Big Hero 6 [2014]

April 2, 2024

It’s so hard to find good movies these days. This is one of the reasons why I created Subversive Rabbit, to recommend people only movies worth watching. And I still stand by my statement that every movie has something to offer. However, there’s a distinct difference between these two categories. So, Subversive Rabbit focuses on the first and not on the second. Studios have become factories manufacturing products. And those products are movies. This has been true in the past but it’s especially true in today’s world. Well, I better get on with it as a rant about the state of the movie industry is not something you probably expected right about now.

After all, we’re talking about the Disney animated movie Big Hero 6 loosely based on a graphic novel series of the same name. The reason why I felt I needed to say those things can be found in the following lines. Disney acquired Marvel Comics back in 2009 and they were waiting for the perfect opportunity to cash in on their properties. Remember, they have a couple of kids’ television channels as well. So, some six years later, we got this movie. You can clearly see and feel that a lot of effort went into Big Hero 6. The opening scene featuring a bustling futuristic city showcases exactly that.

We will be following Hiro Hamada, a teenage prodigy who spends most of his time designing robots for illegal street fighting. He doesn’t know it yet, but his skills will soon help save the city of San Fransokyo from grave danger. However, he will not be alone in his efforts as an extra-chunky medical robot Baymax and his friends will help him. The story is aimed squarely at the kids and, in that sense, it’s pretty awesome. I feel like they were steering them toward a creative and exciting use of their time and effort. Do you like cool robots? Just become an engineer and you’ll be able to make them.

And yet, the cynic in me simply could not avoid seeing all the commercial and formulaic aspects of the movie. The characters were stereotypical and there was no inner logic in the movie. And don’t get me started on the predictable story full of all the usual twists we’ve seen in countless other movies. Pixar proved that you can make financially successful movies for both kids and adults that feature authentic stories. Big Hero 6 has one message and that message is engineering is cool and you can make robots with it. However, is that message enough to sustain a ninety-minute movie? In my opinion, no, it is not. The final battle was kind of cool though.

This is why I say the whole movie feels like a product. A product that’s trying to reach audiences not just in the US but also in Asia. For example, Studio Ghibli made movies that anyone can enjoy, no matter where they live. Disney saw that and wanted to achieve the same level of, not recognition, but brand recognition that equals big fat dollar stacks. I also want to add that Big Hero 6 is actually a pretty dark and fucked up experience featuring a lot of death and sorrow. Yes, you read that right, death and sorrow take centerplace and push the story forward with almost all the main characters.

Although we shouldn’t really kid ourselves, there are only three main characters in this movie. The rest of them are cardboard cutouts there to fill the space and divert attention. After all of this, you might be wondering why the hell you should watch this movie. Well, as I already mentioned, this is a product, single-use product that can serve as a good time-killer if you don’t have anything better to do. Or you got bored of Reel Steel and Transformers. Then again there are countless seasons of Robot Wars and other television shows featuring robots fighting, something that’s much more interesting than this movie.