The heroes of Big Hero 6, Disney’s blockbuster animated film, are nerds—proud science geeks inventing gadgets and technology with super-cool applications in the real world. But unlike someone like James Bond’s Q, who never really got to step out of his lab coat, Hiro and his genius friends get to wield their own wares and be 007-like action heroes themselves—with the help of a cuddly robot named Baymax
It’s no accident that the characters in Big Hero 6 are so vivid and delightfully fun. After all, their world isn’t unlike that of the Disney animators tasked with bringing them to life—making their onscreen exploits an undeniable vicarious thrill.
And what do animators do for fun and to stave off cabin fever during the long creative process? They mock-up a scene with some joke lurking in the background or mix in some pop-culture cross-pollination to get a laugh from the boss. In an exclusive gag reel that will become available on Disney Movies Anywhere on Feb. 24—the day the film arrives on Blu-ray—co-directors Don Hall and Chris Williams explain how the clip’s many snafus, intentional or not, fit into one of two categories: Computers are Weird or Animators are Silly.
Big Hero 6, which is already available on DMA and Digital HD, is EW’s pick to take home the Oscar for Best Animated Film. Hall, Williams, and producer Roy Conli spoke to EW about the obscure Marvel origins of the characters, how they came up with the perfect look for Baymax, and how John Lasseter has rejuvenated Walt Disney Animation.
EW: Big Hero 6 is based on a Marvel comic book from the early 1990s, right? But the film goes in a totally different direction. So what was the essence of the original comic-book story and characters that made you think there was a movie here?
DON HALL: Yeah, Big Hero 6 was early 1990s, and then Marvel reinvented it in the early 2000s. The movie came out of a desire on my part to follow my childhood passions. John Lasseter always encourages us to look at what we’re passionate about, and I lovedDisney as a kid, I loved Marvel as a kid. And lucky for me, Disney had just purchased Marvel, so I pitched that idea of grabbing something of Marvel’s and bringing it over here. John got very excited so I got to looking around. I came across Big Hero 6—at first it was just the title, to be perfectly honest. I had never read the comics before, so I looked it up—they have a great Wiki page—and saw that it was a Japanese superhero team. Kind of a Japanese Avengers. And I thought, Oh, that’s cool. I got my hand on the comics, and I thought the characters were very fun and appealing. I really liked the tone of the books. You could tell the creators just loved Japanese pop culture. There were a lot of references to anime. Everyone in this building loves that stuff too. But most importantly, you could look through all that and see that there could be a really emotional story, with this 14-year-old super genius who loses his brother and this robot that essentially becomes his healer and his surrogate big brother. So even though it was really obscure by Marvel standards, it actually had all the really cool ingredients for an animated story.
CHRIS WILLIAMS: Don has been a hardcore fan of the genre his whole life, since he was a kid. So to me, I feel like it took about three and half years to make this film, but I really think it was more like 40 years in the making. I was not as hardcore a fan of the genre, so my in was really the character that Don created, Baymax, this really sweet and guileless character. The relationship between Baymax and Hiro is what I really connected with. Because I grew up loving the earliest Disney movies, specifically Bambi and Dumbo, and there is this pure, good, innocent quality that those characters have that is shared byBaymax. I think you see a lineage there. So I saw so much potential in this character and was so excited when Don asked me to join him.
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