Big Hero 6 (2014)

  Holy crap, you guys.  I have no idea what happened yesterday, but I could have sworn I published my post on Die Hard with a Vengeance.  That is my bad and I apologize.  Then I almost forgot to publish this one today!  What is going on?

But I remembered and we're just going to go from there like it never even happened.  Ok!

Hiro (Ryan Potter) is a whiz with robots, graduating high school at 13, but he really has no ambition other than to kick ass at underground bot fights.  His brother, Tadashi (Daniel Henney), convinces him to try out for an elite robotics program at the nearby college by showing him the personal health care robot he has built named Baymax (Scott Adsit).  Hiro impresses robotics genius Robert Callaghan (James Cromwell) and industrialist Alistair Krei (Alan Tudyk) with his invention of mind-controlled microbots, but then the entire hall goes up in flames.  Tadashi runs back inside to save Callaghan but neither man comes back out.  Hiro is overwhelmed with depression until he discovers that the fire was set to cover the theft of his invention.  He decides to turn squishy, non-threatening Baymax into a superhero to stop this masked man from taking over the city.

This was a much darker animated film than I was anticipating.  I was thinking it was just going to be a cute Marvel tie-in with a lovably squeezable robot and precocious child solving crime.  Instead, it's much more about grieving, the importance of friends, and the desire for revenge.  The theater was full of small children that probably did not understand a tenth of the themes being presented.  I'm not sure that it mattered to them, but it annoys me that parents don't do research.  Not all animation is aimed at the 3-5 age group.

It is not all dark clouds and adult themes, though.  Most of this movie is just as fun as you would expect it to be and I loved the setting of San Fransokyo.  It seemed like a real city with a ton of available storylines just waiting to be explored.  The plot didn't hold any surprises, but I didn't feel that diminished the impact or the enjoyment I felt.

There is a post-credit sequence (it's a Marvel movie) and it is absolutely adorable.  The movie also comes with an appetizer in the form of an animated short called Feast about a little dog named Winston and his big appetite.  I didn't think it was as good as last year's Paperman, but it's still really cute.