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Big Hero 6 did not hold up well to a re-watch. Knowing the plot of a movie doesn’t always ruin it, but in this case, it did. Red herrings are tossed about freely but aren’t convincing enough to get you to chase them. There are some spoilers ahead.
The villain of the movie doesn’t have a name, he is just ‘the guy in the kabuki mask.’ The source of his power is well explained but his motivations make no sense. His secret lair moves from a nondescript warehouse to an island. The island also happens to be the source of the pain that has sent him into his destructive rage. If the pain was so great that he turned into a supervillain, why would he want to spend time at this heartbreaking place?
Disney loves to have dead parents. There is only one reference to a family that has two biological living parents. It is a neat way to incorporate the Marvel required Stan Lee cameo. All the other major characters have no family back story or are from single-parent households. Tadashi, Hiro’s brother, just succeeded in getting his brother on the right path, only to die IMMEDIATELY.
The explosion that kills Tadashi makes no sense. It is immediately after Hiro’s invention was unveiled. The explosion had to have been pre-meditated, but without the knowledge of the technology that the villain was going to steal. If you think at all about the timeline it won’t make any sense, unless Tadashi had revealed Hiro’s work ahead of time. This would mean that Tadashi was responsible for his own death.
All the above leaves out the best part of the movie, Baymax! Baymax is an inflatable slow and deliberate moving robot. It is Hiro’s connection to his brother. Baymax is the true star of the film. The comedic timing is great. Who knew moving a chair could be so funny?
Marvel movies can often be dissected to find a moral, but it is hard to decipher one in this case. Big Hero 6 feels like a half-baked iron-man/batman origin story. The villain’s motivations take too long to be revealed and when they are, they aren’t interesting. The stakes of the movie are never quite high enough.
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