Big Hero 6

So I still haven't seen Ant-Man, or Age of Ultron, but I did catch Big Hero 6 on one of the cable movie channels this week. If you haven't seen it yet, either, spoiler warning.

I knew very little about it going in, and what I thought I knew didn't make a lot of sense. For example, I thought 13-year old prodigy Hiro built Baymax, the big, squishy robot. But I couldn't figure why he would build essentially a Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man robot, only to later cover it in armor.

As it turns out, Hiro's brother Tadashi built Baymax as a sort of robot nurse, designed to respond to people in pain and assist them. Hiro adds all the armor after he figures out someone started the fire that killed Tadashi as cover to steal some mini-bots Hiro built (which can be controlled by one's thoughts through a headband he also built) for a contest to gain entry to the robotics institute Tadashi works in. Hiro is struggling with the loss, and convinces Baymax it will help his emotional state if they capture the thief/arsonist/murderer. Baymax is trying to help in more conventional ways, like hugs, and contacting Tadashi's friends and colleagues to provide emotional support. So of course, they get drawn into helping as well, by getting suits that incorporate their own work into them.

It was a pretty solid movie. I wasn't expecting it to be bad, it had gotten good reviews, but I'm probably not the target audience. I didn't laugh out loud very often, but there were definitely a few parts I found amusing. Hiro hustling guys at "bot fights" early in the film, Fred hanging out at the lab because he hopes one of the others will develop something to give him superpowers (and how is a shrink ray "not science"? It deals with atoms, and matter displacement, or concentration, which means you probably have to account for gravity. That is completely science!). Baymax's "luddle luddle luddle" when he does a fist bump.

I was impressed with how it handled dealing with loss. Hiro's listless and depressed for a while, and even accidentally activating Baymax doesn't snap him out of it. Learning someone used the fire as cover to steal his mini-bots just serves as a distraction, first with investigating, and then the upgrades to Baymax. It really isn't until after Hiro learns who the villain is, and sees the bad guy's complete indifference to the pain he's caused that he really starts to face the death of his brother. Which starts with trying to kill the bad guy (a reaction that seemed reasonable under the circumstances), nearly alienating his friends, and finally having to admit out loud his brother is gone, physically at least. You could maybe question how easily the others forgive him, but it's presented that they understand Hiro's going through some heavy stuff, and they're all older than he is, so it made sense they'd overlook it as a brief loss of control.

Also, the move deals with science and its potential for abuse, but not the frequently used in fiction approach of "Man messing with forces he shouldn't be". Science is presented as something which can be used to help others, or hurt others, and it depends on who has control of it. Hiro presented an advantage of his mini-bots as their ability to help build things, but the villain uses them to destroy. There's an industrialist character whose company developed a portal/teleportation device, but is too impatient to show it off to the military to test it safely and properly. That isn't presented as a sign humans shouldn't develop such things, just there are going to be people with goals not in the best interests of anyone but themselves. That's unfortunate, and something to watch out for, but not a reason to not push forward. Tadashi designed Baymax to help people in pain, and even gave it the capacity to learn and adapt, to the point it downloaded information so it could help treat emotional pain (also, given the number of kids I saw at that Fanboy Expo convention who wanted to hug the Baymax cosplayer, I'd say his goal of a non-threatening, huggable appearance was achieved). That's a pretty cool invention, even if it's tendency to scan everyone around, without asking for consent, would certainly cause some legal issues. I do wonder if his dream will be realized, and Baymax will be mass-produced in the future, likely minus the karate training.