Yeah, well, as Oscar told you, Big Hero 6 is a really, really good animated movie. It has some of the most beautiful and thoughtful world-building of any movie I’ve ever seen. It has wonderful and charming characters, including its least human character. And it has a wonderful heart to it, with a deeply moving core story about the love between two brothers that ranks with some of the finest scenes of loss in any Disney movie.
So it’s good. You should see Big Hero 6, whether you have kids or not. It’s a delightful, joyful film that will surprise you, make you smile and giggle and even cry in a few places. Big Hero 6 is what movies are supposed to be about, a fresh story built upon familiar tropes.
It’s also a bit edgy, in surprising ways. After all, the film starts with a bit of back-hall gambling and how often do you see that sort of thing in a Disney film? The opening scene, in fact, provides a kind of microcosm of what makes this movie special. We wander down through a city called San Fransokyo, dropping from the glitz and beauty of sparking office towers and a Japanese-influenced take on the Golden Gate Bridge, down past a surprisingly ordinary-seeming set of commuter trains and freeways, down past beaten old buildings and dirty streets into a seedy gambling hall.
You can imagine that cockfights take place in such a place, or some sort of nasty back-alley bare-knuckled boxing match, but instead the film crosses us up. We see a hulking man rumble into the gambling den, and watch money change hands on seedy bets, but the men aren’t fighting with roosters. They’re fighting with robots. And just like that – bam! – the movie changes. We’re crossed up, but in a good way. When our hero Hiro sits down to fight, he’s just clean-cut enough to be a traditional Disney hero and just real enough to be contemporary and interesting. And of course (mild spoiler!) when he wins the battle and is saved from his angry pursuers by his wonderful brother, we see everything else we need to know about Hiro: he’s a genius, he loves his brother and he loves to live a life of danger.
And we also get a hint of the wonderful, positive message of this film: technology is making us happier, more connected, more in touch with the things we love. We see in this movie how technology can help us understand our pain more, can help us become more ourselves, can provide us delightful new adventures, even become a creature that we can love.
It’s a fundamentally optimistic message, a “geeks can inherit the earth” story that pushes viewers to fall in love with a group of thoroughly modern characters who sparkle on the screen. Though the plot that they tumble through is a little shambolic and arbitrary, the characters make the movie special. I want to spend more time with the heroes of Big Hero 6.
The Blu-ray DVD comes with several very enjoyable extras: a insightful documentary that tells the story of how a z-level Marvel comic made it to be a full-budgeted Hollywood film, a six-minute conversation with the animators that sheds light on decisions that they made, a set of deleted scenes, along with the Oscar-winning short animated film “Feast.”
So when can I visit San Fransokyo again? Soon, I hope!