I made it out to the latest Disney animated feature…two and a
half months after its release. So no one
probably cares about spoilers anymore unless you’re in a country where it
hasn’t been released yet so I’ll still warn for them.
With the recent explosion of successful superhero films and Disney’s
acquisition of the frontrunner in them, Marvel a film like this was likely
inevitable. However, for being basically
another origin story film I quite liked it.
The film follows Hiro, his personal healthcare robot Baymax,
and his group of friends fighting a villain who stole Hiro’s invention,
Microbots, and as it turns out is responsible for the death of Hiro’s big
brother Tadashi. Now the family member
dying as the kick off to becoming a superhero isn’t new, Batman anyone? But I think it’s well handled here because Tadashi’s
death is the cornerstone of the entire film.
Rather than being just a shock event for the plot it impacts everything
that comes after it. His line to Hiro
about looking at a problem from a different angle line comes up a number of
times throughout the film. In fact the
story isn’t about Hiro become a hero as much as it is about him dealing with grief. Learning the difference between vengeance and
justice and how to heal from loss in a healthy way and that really worked.
Another thing that I found really good here was that the
entire team of heroes was made up of characters that don’t have superpowers. All their gear comes from their intelligence
and specialized fields of chemistry, physics, and so on and that was really
nice to see as well as a great quality to highlight for the young kids in the
audience. The side characters themselves
are also a lot of fun if a bit standard.
The slob with the rich background is something we’ve seen before , the
badass gum-chewer, the rule-stickler, and etc.
Heck Hiro himself is the walking
trope of the guy with big brains who wastes his talents in the beginning of the
movie. Now this being Disney and a
superhero film no doubt there will be sequels I would just rather have had a
little bit more development here and little less action.
Not that the actions scenes weren’t good they were. This is Disney after all so the animation was
great. The city design was cool the
depth of the environments and details was great and I don’t want to think about
how long it took to get all the Microbots shifting and flying around in the
fight scenes. I bet those scenes took
like a week to fully render, but the final effect is awesome. The only complaint I have about the animation
is the design of Honey Lemon. Her design
overall has thin tall proportions and that works, but when she takes off her
glasses for the superhero suit it’s easy to see her character model is
basically the same as Elsa from Frozen
and Rapunzel from Tangled in terms of
facial design. I can’t unsee it now and
it’s really distracting. Look Disney you
are a mutil-billion dollar corporation.
If my classmates and I could make distinct characters just using
different attributes of the same rig in an intro class to Maya you guys should
darn well be able to do better.
One design and character that I thought wasn’t standard was Baymax
he is just wonderful. He has a great design with the whole huggable quality
and the simple face. He has a wonderful
soothing and yet distinctly robotic voice and much of the humour of the film
comes from him being so literal in his program and following his program so
strictly. One thing though is that I
wish they had done more with the healthcare angle rather than just having
Baymax be basically a fighting robot by the end. The fact that Tadashi created this robot to
help people in such a specific way I thought was far more interesting. This nurturing
element is so often still considered a feminine thing only so it was really
nice to see it come from a male character and not be used for cheap laughs ever. I would have loved to have seen more of that,
but since Hiro is thirteen it makes sense that he would make a kickass robot
rather than using Baymax for his primary function and maybe we’ll get to see
something different in a sequel.
So to conclude right now I think the movie is good, but rather
standard. Certainly not bad, but not
really mind blowing either. It’s a fun
an action packed ride with beautiful animation and some good characters that I
wish hadn’t gotten just a bit more development, and a plot that I thought could
have benefitted from a few more twists.
In short it’s a good superhero movie hitting all the points these kinds
of films should I just think it could have done a bit more to make itself stand
out from the rest of the pack.
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