A few thoughts on Big Hero 6 and the stupidity of the supervillain. (Spoilers ahead) · 7:20pm Nov 7th, 2014
Seriously: if you haven't seen the movie and have any intention of doing so, don't read any further than this. I'm not going to cover the entire post in spoiler text blackout. Every element I feel like discussing, will be discussed. If you keep going and ruin the film for yourself, it's your own fault. Got it? Good.
Ignored it? Too bad.
* Many people like to blame whatever they feel is wrong with the world this week on the destruction of the artificial construct known as the Traditional Family Unit. Just once, I'd like to see one of them take that fault to Disney, Because if anything has done more to basically say "Hey, kids? Want to be a hero? Then let's get your parents killed off!", let me know.
And now they're upping the ante.
Y'see, we're kind of used to dead parents at this point. There's a trail of previous-generation blood stained most of the Disney Animated Canon, but don't worry: it also preserves the film stock. So when the movie opens, Hiro's parents are already dead. They've been dead for eleven years. We accept that they're dead: the only miracle is that it didn't happen (in a heavily shadowed fashion) on-camera. But Hiro still has an older brother and, to paraphrase PresentPerfect, the instant you see him, you know he's starred in his very last Disney feature.
A long, long time ago, just when Batman: The Animated Series was taking that fourth-season turn into the no-hope, no-point, no-reason-to-watch which would completely dominate Batman Beyond, Mr. Freeze managed to figure Bruce out in three seconds. He raided Wayne Manor in order to take away what he perceived as being most precious to Bruce -- the surrogate family our orphan spent so much time putting together in replacement of the real one, starting with the surrogate father figure of Alfred. Very insightful, really.
With Hiro...
A number of products which work with superteams like to suggest the idea of extended or surrogate family as the true bond between team members. (If it's your actual family, Marvel will cancel you.) So for Hiro, his parents are gone. He has an aunt looking over him who's exactly the right amount of self-distracting oblivious to let an enterprising young man have that double life. His brother dies. Oh, does his brother ever die. The film takes a leisurely pace when showing you just how vital, important, crucial, and essential to the core of Hiro's emotional well-being his brother is, which pretty much rams the whole He Gonna Die thing between your eyes at 0.0005 mph, one millimeter at a time. And then Baymax becomes surrogate father and big brother alike, while Tadashi's classmates turn into a whole group of older siblings. Support network restored. It's just that --
-- why was that death necessary in the first place?
I know what the first claim from a screenwriter would be: motivation. Can't go out to make things better unless someone's made your life worse. And by this point in the genre's lifespan, that feels like an excuse.
It's as if we're saying that no one would ever do good without a need to make up the balance, counterweight their own pain. We're incapable of fully unselfish motivation. The movie, through Baymax, directly says that this is heroism as emotional therapy: will this make me feel better? Yes... but not for long, and you'll be stuck chasing that brief feeling of completion for the rest of your life.
Maybe the real motivation is jealousy.
There's no gift without price: I've used that theme myself. Hiro's a young genius: already out of high school, able to create stunning new technology with just a montage of effort. He's not bad-looking and an active dating life will be within his reach. He's got a working parts fabrication lab at his disposal. He'll probably be rich one day. Just so much to be jealous of, right? Can't have audience empathy when you're starting with audience envy.
So... here's the price: let's kill his parents. And his brother. And @#$$, just when we think he's getting better, let's off the surrogate father figure too (even with that as temporary Disney Death). He has so very much -- which means it's time to start taking it all away. How can we believe in the strength of his surrogate bonds if any of the originals still stand?
There's always been a strange emphasis on death as starting gate in States culture. It's been getting worse over the years. Make this film in 2040 and it might have been seen as essential to get rid of the cat. Rewrite the Bible in 2112 and I'm pretty sure at least one person would have casually proposed 'So what do you think about bumping off God?' Because the kid's got all these abilities... how else is the audience supposed to connect with him? To make a hero, look at what your character has, then figure out how to take it away. Over and over and over.
The Traditional Disney Family Unit consists of a lone shadow falling across a grave.
It's an effective road. Can we stop walking down it for a week?
* Towards the end of the film, after the Thou Shalt Not Kill In Revenge thought has been hammered through, we get a scene where Baymax, under Hiro's control, has the chance to basically punch through Professor Callaghan's head. Thrusters blazing. Fist extended. A few hundred pounds of carbon-fiber armor are about to meet skull, and the bone will lose.
Baymax stops dead in midair. The fist is a few inches away. Because Thou Shalt Not Kill.
Incidentally, the thrusters are still going.
