Big Hero 6

Spoilers cause i'm the last person around who hasn't seen it till now.

So, First of all, it had a lot of potential....... but for me it dropped the ball.

The Story focuses on Hiro and Tadashi, Orphaned cause Disney hates living parents.
Hiro is young, graduated school at 13 and decides hustleing betting matches at 'bot fights' is the best way to pass the time.
Tadashi just wants to save everyone in the world with no worries about his own personal health.

Hiro really wants to go to the same college as his brother so he enters a showcase in order to impress Calihan and get a spot in his program.
Telepathically controlled micro magnetic robots....
He gains the interest of many scientists but before he can put his invention away disaster strikes.

Hiro loses everything: his teacher, his brother and his nifty little invention.
In a state of grief he refuses to leave his room until his comes across his brothers final invention. A robot that focuses on being a personal nurse essentially.

Soon after he finds out his invention wasn't destroyed and that the fire was no accident and now he has vowed to get revenge for his brother. He gathers his classmates into a team and together they solve the mystery surrounding these sad circumstances.

...
well thats what I want to say.
In actuality Hiro reprograms the robot to be able to fight, fly, scan and even potentially kill.... and then the other team do stuff but add absolutely nothing to the story
at all
they do one thing.
In fact there are a handful of characters that add nothing to the story and could be cut completely with nothing lost.

However thats not why i'm so dissapointed in this film.

Early on theres a character who tries to steal a microbot and so we the viewer see them as the antagonist.
However anytime a story is like "oooooooo look at this guy.... look how evil he is.... you better not trust him" you have to look at it and go "that is too obvious, what are they trying to hide"
I'm not saying i've never been fooled but after the last thing i read fooled me... a thing that i am still upset about (mostly because it hasn't been resolved)... well lets just say i've become far more cynical about it.
anyways the antagonist ends up not being the antagonist and i have to point out that none of that had to happen.

*clears throat*
 How the story should have played out:
Hiro enters the contest, refuses to sell the idea and works under calihan. He is taken under his wing and gladly shows the professor everything to do with the micro robots and they work on it together.
Over time Calihan starts acting odd, he stops spendign as much time with the boy and even gets mad at him a few times until one day he's seemingly normal. he shows hiro the capabilities of the robots but it's not something they were intended for and frightens the boy, before he can stop him from doing something stupid theres an accident and someone dies.
Filled with grief of losing someone and the anger of being betrayed he takes it out with the help of his team before realising that it wasn't want the dead person wanted and together with his team does the right thing in capturing calihan but not killing him.

Instead Hiro and Bamax do everything, none of the others have a moment to shine and the story ends in a "omg look at all the people we will help" way even though the only person they helped was the one girl at the end.

The pacing was also pretty terrible. It felt like snippets of other films mashed into one or a bunch of episodes watched in row.  Too many ideas all done too quickly with no time for an arc cause it focuses on the wrong story.

Is it a bad film? yeah i think so, again i'm just bummed out about all the potential.
Did i dislike it? i guess... i didn't hate it. I don't even begrudge it my time but i will not be seeing it again.
Still i'm sure there is still something decent about it.

The good:
I like the look, the mix of San Fransisco and tokyo was pretty neat, the characters don't fall into the category of all having the same look (or similar looks to other disney films)
The lighting effects are very nice... theres a scene where ligth shines through bamax and all i could wonder was what the endgine was going through to accomplish that... like was it a subsurface scattering type of thing? no matter what it was is looked great.
When i noticed the music it was decent.


The bad:
Too many characters that could have been cut with nothing lost.
This could have been a story about a boy, his robot and the professor that betrays him and nothing would need to be cut.
Long... or at least it felt very long.
ok so i checked and it was 102 minutes but it felt like 120.
Extremely scattered and characters have revalations at breakneck speed.
predictable... every beat could be seen from a mile away and i went in knowing as little as possible.

Again it wasn't terrible but wow it had problems. maybe it could work better in a monster of the week type tv show... it would have solved some of the pacing issues and given more of a chance for characters to grow. (also the other 4 could have each gotten an episode to shine)
But in the end it was a movie and i'm pretty sure the second one has already been greenlit... i don't think i'll be seeing it.

It looks like all my shows will start ending soon so lots of little rambles on the way... I should also eventually finish 12 kingdoms which will be a fun ramble.

Until Next Time