Watch Big Hero 6 Online Free~The Playlist’s first ever visit to the
Tokyo International Film Festival could scarcely have got off to a more appropriate start than with the World Premiere of the new film from
Walt Disney Animation Studios: “
Watch Big Hero 6 Online Free” from directors
Don Hall (“
Winnie the Pooh”) and
Chris Williams (“
Bolt”). After
all, we’re a U.S.-based publication journeying across the world to
experience our first Asian festival, and one of the overriding themes of
the film is cross-cultural hybridization—it's set in a fictionalized
melange of two iconic cities (see if you can guess which ones), the
near-future metropolis of San Fransokyo. But there are also corporate
cultures meeting here for the first time: this is a Disney film based on
a
Marvel comic book property, and while it’s definitely a
Hollywood film, it wears its manga influences on its sleeve with
foregrounded pride. And for the most part, the admixture is
intoxicating, skillfully grafting the clean, familiar but still
effective emotional throughlines of classic Disney storytelling onto the
interesting topography of this more recent, Japanese-inflected terrain.
In fact, inasmuch as “
Frozen” amounted to Disney reinventing
their traditional gender politics, “Big Hero 6” can in some ways be seen
as the studio addressing its historical reputation for ethnic
homogeneity and cultural appropriation. Addressing it in the form of a
big, lovably goofy, marshmallow-shaped robot nurse called Baymax.
Hiro Hamada (
Ryan Potter) is a 14-year-old robotics prodigy, orphaned along with his elder brother Tadashi (
Daniel Henney) when he was just three and left in care of his Aunt Cass (
Maya Rudolph).
Hiro wastes his significant brainpower grifting local robot fights
while Tadashi, by contrast, studies at university, designing a cuddly,
caregiving robot nurse/doctor/diagnostician called Baymax (
Scott Adsit).
Tadashi shares a lab with four other self-described “nerds” (though
there’s really no sense that the word has any negative connotations), a
conveniently Benetton-diverse group, each of whom has their "thing":
Gogo (
Jamie Chung) is a feisty goth-y engineering genius; Wasabi (
Damon Wayans Jr) is a neat freak and neurotic laser specialist; Honey Lemon (
Genesis Rodriguez) is a preternaturally talented chemist; while Fred (
TJ Miller)
is the dropout college mascot/motormouth who occupies the wisecracking
sidekick role here (often rather irritatingly). When Hiro sees all the
cool stuff they’re up to, he goes all out to impress the visionary
Professor Callaghan (
James Cromwell) so that he’ll let him
join the class. But the very night of his triumph, the lab burns down
and Tadashi, who rushes in to save Callaghan, is killed.
Watch Big Hero 6 Online Free: This is only the beginning of a extremely involved plot that sees Hiro
learn about five lessons per minute regarding friendship, being true to
yourself, grief, teamwork, the duty of creative genius, morality, the
emptiness of revenge, etc, etc. It’s often heady stuff for a Disney
movie, and the film shows an admirable willingness to go to some dark
places (a scene where the gang ends up driving off a pier and getting
trapped in a car underwater feels unusually real-world perilous) in
order to map Hiro’s inevitable embrace of what’s right and, ultimately,
heroic. But the sheer number of lessons that Hiro has to learn means
that the film takes on a rather episodic quality; a lot of little
battles rather that one grand arc. And in constantly introducing new
strands of plot and subplot, something’s gotta give, and that something
is the characterization of the paper-thin supporting players, as well as
dialogue that veers from prosaic to eye-rollingly on-the-nose.
Furthermore, this overstuffed quality makes it sometimes feel like the
directors aren't aware that the real gold is in the relationship between
Hiro and Baymax, who, having been designed by Tadashi and remaining
active after his death, becomes a touching proxy for Hiro’s beloved
sibling. Baymax has been programmed solely to ease pain and becomes pet,
companion, helpmate, and ultimately superhero, in an effort to heal a
little boy who is otherwise unable to process his vast, wrenching grief.
At moments, “Watch Big Hero 6 Online Free” threatens to vie with “
Up” for Most Touching Animated Film About The Grieving Process, but then something new and noisy distracts us.
However, the design of the film is pretty much flawless. And along with
the the wonderfully detailed rendering of San Fransokyo, with streetcars
hung with paper lanterns and its Asian-ified Golden Gate Bridge, it’s
the conception of Baymax that is the film’s greatest treat. Beautifully
conceived as a device of pure goodness, he’s basically a huge balloon
animal, moving with believable physics (and even squeaky balloon noises)
and repairing himself with sellotape when he springs leaks. From the
way he sidles bashfully out from too-small spaces, to the way he learns
how to fist bump (there are definite shades of the young John
Connor/Terminator relationship at times), to the extended sequence in
which he is essentially rendered drunk by a draining battery, Baymax
might be Disney’s most wholly adorable creation ever, and that's surely
saying something.
But outside the design, the animation, and the laudable attempt to meld
different storytelling and graphic traditions, the film is on slightly
shakier ground. The story morphs from one thing to another rather too
often, and a few nice flourishes are marred by reintroduction and lack
of subtlety. The first time we hear Gogo say “woman up!” it’s a fun if
obvious nod to female empowerment, but the second time it’s an empty
catchphrase. Similarly, a glimpse at a portrait on the wall of Fred’s
mansion is a fun easter egg for Marvel fans that is rendered moot by an
extended post-credits scene. And we can’t ignore the absolutely godawful
specially-commissioned
Fall Out Boy track “
Immortal,”
which is slathered all over a montage and then wails over the end
credits, disrupting the otherwise solid if unmemorable work of
Henry Jackman’s
score. How much any of this might impact the kids in the audience we
can't really say—in fact, the restlessness of the story might well work
to keep their attention (in general it feels like it skews slightly
older than "Frozen"), and hopefully one single, borderline unlistenable
pop-punk dirge will not an army of pint-sized emos make.
Egregious soundtrack missteps aside, “Big Hero 6” is truly glorious to
look at and comprises a mostly beguiling mixture of genres, story
strands, and cultures, though it remains a mixture rather than a wholly
seamless synthesis. Otherwise, whatever flaws it has are ones of
over-enthusiasm and over-ambition, and are therefore easy to forgive,
especially because when it works, it
really works [read: there
were tears]. It’s a film that clearly has had lots of care lavished on
almost every aspect of its conception and execution, and to echo a
weighted phrase frequently returned to, to various levels of
heart-tugging effect: with “Big Hero 6” I am satisfied with my care.
You, and any bright-eyed moppets of your acquaintance, probably will be
too.
