Random Movie Review - Big Hero 6

So Disney have made one risk with an unknown Marvel property and made a great film out of it, so let's now see if they can handle another. Now Big Hero 6 is a film that is both a Marvel property and the first to be part of Disney's long line of animated films dating all the way back to Snow White. Its also the first of these animated films to be based on a Marvel property since Disney acquisition of Marvel and also the first Marvel film since the acquisition to not be part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Now I went in seeing this just for curiosity as I didn't know a thing about the property so this review is based primarily on the film itself and not both the film and the source material. So let's take a look:

So interestingly, the film takes place in the present or future (something of which only Disney have talked about in a small amount of these animated films) in a fictional city called San Fransokyo (obviously a pun on the real life cities of San Francisco and Tokyo with a lot of the city being a combination of the two). We meet Hiro Hamada (pronounced Hero, voiced by Ryan Potter) who makes a robot and takes part in a robot battle to win money. However, things get awry and so his older brother called Tadashi (voiced by Daniel Henney) comes to get him out and bring him home. Hiro wants to be the ultimate robot master in the battles, but Tadashi convinces him otherwise to join him and his team at his university where he does robotics. There he shows Hiro his creation of the health care assistant Baymax (the guy you see on the poster above, voiced by Scott Adsit) and after a lot of convincing, Hiro then decides that this is what he wants to do. But to get in, he has to impress people and a robot competition of sorts and does so with his invention of the microbot. However, as things turn out to be good, a fire breaks into the university and his brother who goes in to rescue anyone inside, dies in the explosion that follows. As such, Hiro then decides to isolate himself for a long time, but then chooses to maintain Baymax in his brother's honour to help find the person responsible for his death and to make a team of heroes in order to do so.

Now having read up about the comic that this film is based on in some form, I think there maybe a few people that may be dissapointed with this film in that it is a very different take on the characters, but still manages to retain elements that the comics were known for having. But as someone who has not read the comics, I thought it was a great film. Compared to Frozen, this is one film where its visuals are just great and very realistic compared to Frozen. Not only that, but there is plenty of it as well. The characters are fun and each have something for us to like about them and the whole city is quite awe inspiring to look at. Parts of the story feel like its been done before, but on the whole, I think its pretty solid with a few things that have been done before, but not to a great extent. Do I like it? I will say that its not the best that Disney have had to offer so far, but there is plenty to like in the film, especially if you want a break or something different from all those musical films. And yes, despite it being animated, Stan Lee does make a cameo, but you have to wait a bit in order to spot him. 9/10

Now as I did see this in the cinema, it feels right for me to also talk about the short film that was accompanied with Big Hero 6:

So this film is about a dog who gets spoiled rotten on junk food. That is until his owner forms a relationship with a waitress and soon enough, the dog gets bored of the healthy food that he gets, until he realises that his owner isn't happy and decides to do something about it rather than to expect to get junk food. This short film gave me mixed feelings in the sense that I was angry with the way the owner treated the dog as you're only meant to feed the dog what you're meant to feed him (and that's from experience), but I liked it in that it had a happy ending and the visuals looked great for a film that was only just a few minutes long. I don't know, but it isn't very long and its one where when you blink, its all over in an instant. 8/10