Big Hero 6 is More Than Just a Disney-fied Version of a Marvel Classic

(dinging music)

Whoosh.

(reaving)

I'll save you.

I'm excited about Big Hero 6 and not just because

I desperately wanna believe that a hairless snowy white blob

can become a mighty superhero.

I explain why on this week's episode of Angry Nerd.

(whistling)

First the mail bag.

Robbie Knight writes, I love you Angry Nerd.

I wish I could find you on Twitter.

Thank your lucky stars Robbie,

then go follow Angry Nerd WIRED.

As soon as I launched into the Twitterverse

I was having intense Tweet chats

about the recent movie Dracula Untold.

I geeked that with Kynan Waterford about how cool it'd be

if the sequel was set to the sci-fi future.

I discussed Romanian folklore with ovidiug,

and I highly seconded Will Fulton's complaint

that the impalement method in the movie

was not historically accurate.

Dracula is Vlad the Impaler, how can you get that wrong?

Anyway, what was I talking about?

Oh, oh yeah yeah, okay.

The latest animated feature from Disney

is based on Big Hero 6, a Marvel comic

that was spun off from Alpha Flight.

See, Alpha Flight are like the Canadian Xmen, eh.

Big Hero 6 are like the Xmen of Japan.

Think superhero mutants with a dash of Kaiju,

and a dollop of Mecha, and a soupcon of Samurai.

But I'll admit I had my doubts when I heard

that the man who directed the CG Winnie the Pooh feature

was the one who would be turning this Marvel IP

into a Disney toon.

I can see you're going to be rather feisty today.

And I Hulked out a tad when I learned

that they eliminated Sunfire and Silver Samurai

from the lineup of Big Hero 6.

The two characters that were most hooked

in to the rest of the Marvelverse.

And they made all the other heroes

and heroines much younger.

It seemed like the culmination of everything we fear

would happen in 2009 when Disney swallowed up Marvel,

like Galactus devouring a hapless planet,

oh take that Disney.

(shooting)

Stop trying to turn Marvel's trademark adolescent angst

into your own signature brand of prepubescent peevishness.

And I hope you learned your lesson bonehead.

(breathing)

But since then I've achieved enlightenment

and my gamma ray rage has subsided.

You see I realized that this new movie is not trying to be

a kid friendly addition to the Marvel cinematic universe.

This is just Disney adapting a classic story,

like they did with Grimm's Fairy Tales, or Peter Pan.

I mean look at Disney's adaptation

of the 1880s children's book Pinocchio.

It maintained the skeletal outline of the original story

and just enough of the ethnic origins

to be vaguely offensive.

Pinocchio.

It's a-me, Geppetto.

But the movie refashioned the tale completely

adding different storylines

that made it more marketable and family friendly.

(Singing) I've got no strings to hold me do- (tumbling).

In the book Pinocchio kills the talking cricket seriously.

What Disney did to the Pinocchio book

kinda mirrors what they're doing to Big Hero 6.

See at this point giant robots and teenage superheroes

are timeless archetypes, modern day folktales,

and Disney is drawing on them

the way that best films have always done.

The trailers also make a pretty strong case for the movie.

The interaction between the human protagonist Hiro

and the powerful but clueless Baymax

seems rife with possibility.

A little bit like The Iron Giant,

a little bit like How To Train Your Dragon.

But on the other hand, the best Marvel animated shows

of the last several years have been collaborations

between western writers and Japanese animation houses.

And the hands down most exciting thing in the Marvelverse

these days is the Japan only show Avengers Disk Wars,

a collaboration with Bandai

that's sort of like superhero Pokemon.

(Japanese speaking)

I choose you Iron Man Pikachu.

I don't need to see anymore, I'm sold.

Why is this Disk War show not available in America?

Marvel, this should be your top priority.

Delay the release of Big Hero 6 if you have to,

put Age of Ultron on hold,

and make Joss Whedon supervise the English dub

of Disk Wars, pronto.

(futuristic whooshing)

Frozen characters are now showing up

on ABC's glorified Disney fan-fic series Once Upon A Time.

I insist that Disney characters Baymax

and Wreck It Ralph be added to the series too.

Would you like to see that?

Let me know in the comments.

By the way, in a recent rant,

I just mentioned in passing that I like Teen Titans Go.

Many of you went absolutely ballistic in the comments.

I get it.

I get it.

I get it.

You hate Teen Titans Go like Indians Jones hates snakes.

Well I think it's funny, it's not a sacrilege,

it's a clever twist on the formula however

I hate the cartoony new Disney XD version of Spiderman

which adds funny asides and chee-bee Spiderman skits.

I'm Spidy sensing a connection.

Now that is a sacrilege.

Let me know what you think of Marvel on Disney XD

in the comments.