By Jake Wilson
Disney may have taken some time to adjust to the digital era but since more or less merging with Pixar it's regained its position as the top animation studio in Hollywood. This science-fiction action-comedy – based on a Marvel comic series and directed by the team of Don Hall and Chris Williams – shows a mastery of storytelling technique that few live-action films can match.
Among other things, Big Hero 6 is a tribute to the tradition of Japanese anime – and, no doubt, an attempt to win over the Asian market.
In a futuristic city called San Fransokyo (steep streets, neon lights) an orphaned scientific prodigy named Hiro Hamada (voiced by Ryan Potter) squanders his genius competing in back-alley robot battles: the early scene where one of his miniature creations dismantles an opponent 20 times its size is guaranteed to win over children everywhere.
Briefly, Hiro agrees to give up these illegal shenanigans and enrol in university, with the encouragement of his almost equally brilliant older brother Tadashi (Daniel Henney). But then Tadashi dies as well – this is a Disney film, remember – and Hiro falls into despair.
Robotics prodigy Hiro Hamada transforms his closest companion - a robot named Baymax - into a high-tech hero in Big Hero 6.
That's until he rediscovers the invention his brother was working on: an inflatable healthcare robot known as Baymax (Scott Adsit), who suggests the marshmallow man from Ghostbusters as reimagined by Macintosh designers under Steve Jobs.
Baymax is the film's signature creation, a demonstration of the filmmakers' own ability to construct a figure that will appeal to the widest possible public: blank but friendly, motherly but free of gender, the ultimate non-threatening pal.
An empty vessel of this kind could easily turn creepy but the immediate pitfalls are circumvented with careful use of cheap humour: the farting noise Baymax makes when deflating is another surefire winner with the kids.
In a wider sense, there remains something uncanny about the film's expert blend of hard-edged action, self-aware joking and emotional sophistication. On one level, this is a turbo-charged superhero origin story; on another, it's a realistic exploration of the grieving process, with Baymax as the counsellor or psychologist who helps Hiro move on.
These agendas don't always merge seamlessly, nor is the final pacifist moral entirely persuasive in a film that depends in large part on the thrill of high-tech combat. Still, the team behind Big Hero 6 clearly have good intentions, as well as being the smoothest operators around.