Comic-Con Report: 'Big Hero 6' Launches Marvel's Animated Superhero Universe
Forget the live-action Marvel Cinematic Universe. The rollicking superhero cartoon Big Hero 6 represents the potential origin of Marvel’s animated cinematic universe, at least the first one overseen by the comic book company’s new owners at Disney. It was Disney animation head honcho John Lasseter himself who approached Winnie the Pooh director Don Hall with the pitch of translating a Marvel property into the animated realm. After perusing a list of available titles, Hall settled on Big Hero 6, a six-issue miniseries created by Steven T. Seagle and Duncan Rouleau that focused on a Japanese superhero team fronted by young genius, Hiro. For the movie version, Hall and co-director Chris Williams have refashioned the movie into a tale of friendship between a boy and his synthetic robot, a big white blob named Baymax.
"We thought it would be great to take the comic and create our own world," Hall said at Big Hero 6's New York Comic Con panel yesterday, where he and Williams previewed four new clips from the movie (as well as a great sizzle reel), in advance of its Nov. 7 release date. The film’s voiceover cast, including Ryan Potter, T.J. Miller, Jamie Chung, Genesis Rodriguez, and Scott Adsit were also on hand to tease the film, which they all saw for the first time two nights before. “It felt like we knew each other, even though we were meeting for the first time! We’d been a team for a year-and-a-half at that point, but we’d never met [in person]. We were finally the Big Hero 6,” Adsit told us after the panel. Among the other things we learned from the team:
Don’t expect a Baymax/Groot/Rocket mash-up
Although some of the most popular characters in the live-action Marvel universe right now happen to be CGI-generated cartoons — think Guardians of the Galaxy's dynamic duo of Rocket and Groot and The Avengers' heavyweight brawler, Hulk — there are no plans to assemble an all-animated Avengers, with Baymax as one of the members. “Groot and Rocket Racoon exist in the cinematic Marvel universe, which we are an alternate reality of,” explains Hall, while Williams adds, “I don’t think we can cross those two worlds.” The decision to spin Big Hero 6 off into its own separate universe was made in Hall’s first meeting with Marvel, which freed the filmmakers up to create such new environments as San Fransokyo, the East-meets-West metropolis that serves as the movie’s setting. “They encouraged us to not worry about setting it within the Marvel universe,” says Hall.
Watch the sizzle reel below:
Scott Adsit’s superhero workout regimen was emotional, not physical.
Henry Cavill and Ben Affleck both hit the gym hard in order to play Superman and Batman respectively, but slipping into Baymax’s synthetic skin required Adist to exercise different muscles — his feelings. ”In the recording booth, I was trying to not let emotion peek through. He’s a robot and if he has a heart, he can’t really express it.” With Hiro’s help, Baymax eventually gets in touch with his emotions and becomes a kick-ass hero to boot. It was a transformation that, as the self-confessed comic book fanboy puts it, made “the kid in me very happy,” the former 30 Rock star explains.
The girls aren’t in need of rescuing.
Having clearly learned their lesson from Frozen, Disney made sure that the female characters in Big Hero 6 would get to join in on the fun instead of sitting on the sidelines. Chung and Rodriguez provide the voices of Hiro’s friends and fellow adventurers, GoGo and Honey Lemon respectively, who, in one of the clips shown to the Comic-Con audience, take part in a crazy chase through the streets of San Fransokyo, with a kabuki-mask wearing bad guy on their trail. “It’s interesting because the female characters are very grounding,” Chung says. “The boys are a bit out there and Genesis and I are the ones who kind of ground them.” Adds Rodriguez, “Our characters are both bad-asses, but they’re also so different. They embrace [different] parts of a woman, but we’re both as equally strong.” When it comes to past Disney heroines they admire, Rodriguez names The Little Mermaid's Ariel, while Chung points to Sleeping Beauty's Aurora and Mulan, a role she's played on the ABC series Once Upon a Time. “It’s super egotistical of me to say that, but I don’t care — she’s awesome! I also feel like Tinkerbell doesn’t get enough credit. She’s always kind of saving the day in a way.”
T.J. Miller made sure to keep it clean (and weird) for the kiddies
In his stand-up comedy, as well as on shows like Silicon Valley, T.J. Miller has been known to get more than a little bit R-rated. But he successfully got into a PG state of mind in order to play Fred, a comic book fan who, thanks to Hiro and Baymax, gets the chance to have his very own superhero adventure. “I aspire to be a great comedian and part of being a great comedian is being able to do comedy in every medium, and part of that is voiceover where I can’t rely on my giant toddler body or my weird face…. I got some strange stuff in the movie, like a song called ‘Fred’s Angels’ and a bit about invisible sandwiches. I remember in the recording booth going ‘This is unusable, but thanks for letting me be weird.’ And then I saw the movie for the first time, and it’s in the movie!”
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Photo credit: Disney
