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Compared to the more ambitious, artistic, original, and daring works like Song of the Sea and The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, Big Hero 6 doesn’t hold a candle to them and makes for a bland Oscar winner. Taken on its own merits away from that Oscar win, Big Hero 6 is a perfectly charming, funny, warm-hearted film that marries the superhero origin story to one about grief and overcoming loss.
I suppose one could look squarely at former Pixar head John Lasseter’s ascension to head of Walt Disney’s animation department for the sudden upward trajectory of their films. Tangled and Frozen were very enjoyable spins of their respective fairy tales, grafting on to them themes of sisterhood and personal agency in addition to the lively musical scores. Big Hero 6 isn’t a musical, but it’s another solid entry in Lasseter’s tenure as Disney’s overseer.
About as faithful an adaptation as any of Disney’s typical fairy tale fare, which is to say not at all besides a title and some broad strokes, this film sees the House of Mouse dipping into an obscure Marvel comic book for source material. While the comic has ties to the X-Men universe, those have obviously been dropped as a rival studio owns the film rights to that property. Instead, we get a bunch of science-geeks using their intelligence to create gadgets that enable them to perform daring feats.
While the film is overall more playful, and Baymax is one of the lovable standout character of 2014, the narrative attached to the film is muddled and confused, at best. Not only are we witnessing a character deal with the loss of a close relative, we’ve also got several other characters to introduce and many of them get the shaft. Mostly the film’s female characters are regulated to second or third class status.
In addition to having to introduce and develop a large ensemble of characters, we also get the typical superhero origin story beats, a third-act reveal that’s preposterous, and a typical Disney fake-out death that’s just tired at this point. No one really believed that character was dead, did they? C’mon, Disney wouldn’t do that to a potential revenue source as clearly designed to be beloved and sell merchandise as that one. Having said all of that, the film succeeds more than it falters, and I wouldn’t mind spending more time with these characters in the inevitable sequel(s). Hopefully next time around they’ll give more attention to the female supporting players.
