I finally got to see BH6 tonight. Now I don’t feel too bad about waiting so long, since I didn’t really enjoy it.
I suppose I feel about the brothers the way many felt about Elsa and Anna in
Frozen--the less interesting brother is the lead. Of course, I actually liked Anna, unlike a lot of people here. I didn’t care for Hiro. But I loved Tadashi, and it was interesting to have a male character with his personality. My favorite scene was the one in which he introduced Baymax to Hiro, just because of the expressions he was making while Baymax talked (as if he was speaking the words in his mind). Still, I felt Elsa and Anna had a more believable relationship than Tadashi and Hiro. Many things in this film felt forced and by-the-numbers for me (particularly using a phrase like “find another angle!” as something inspirational…), and the brothers’ interactions for the most part didn’t feel genuine. A lesser version of Nani/Lilo to me, actually. Like with Tadashi/Hiro, I loved Nani and Lilo irritated the ever-loving **** out of me; unlike Tadashi/Hiro, Nani and Lilo's relationship felt very real.
The group of “nerds” was mostly lost on me. The only one I felt anything towards was Honey Gogo, just because her voice, design, and personality all came together, imo. All 4 of them are stock characters, but I still managed to enjoy her (although it might be because she reminds me of Starfire from
Teen Titans). I couldn’t really understand why they would want to become superheroes or why I should root for them to do so. All I could think throughout the action scenes was how they were risking their lives without any fighting skills; I especially found it hard to watch Hiro put his life in the hands of a robot several time. The villain was a complete flop, even compared to the low standard of this new Disney “era.” I thought Baymax was entertaining, but I found it hard to latch onto the relationship between Hiro and Baymax because I don’t believe robots can have real personalities or emotions. I could’ve understood the angle of Hiro unconsciously filling the loss of Tadashi with Baymax--and that being the emotional core of the movie when he thinks he’s losing Baymax in the climax--more if Tadashi and Baymax had the same voice actor, for example.
I will say the film was very pretty. I thought the Tokyo/San Francisco mashup was bizarre, visually, but most of the animation was gorgeous to watch. I loved what they did with the inside of the portal. I noticed Hiro looked much better in the concept art/drawings during the credits; something about his mouth/nose/chin didn’t work for me in the film itself (but I have that same problem with most 3D human characters Disney's created). The rest of the characters looked the same or better though.
Overall, I’d rank it below
Frozen, TP&TF, WIR, and
Tangled. As far as “pacing issues” go, I thought this film was much worse in that regard than TP&TF or
Frozen. It felt very rushed, and I felt little investment or emotion in anything happening--although that's tied into the fact that the only character I really liked died early.
Sorcerer Mickey wrote:From
The Hollywood Reporter:
Disney celebrated a second victory over the weekend as the Oscar-winning Big Hero 6 became the top-grossing animated release of 2014 ahead of How to Train Your Dragon 2 ($618.9 million) thanks to a late run in China and other key international markets. Through Sunday, Big Hero's global tally is $632.8 million, including $75.8 million in Japan and $66.5 million in China, where it has become the No. 1 non-sequel animated film of all time after 16 days of release, and the No. 3 animated title of all time.
I'm glad it's done well in China and Japan. I went to boxofficemojo.com after reading that, and they still have it about half of
Frozen's numbers, overall, although I'm guessing it isn't done yet.
