"Badaladaladaladala!"
Big Hero 6 is a 2014 American 3D computer-animated superhero comedy film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures—the first superhero film in Disney's animated features canon and the 54th overall. The film is inspired by the Marvel Comics superhero team of the same name. Directed by Don Hall and Chris Williams, the film tells the story of a young robotics prodigy named Hiro Hamada who forms a superhero team to combat a masked villain. The film features the voices of Scott Adsit, Ryan Potter, Daniel Henney, T. J. Miller, Jamie Chung, Damon Wayans, Jr., Génesis Rodríguez, Alan Tudyk, James Cromwell, and Maya Rudolph.
Big Hero 6 is the first Disney animated film to feature Marvel Comics characters, whose parent company was acquired by The Walt Disney Company in 2009. Walt Disney Animation Studios created new software technology to produce the film's animated visuals.
Plot[]
Hiro Hamada is a 14-year-old robotics genius in the futuristic fictional city of San Fransokyo. Raised by his aunt Cass and older brother Tadashi after the death of his parents, he spends his time participating in illegal robot fights. To redirect Hiro, Tadashi takes him to the robotics center at his university, where Hiro meets Tadashi's friends: GoGo, Wasabi, Honey Lemon, and Fred, as well as Baymax, the inflatable healthcare companion robot Tadashi created. To enroll in the school, Hiro signs up for the school's science fair and presents microbots: swarms of tiny robots that can link together in any arrangement imaginable. Professor Callaghan, the head of the university's robotics program, is impressed, and grants Hiro entrance to the university. Alastair Krei, renowned entrepreneur and president of Krei Tech, offers to buy the microbots, but Hiro follows Callaghan's warnings about Krei's questionable business practices and declines to sell them. When Tadashi and Hiro later arrive at the university to find it engulfed in flames, Tadashi rushes in to rescue Callaghan, but the building explodes moments later, killing him.
Weeks later, a depressed Hiro inadvertently activates Baymax, who follows Hiro's only remaining microbot to an abandoned warehouse. There, the two discover that someone has been mass-producing microbots, and are attacked by a man wearing a Kabuki mask and in control of the bots. After they barely escape with their lives, Hiro equips Baymax with armor and a battle chip containing various karate moves, and they track the masked man to the docks. GoGo, Wasabi, Honey, and Fred arrive looking for Hiro, and the masked man attacks the group. The six manage to escape to Fred's mansion, where they begin to form a superhero team, with Hiro creating armor and accessories for his friends to complement each one's area of scientific expertise.
Using Baymax's upgraded scanners, the group tracks the masked man, who they suspect to be Krei, to an abandoned secret Krei Tech laboratory, which they find was researching teleportation technology until a test pilot was lost in an accident. The masked man attacks, but the group manages to knock off his mask, revealing him to be Professor Callaghan, who had stolen Hiro's microbots to shield himself from the explosion and left Tadashi to die. An enraged Hiro removes Baymax's personality/healthcare chip, leaving only the battle chip, and orders him to kill Callaghan, and only Honey re-installing the chip at the last second prevents him from doing so. Furious at his friend's intervention, Hiro flies off with Baymax. Once at home, Hiro tries to remove the chip again, but Baymax prevents him, stating that vengeance is not what Tadashi would have wanted. To comfort him, Baymax shows Hiro video recordings of Tadashi running tests during Baymax's development, and his refusal to give up despite many failures. A remorseful Hiro apologizes to his friends, who forgive him since they understand what he's going through, and the team reunites to stop Callaghan.
The group discovers that Krei's test pilot was Callaghan's daughter Abigail, and that Callaghan is seeking revenge. Callaghan interrupts a public Krei event and attempts to kill Krei and destroy his headquarters using a giant teleportation portal, mirroring his daughter's accident. Working together, the team destroys Callaghan's microbots and saves Krei, but the portal remains active and becomes unstable. Baymax detects Abigail inside, alive but in hyper-sleep, and leaps into the portal with Hiro to rescue her. They find Abigail's pod, but Baymax is damaged by debris, leaving them adrift inside the portal's space. Baymax uses his armor's rocket fist to propel Hiro and Abigail back through the portal opening to safety, forcing them to leave him behind. Hiro is heartbroken over losing Baymax, until he discovers Baymax's personality chip clenched in the rocket fist. Hiro rebuilds Baymax and the six friends continue their exploits through the city, fulfilling Tadashi's dream of helping those in need.
During the end credits, it is shown through newspaper headlines that Hiro has been awarded a grant from the university, where a building has been dedicated to Tadashi. In a post-credits scene, Fred accidentally opens a secret door in his family mansion and finds superhero gear inside. His father, a retired superhero, arrives, stating that they have a lot to talk about as they embrace each other.
Production[]
After Disney's acquisition of Marvel Entertainment in 2009, CEO Bob Iger encouraged the company's divisions to explore Marvel's properties for adaptation concepts. By deliberately picking an obscure title, it would give them the freedom to come up with their own version. In June 2012, Disney confirmed that Walt Disney Animation Studios was adapting Marvel Comics' series and that the film had been commissioned into early stages of development. Because they wanted the concept to feel new and fresh, head of story Paul Briggs (who also voiced Yama in the film) only read a few issues of the comic, while screenwriter Robert Baird admitted he had not read the comic at all.
Big Hero 6 was produced solely by Walt Disney Animation Studios, although several members of Marvel's creative team were involved in the film's production including Joe Quesada, Marvel's chief creative officer, and Jeph Loeb, head of Marvel Television. According to an interview with Axel Alonso by CBR,[39] Marvel did not have any plans to publish a tie-in comic. Disney planned to reprint the Marvel version of Big Hero 6 themselves, but reportedly Marvel disagreed. They eventually came to agreement that Yen Press would publish the Japanese manga version of Big Hero 6 for Disney. Conversely, Lasseter dismissed the idea of a rift between the two companies, and producer Roy Conli stated that Marvel allowed Disney "complete freedom in structuring the story." The production team decided early on not to connect the film to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and set it in a stand-alone universe instead.
In Badfic and the PPC[]
Due to the wild success of the movie, fanfic of Big Hero 6 is getting increasingly popular, complete with the massive influx of badfic it implies. There is actually very little romantic attachment between the characters of the movie, resulting in Suethors freely shipping the characters amongst each other. The pairing of Hiro and Tadashi, often called "Hidashi", has become distressingly common. Other plots explored include the possibility that Tadashi survived the fire, often becoming the villainous Sunfire, or AUs where Hiro died and Tadashi survived (or where both survived at a cost). AUs in general placing the characters in other continua are also popular.
Within the PPC, there have yet to be agents recruited from this continuum, but Seung-Li Kim does originate from it, being originally a genderbent Go Go. The mission that led to their recruitment also provided the first known instance of minis from Big Hero 6, which are Mini-Baymaxes.
Missions in this Continuum[]
- "You Should've Left" (crossover with Rise of the Guardians), Agent Sarah Katherine Squall (DIC)