Reviews WesternAnimation / Big Hero 6

Disney grows up, but is still Disney, for the better

I saw this movie not knowing what to expect. Something about robots, there's a big friendly fluffy cute robot, and a boy named Hiro who builds robots. Something like that. I think I may have heard it was a superhero movie, but I let that slip my mind.

So when it started off with an underground robot fight with illegal gambling, run by high school students, it was the last thing I expected, certainly from a Disney movie. I had no way of knowing where the plot was going to go. Tadashi was established and built up as an important character, and then his death early in the film caught me off guard. I'd already come to like him.

This is Disney not screwing around. They're telling a more mature story here. And by "mature", I don't mean "dark and loaded with cynicism", like the Marvel comic it's based on. I mean one with themes that you don't normally expect in their films, such as loss, grieving, revenge, and moral questioning. Even the villain has a sympathetic motivation.

Of course, it's Disney, so there's plenty of light-hearted comedy and cute character designs. In fact, the movie is a bit of a genre-blender and emotional rollercoaster.

When the characters decided they wanted to put on costumes and become superheroes in order to catch the villain Hiro blames for his brother's death, I thought, "Oh please. Now it's turning into a superhero movie." Well, it didn't quite do that. Instead, it merely added "superhero" to the list of genres it already occupied: comedy, drama, adventure, mystery.

I said before that this movie is based on a Marvel comic. Well, I say "based on" in the loosest sense. While Disney is a bit infamous for taking stories and cute-ing them up, here I think it works very much in the story's favor. We still get a bunch of dark themes and even a questionable moral choice from the protagonist.

But the Marvel comic contained darkness that was there solely for the sake of having darkness: it had a ghost made of the souls of Hiroshima bombing victims, it had government corruption and tragic backstories galore - you get the idea. Disney stripped all that stupid crap out and only kept the darkness needed to tell a compelling story, while adding, well, cuteness and humor.

It's Disney growing up, while still being Disney.