Look at the screen. Merrily blazing away. There's been no visible redirection for braking, nor is anything going which would allow a hover. He's just suspended here, and the thrusters which should be completing a literal blow-through are visibly pushing while physics takes a holiday.
I'm guessing he's being held up by The Power Of Friendship.
* Professor Callaghan is an idiot.
He's established in the film as being a father of modern robotics. He holds any number of patents. A genius who spends his life supervising other geniuses. But he has that whole Vengeance! motivation going and possibly that's what's making him stupid. Still, there are worse plans than 'steal the innovative tech here and now while faking your own death and then go after the party you see as responsible for your daughter's demise', right?
Problem is... there are also better ones.
Let's think about the situation for a moment.
Pretend you're Professor Callaghan. Hiro has just debuted his microbots as his means of proving he belongs under your tutelage. You're impressed enough that you give let the letter of admission on the spot. This adds his brilliance and insight to the rest of your students, who have already proven they're skilled at magtech, artificial intelligence construction, chemical weaponry, and plasma cutters.
Essentially, you have a weapons lab at your disposal, working for no pay whatsoever, only too happy to hand their latest creations over to you for inspection, refinement, and the occasional bit of praise, plus they'll probably work on whatever you suggest. With a smile..
So here's a better idea than torching the expo: invite Hiro into your class -- then go back to teaching it. You've seen what these students are coming up with and you'll be in the perfect position to steal all of it. Wait for things to clear the Beta version and then your supervillain rampage gets to go with All Their Inventions Combined. You can even blow up the lab and fake your death then, if it's such an essential part of the plan. You could maintain your life and help the kids search for the phantom thief. Either way, you'll be so much better prepared, versatile...
Sure, you're a robotics genius. You probably could have reprogrammed Krei's own building security to kill him, or sent microbots into his bedroom to form a garrote and strangle him. But you're addicted to the big production number, and that's okay. It's just that... there were better ways to do it. More intelligent, effective ways which still would have fed your need for publicity and public destruction.
But you're going to be a movie supervillain. And therefore, you're an idiot.
* This film is a spiritual sequel to The Incredibles in one sense: there is no doubt at any time that Callaghan is trying to kill Hiro, his former students, and anyone else who happens to get in the way. If you have any inkling of what might be going on? He will try to drop a car on you.
And this leads into Hiro's armor. All the other students built their Chekhov's Earlier Scene weapons into their outfits. Hiro went with -- a magnetic lock to keep him on Baymax when the latter is flying. And nothing else. He has no offense of his own. If Baymax isn't nearby -- if his surrogate relative is out of action -- he can't defend himself and will go down the instant anything breaches that armor.
It's one thing to say your villain doesn't mind killing former students, relatives of same, and any innocent victims who happen to be around in occupied new buildings. It's another to suggest your main character is working with a very active death wish.
* I think someone at Disney needs to take a serious look at 'objects which weigh about a thousand pounds'. Because most of those weren't it.
* As corporate bad guys go, Alistair Krei is -- not particularly up there.
Tried to steal a piece of Hiro's work so he could reverse-engineer it? Sure. But in the teleportation experiment... the little spike of energy (which exists just to make it look like letting things go through is entirely his fault) is said to be within safety range. And a man accused to cutting corners paid for a teleportation travel pod -- which is going to spend mere seconds within interdimensional space -- to be equipped for coldsleep hibernation just in case anything went wrong. Something which assuredly did not cost $1.99 to install.
So he's a thief, but he works within the safety protocols set by his own personnel and tries to keep them alive at all very high costs. Gee, what a jerk.
* I want to make sure I have this right. There are tens of thousands of microbots cascading through the city streets in an endless wave. There are other vehicles in the area. Drivers. Foot traffic. People looking out their windows at all the noise from the car chase. And no one got a picture?
* If I'm in a fighting crisis and looking at possible death, being told to look at things from another angle is probably not the battle advice I'm hoping for.
* One credit I do have to give the movie is in Baymax's thinking patterns. He's programmed for one purpose and has to see everything around him in terms of 'How does this either hurt or help my patient?' It's the only lens through which he can view the world, and while it makes him the sympathetic character of Stay-Puft Marshmallow Nurse, it also turns him alien -- in a way we can understand. His thought process is not ours and his conclusions aren't the ones we'd come to. But at the same time, we know how he got there and can have empathy with both process and result. Making an inhuman character comprehensibly inhuman is a neat trick of scriptwriting.
It doesn't hurt that Scott Adsit arguably has the best voice work in the movie. Baymax's gentle "Oh no" comes across as a programmed casual distress message which is being pulled out in situations Tadashi never prepared him for, and it gets more comedic with each repetition. It's not many characters who can make you laugh just by noticing something's gone wrong.
