This fall, Disney Animation and Marvel will team up for the first time on the big screen with Big Hero 6, a tween-targeted adaptation of the superhero team originally created by Steven T. Seagle and Duncan Rouleau in the pages of Alpha Flight. We still don’t know all that much about the movie, but what we’ve seen so far from trailers and images suggests a cutesy, vividly colored superhero outing in the comedic vein of Megamind or Despicable Me. Recently, we discovered a new piece of information about Big Hero 6, one that, though expected, is at least nice to have confirmed.
In the pages of Total Film, director Don Hall articulated that, though Big Hero 6 is a Marvel property, we shouldn’t be expecting the Avengers or any other superheroes to be making an appearance in the movie and subsequent sequels:
“Very early on, when we were collaborating with Marvel, the decision was made to intentionally not connect it to the Marvel universe,” he explains of the CGI superhero flick.
“Everybody felt like it would be great for us to take this idea of theirs and make our own universe with it. Marvel really encouraged us to do that. So there’ll be no Iron Man or Captain America, and no Avengers in this world.
“Our Avengers are the Big Hero 6.”
The promise that no major superheroes will be involved in Big Hero 6 may deter fans of the live-action Marvel franchise, but perhaps younger audiences will find the new set of characters, including a marshallow-like robot named Baymax and a young robotics prodigy named Hiro Hamada, to their liking.
In Big Hero 6, Hiro turns his softy protector Baymax into an armored super-robot, a choice which brings them into contact with a group of other super-powered beings. When their city, San Fransoyko, is faced with a terrible threat, Hiro and Baymax partner with comic-book superfan Fred, who can transform himself into a Godzilla-esque creature named Fredzilla; Go Go Tomago, a bike messenger with the ability to transform himself into a ball of energy; and Leiko Tanaka, a young woman with a fearsome battle suit. That’s only five of the six accounted for (provided Hiro even counts), so we’ll likely hear more about additional characters as the film’s November release date draws closer.
Big Hero 6 opens November 7th.