were clearly going in a completely different direction, essentially retaining only the names of major characters, plus Hiro being a child genius with a robotic manservant of sorts named Baymax. But Disney’s Baymax is a very, very different Baymax – and that is a blessing, and what makes this film.

The Disneyfied version is set in a hybrid world of Japano-American fantasy, with the city of ‘San Fransokyo’. It’s a little bit of a shame that they didn’t feel they could simply set the film in Tokyo, presumably because that would make it less commercially viable in their home territory. But there’s also a charm to the mixed aesthetic. In this technologically advanced city, young Hiro is a bit of a rebel. He has great skill with technology, but uses it to take part in illegal backstreet Robot Wars technological cock-fights. As these are shady affairs, he gets in trouble, and it’s up to his gentle, kind-hearted big brother Tadashi to save him. He gets some very abrupt character development when he sees his brother’s research lab – including the cute inflatable healthcare robot Baymax – and is inspired. He creates what are essentially the cliche of what nanobots can do in sci-fi, only on a macro scale, and impresses the scientific community.

However, at the event at which he is presenting these, there is a catastrophic explosion. His brother goes into the burning building to try to rescue his mentor, and doesn’t make it out. After a period of mourning, Hiro’s one remaining mini robot tries to reunite with all the others – leading him to realize that the explosion was no accident. It’s up to Hiro, along with Baymax and Tadashi’s old workmates, to investigate.

There’s a lot in common with How to Train YourDragon here – including the young boy bonding with a large, powerful, rather goofy non-human companion. And the film admirably manages to hit similar emotional notes. Hiro experiences loss, determination, the dark desire for revenge, and also the exhilaration of flight. The plot moves with just the right amount of exposition, character development, action and resolution.

I do have some plot-related problems. The fact is that the last thing Hiro should have learned from his brother is that someone has to help the needy. In fact, Tadashi should have trusted his mentor could look after himself rather than recklessly putting himself in danger. Then there’s the fact that even though his actions likely make his daughter hate him, the big winner is actually the bad guy – who without his dastardly plan would have never been able to get his loved one back. So while he ended up looking sad in the back of a police car, in fact crime paid for this villain – far beyond his wildest hopes, as all he had sought was petty revenge.

I also have to confess I felt a bit manipulated by the film’s emotional moments. Hiro is already a tragic orphan, but ends up losing his brother too, and then a sacrifice must be made at the end, too – even if perhaps not a lasting one. While Hiro is utterly adorable and I did enjoy seeing him go through a wide range of emotions, at times the losses didn’t ring true and it felt like artificial plucking of heart-strings. His transition from rebel who looks down on ‘nerds’ to science buff also seemed a bit hollow. Did he have no friends at all from his robot-fighting days? No links that lasted into his later life at all? Really?

The tech was a bit much – Hiro’s invention in particular should have revolutionised all science at once. It also rankled just a little that Hiro doesn’t even think to mass-produce Baymaxes as, y’know, the healthcare robot Tadashi intended him to be.

Ultimately, though, I loved the film – just not unreservedly. It was utterly beautiful, especially the animation for water and sky and various types of energy. Hiro was an endlessly loveable little guy, and Baymax’s non-threatening personality was hilarious put into the various perilous situations we saw. The twists were obvious but compelling, and the jokes were genuinely funny. Disney is still in a very good place, and this is one of their better films since embracing CG, very much worthy of Wreck-It Ralph (and the little background references to old Disney films, like the Stitch cushions, were a nice touch). Definitely one I’ll enjoy watching again. 

Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow

Marvel Animation, in its various iterations, is perhaps under-appreciated as an American animation studio. Over the years, there have been a huge number of Marvel properties adapted into animation – Ralph Bakshi was animating Spiderman in the 60s (very badly) just before he went to work on Fritz the Cat; a wide variety of shows in the 90s were made under the studios of New World Animation that became the ‘Marvel Animated Universe’, including the X-Men, Spider-Man, Fantastic Four and Incredible Hulk cartoons; while in more recent years, the likes of X-Men Evolution and its follow-up Wolverine and the X-Men have been successes for Marvel Animation. The studio’s latest project is a series of anime produced in collaboration with Madhouse, thus far a mixed bag. But from 2006 until the May of this year, Marvel produced eight animated films for Liongate. Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow is one of them, the most kid-friendly and light-hearted, but just like all the rest, making minimal impact on the world of animation or the mainstream and being released direct-to-video.

Next Avengers comes so close to being superb enough that I would go recommending it to anyone who may be interested as an attempt to do what Teen Titans did but better, and without the contrived anime stylistic imitations – albeit not first, and for that many will dismiss it as a poor imitation. What holds it back, sadly, is the animation. It’s a little strange, because the production values are high: pause the film at just about any point and the frame will look superb. The character designs are by and large cute and appealing. The story, while odd, is good, and the voice acting much better than I expected. But the characters just do not move right. They are stiff and often weightless. They do not move enough, and do not seem to connect with one another, especially in action sequences. There’s a scene where Torunn is slammed to the ground, grasps her sword and flies back up at intense speed, and it should be awesome – but it just seems so flat and lifeless.

It’s a shame because there is real promise here. The premise is oddly dark and might well cause some confusion with young kids who don’t know about Marvel’s multiple universes and assume this will be the ultimate fate of the Avengers: after a period of peace, they are attacked by Ultron and crushed, almost all of them killed. Iron Man escapes, taking with him the four children of Avengers – Captain America and Black Widow’s son James, the Pyms’ son Henry Jr, Black Panther’s son Azari and Thor’s daughter Torunn. Hawkeye, too, had a son, but Iron Man was not able to reach him before they fled to the Arctic.

Somewhat out-of-character for him, Tony Stark spends twelve years in hiding while Ultron conquers much of the world. He trains the children and tells them stories of their parents, all dead but for Thor, who had returned to Asgard. They grow up as siblings: James is a somewhat self-centred boy who yearns to set out from their ‘island’. Azari has more of a sense of responsibility and is the sensible one of the bunch. Pym is the youngest, and the cute, mischievous comic relief – probably the most likeable of the four. And then there is Torunn, who wears a very silly breastplate reminiscent of Zero from Megaman and tries to imitate her father’s speech, being quite adorable when she gets it wrong – and right. ‘I say thee nay!’ Always gets me.

One day, with an amusingly nonchalant entrance, The Vision, damaged, comes to the island to tell Stark about Hawkeye Jr. The children follow Stark into an underground layer, where he is repairing The Vision. They accidentally set off Iron Man’s robotic versions of the Avengers, who are not only captured by Ultron and made into his soldiers, but who give away the hideout, meaning the Next Avengers are on the run. Of course they eventually must confront Ultron himself, but even with the help of the much more worldly, rather flirtatious new Hawkeye, they’re going to need help. Torunn’s father may help in some way, but he won’t return. But perhaps there is another Avenger still alive – the strongest of them all.

I really wanted to love this. Seeing the cute designs and fluid motions of the very first shots, I was eager. I could forgive the utterly awful exposition piece with static cut-outs of the Avengers moving about as stylised. I even liked how Storm’s appearance was limited to just a hand – perhaps a rights issue? But then the real story kicked in and it just looked clumsy, and only for a few minutes of the whole could I put aside how poorly animated and clunky it all was. A shame, because I really liked the characters and probably even prefer the general premise to that of Young Avengers. Oh well.