Will he go down as one of the greatest Disney creations? Possibly not -- but he's going to be at least high on Tier 2. At least until he tries to destroy us. Even though Ray tried to think of something which never, ever would.
For his first Halloween? Sailor hat.
* T.J. Miller's current career arc: see how many times he can play Jason Mewes before anyone catches on. (Dear T.J: too late.)
* And Baymax's chip got from chest to hand... how?
* Open faceplates for most of them. (Great armor you've got there. Really. Fred, as the only one who understands how the genre truly operates, went with the most common sense move in the cast.) No real attempt at hiding their features. A bad guy in custody who probably isn't going to keep silence out of gratitude. Plus they all work together in the same small area, hang out together away from it, two of them have very distinctive builds and again, no masks.
Yeah, those secret identities are going to hold up forever. Good thing practically no one in the world owns a camera!
* Consider the fate of Baymax's original body. Floating around an interdimensional void (along with a bunch of human debris -- we're natural polluters) with no power, no destination, and nothing else which can ever happen to him except bouncing off objects and demonstrating whatever physics weren't already repealed.
I give it two days before someone around here has him crash-land in Equestria.
Maximum.
Stan Lee's appearance has never been less necessary or funny.
Well, the massive upwards-pointing gravity field may have had something to do with it. And the microbot shackles would assist in arresting downwards motion too, if I recall correctly.
The chips: A switcheroo off camera! Those come in real 'handy,' eh?
Anyway, Baymax has two chips fully capable of operating his systems. When it's not being ordered to be THE MOST BADASS INFLATABLE TERMINATOR-BOT around, Red Chip would probably still be able to handle Baymax's basic functions, like taking out the other card, powering down into standby mode, and tugging at the audience's heartstrings. (Which reminds me, that version of Baymax could come back as his evil twin, probably. Not the one you want landing in Equestria, that's for sure!)
Safety protocols: He appeared to say that as a question ("It's within safe parameters, isn't it?") without really waiting for an answer. Might have been just a bluff in front of General Warbucks. Still, it's agreed that Krei (Cray, koi, whatever) is not quite as bad as the robotics teacher makes him out to be, and their personal history/grief over his daughter may have made him forget that the CEO wasn't truly a soulless corporate bastard at heart. Focused on money, sure, but like you say, he doesn't rate high on the Evil Bastard scale.
Far out in the reaches of interdimensional space, the microbots wander without purpose. The flock to each other, forming into random and haphazard patterns, seeking input but finding none...
Elsewhere, a programmer trying to create a more perfect digital world stumbles upon seemingly self-forming algorithms. He calls them "ISOmorphic algorithms," unaware of the look of disgust on his reflection...
All I'm sayin' is, if Baymax lands somewhere, those billions of choking hazards have to too.
To be honest (and I haven't seen the film yet), this review just feels negative to be negative.
Like, a 'Stop Having Fun Guys' type review
And I hate those
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'kay, the pull accounts for part of it... but still...
For Krei, we can also add the military being the ones to shut the teleportation project down, preventing any attempt at recovery -- and Callaghan, who now has the tech, doesn't try it either. Priorities may require slight shifting.
We also don't see any attacks against the armed forces. He's a tight-focus lunatic.
As for the microbots, I'm not sure they can do much beyond acting as choking hazards when they don't have outside direction. Most of their onboard programming seemed to be "Remember where everyone else is and get back to them."
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This was not a review. Please believe me when I say that based on previous experience, had this been an actual review, it would have been at least 7000% more negative. (There are reasons why I don't review stories, and many of them center around keeping suicide rates low. Including mine.) These are just things I thought about during and after the film.
If I had to sum up the movie in review fashion, then for me, it was about 6 out of 10: a positive experience, but not a truly memorable one, in no small part because it felt so generic in many ways. I probably won't purchase the movie when it's released for home viewing and don't feel there's a lot of rewatch value in it beyond staring with adoration at the scenery.
I might wind up buying the soundtrack. The instrumental work is surprisingly strong in a few areas.
I wanna know what you're paraphrasing now, because that's p. good. :B
That's not to say you can't make it work; I've seen that work. But it really helps if you were doing it on purpose, and the audience can tell it was on purpose.
Uh...
Did you forget about the giant portal that had a strong enough pull to rip an industrial bulding to shreds? Not some lean-to structure, an entire building. That was actively being sucked up into said portal during the same scene. That they were USING In order to stop the microbots. Yeah. That thing.