Big Hero 6: A Review
Today, I decided to treat myself and took off to see Big
Hero 6 at the local theater. And it was alright - decent action, gorgeous
animation and creative character designs - Baymax was fun to watch and the
villain did look scary, with that creepy mask and an army of nanobots under his
command.
However, the film had its drawbacks and unfortunately, I
feel that they're kind of big drawbacks: a lackluster script and underdeveloped
characters. A lot of things happen in the first third that feel really forced -
there 's no buildup to a lot of stuff that happens and, to me, it felt kind of
phoned in. Also, I was struggling to make sense of the timeline (but I'll get
to that.)
Take, for example, the opening scenes of the film, our
character establishing moment: Hiro, our central lead, is in a bot-fighting competition,
waging money and winning robot fights. He, of course, has a robot that doesn't
look like it's going to win - a David vs. Goliath if you will. But of course
the robot is tiny and harmless, but actually extremely lethal and destroys the
other bot, which angers the guy on the other end of the arena.
It looks like he's about to get his butt kicked, when his
brother comes in, saves him and they both get arrested and thrown in jail for the
night and saved by their aunt (because, in true Disney fashion, their parents
are dead. I say to myself : 'Aha, so this is going to be a Spiderman-type story
where he loses his brother and learns responsibility or something.' Nope. An
interesting story arc that could have spanned the course of the movie was
instead resolved in about ten minutes, with his brother convincing him to ditch
the illegal underground world of bot-fighting and go to college (because this
super-genius kid graduated high school when he was 13.).
So, to get into college he has to impress this professor,
which he does with these microbots he builds because now he's all responsible
and stuff. And then he gets two offers: one to sell the bots to a corporation for
a lot of money or go to school and develop them further. A clear choice between
right and wrong - maybe he'll take the wrong path? Nope. He chooses the school
and the corporate executive seems to threaten him. (Which, as it turns out, was
nothing more than a red herring - said executive turned to actually be a
reasonable authority figure. Literally the only reason he said that line was to
provide a red herring for the villain).
So they go off to celebrate - and the building is on fire
despite the fact they were out of it for literally less than a minute. This
goes back to the movie's very odd sense of time, but we'll get to that. So his
brother goes in to save people, gets killed - and yeah. Hiro doesn't really
have an arc after that. He grieves for his brother, discovers the supervillain
threat (who is using these microbots that he invented), and from there
character development is pretty much pushed aside to make room for the
superheroics and the plot takes center stage.
To the movie's credit, however, Hiro in the later portions
of the movie is blinded by rage at how callous the villain was (No, I won't say
who, but his motivation felt weak and involved a random piece thrown into the
third act with no mention or buildup in advance) and tries to have him killed,
only to be calmed down later. It's only for a scene or two, however, and feels
tacked on. Nonetheless, it's still an effective scene.
The side characters are, well, underdeveloped. You have OCD
Nerd, Nice Girl Nerd, Rebellious Punk Girl Nerd and Rich Slacker Nerd. That's...really
all the personality and development that they get. They're touted regularly as
Hiro's friends, but he barely knows these people - he meets them in the first
third, and doesn't spend a lot of time with them. He doesn't know them, and
neither do we. They have no backstories (well, I shouldn't say that. Slacker
Nerd is established as being extremely rich, but that's about it). We don't
learn about them beyond their character design (for the females) or their
singular quirk and character design (for the males.).
The villain, as I stated earlier, has a cool, menacing
design but a weak backstory. He effectively was involved in some sort of research
project for an unrelated bit of tech (basically: Stargates) that's never
mentioned in the story until the last third. Basically, the experiment went
wrong, he lost a loved one and now he wants revenge on this corporate
executive. My major questions were, effectively, how long ago did this happen
(going by the site of this experiment, it looks like a while) and why is he
waiting until now to take his revenge?
What was stopping him before? Was he just too lazy to invent
the microbots himself? And the fire. Why did he decide to set the entire
robotics building on fire? Wouldn't it have made more sense to steal just a few
microbots to study so you could duplicate them yourself? And then maybe have a
mole in the school to keep stealing more bots as Hiro makes improvements and
the villain wrecks havoc? That would have allowed for actual character growth
among all of our leads and more chances for them to actually interact with each
other.
And that brings me at long last to the time scale of this
movie. This is something that continues to bug me. At one point , Baymax
contacts his friends to cheer Hiro up. Hiro, in the meantime, decides that he
needs to take action against the villain. So he naturally builds Baymax an
entire suit of armor, programs a new computer chip to teach him karate, take
him out to the docks, find the supervillain - and then his friends arrive to Baymax's
summons. (How they knew he was at the docks, I'll never know.). Did they just...stand
around for a long time before going? Are they aware they're in a movie and
waiting for the end of the montage?
Or did Hiro really just program a chip, build a suit of armor
and engage a supervillain in the space of only a few minutes in-universe?
Similarly, he has Tony Stark levels of tech in his basement. Why and how? He's
established as being middle class, and I can't imagine the school would allow
that kind of tech to be taken from their campus.
All in all, however, I think I would say I'd check it out
once - it's a fun superhero romp. Fantastic animation, like what I'd expect
from Disney, fun character designs but weak writing and flat characters don't
really make this all that memorable of a flick. It's definitely more of a
rental instead of an outright purchase.
Final rating: 6.5/10.
