Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio. This week, Bennett talks about Disney and Marvel movies, and why Big Hero 6 is a Disney movie. Along with having single-handedly saved the summer box office from disaster, Guardians of the Galaxy has been officially designated the #1 movie of the year as well as the #1 record on the Billboard 200. Which happened, as far as I can tell, with absolutely zero radio play. I know that such a thing matters little these days what with your YouTubes and iTunes. But it is kind of odd that I never heard a single song from Awesome Mix Vol. 1 being played, but Pharrell Williams' "Happy" (which, everyone seems to have willfully elected to forget, made its debut in Despicable Me 2) stalked me everywhere I went for months.
As a thank you to fans of the film when it passed the $200 million mark, the producers released the video of adorable Baby Groot rocking out to The Jackson 5’s "I Want You Back" (see "'Dancing Baby Groot' Clip"). The unintended consequence of which being they had to acquiesce to the public’s demand for an official Dancing Baby Groot toy (see "First Look at Funko's 'Dancing Baby Groot'"),if only to stop people from making their own. Which led to the word "Grooting," which the Urban Dictionary defines as the "act of spreading ones legs and bending the knees while slowly waving the arms to resemble baby Groot," entering the American lexicon.
So now it's onto the next big thing, which, probably, will be Disney's Big Hero 6. After Frozen it would be kind of silly to bet against them, especially since like Marvel’s Guardians the project is a completely unknown property that looks like a lot of fun. I'm hoping it is a success for entirely selfish reasons: as always I want to see a good movie, one that holds the possibility of showing me something I've never seen before. Though I must confess I'm personally pulling for inflatable white robot Baymax, because I'm a big guy myself, sure. But also because as we're still uncertain as to what constitutes a hero in our ever-so-slightly-used century, it's nice seeing one who's a caretaker, not a "badass."
The big question for me was whether Marvel was going to "do" anything with the characters--and I finally got an answer. As outlined here (see "Yen Gets ‘Big Hero 6’ Manga") Marvel Editor-In-Chief Alex Alonso told the Comic Book Resources website that the company wasn't going to publish any tie-material to the movie. No new stories, collections or even comics featuring the 'Disney-fied' versions of the characters. I had pretty much given up on seeing new material, but I was hoping for at least reprints, first because they're good comics worthy of being collected. But also because they're comics we could have been able to sell on the back of a Disney blockbuster movie.
This doesn't represent some kind of schism between Marvel and Disney, and Disney has gone out of its way to say so in a Hollywood Reporter piece by Scott Feinberg titled “John Lasseter Dismisses Notion of Rift With Marvel Over 'Big Hero 6' - Hollywood Reporter." Disney-Pixar Chief John Lasseter has been calling Big Hero 6 not a superhero movie but a "supernerd" one, which isn't just him playing with semantics. While I would like to think this means the studio has made a movie just for us, it's entirely more plausible that Lasseter used that term to let us know that like in any other Disney movie the emphasis in Big Hero 6 would be on relatable characters and human feelings, not superheroic action. What is also probably the reason why so far the ads and trailers so have focused on the Baymax and Hiro Hamada relationship and not the other members of the team.
It's understandable that Yen Press got the license to do a translated version of Haruki Ueno’s Baymax manga, since they already have a relationship with Disney: they're publishing the Kingdom Hearts manga. Though there is the small matter that the publication date is "still to be determined," which suggests to me it's pretty much guaranteed not to ship by early November to take advantage of the release of the movie.
With millions and millions of dollars at stake it's also understandable there's been a concerted effort to keep the two very popular brands separate. Because while Marvel movies are undeniably very successful (see paragraph one), for one thing they appeal to a different audience than a Disney film. And for another "Disney intends to give the film a major awards push," and so far, superhero movies don't win Oscars. Big Hero 6 might be the first one that does, though, if enough people don't think it is one.
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com