Reviews – Page 12 – Diabolical Plots

MOVIE REVIEW: Bumblebee

written by David Steffen

Bumblebee is a 2018 action science fiction film distributed by Paramount that’s a prequel to the Transformers film series that started with Transformers in 2007.

A war rages between two factions of intelligent shape-changing robots on the mechanical planet of Cybertron. The vicious Decepticons have scattered the remaining Autobots and driven them into hiding. Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen), leader of the Autobots sends the Autobot B-127 (Dylan O’Brien) to find a place for a new base. B-127 lands on Earth in 1987 and although hunted there, manages to survive the landing but soon gets into a fight with a Decepticon that leaves him mute and wounded, and he barely manages to turn into a VW Beetle before powering down.

The Autobot is revived by 17-year-old girl Charlie Watson (Hailee Steinfeld), who learned mechanic skills from her father before he passed away. Charlie’s family doesn’t have a lot of money and for Charlie that means lack of freedom because she doesn’t have a car, so when a junkyard dealer gives her the broken old Beetle for a birthday present, she sees it as a major opportunity.

Charlie befriends the Autobot and gives him the name “Bumblebee” and teaches him more about life on Earth, especially the importance of keeping his presence there secret. But when she revived Bumblebee, he emitted a transmission that has drawn a pair of Decepticons to investigate, and now Bumblebee is hunted by both the military and by the Decepticons. A neighborhood boy, Memo (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.), stumbles upon the secret and Charlie tells him everything, and the three of them fight to keep Bumblebee and Earth safe from the Decepticons who would destroy them all.

Although I was not among those who hated the 2007 Transformers movie, I understand the criticisms of it and the sequels have only gotten worse from there (primarily because of tasteless unfunny jokes and military fetishism) to the point that I’d more or less given up on the movie franchise, at least until the creative minds behind it changed. Bumblebee redeems the series a great deal, making it much more of a character story than its predecessors and making me care about the characters again. The character of Bumblebee has always been a favorite character for me, one of the smaller Transformers and always an underdog and he was the best part of the 2007 movie. I loved that he got his own movie here and I loved the friendship that develops here between Bumblebee and Charlie, especially with Bumblebee as the bumbling newcomer to the planet who doesn’t know how any of this works. The acting is great across the board, and I really cared about Charlie and her grief about her father’s death and abouther quest to get a car to get some more freedom in her life.

I like Bumblebee’s new look, redesigned from the other movies, and they did a great job portraying his emotions through body language since for most of the movie he doesn’t have a voice and his face lacks the articulation to express emotion that other Transformers have.

This was a fun and great movie, a return to the fun and kid-friendly roots that the series had gotten away from. I highly recommend it, and I hope that there are more Transformers movie in the future that are more like this kind of film.

TV REVIEW: Chuck Season 3

written by David Steffen

Chuck was an action spy action/drama/comedy show, starring Chuck Bartowski (Zachary Levi), who started as a down-on-his-luck geek working at the BuyMore fixing computers, when he ended up with a supercomputer with government secrets downloaded into his brain, as he has been used as an intelligence asset. Season 3 ran from January to May of 2010.

Season 2 ended with a major change as Chuck ended up downloading a brand new version of the Intersect computer into his brain which not only lets him suddenly remember government secrets at convenient times, but gives him a wide range of physical skills, especially martial arts. No longer is Chuck just “the asset”, forever told to wait in the car and stay out of trouble. Now he has the combat skills (without actually having earned them through training) to be able to take danger head on. It had also ended with Chuck, Casey (Adam Baldwin), and Morgan (Joshua Gomez) all quitting the BuyMore, with Morgan moving to Hawaii with Anna.

Season 3 begins with much of that being rolled back–Chuck has taken some time off to try to become a full-time spy, even turning down an offer from Sarah (Yvonne Strahovski) to quit and run away, but it has not worked out well, so he ends up returning to work for the BuyMore. Morgan’s dream to become a chef in Hawaii does not go well and Anna leaves him. Team Bartowski ends up reuniting, albeit with a much more awkward mood because some drama happened between them that you don’t know about yet. So, Season 2 felt like it was written as a series finale, and meant to give some sense of closure by ending an era in various ways, but when the writers began writing Season 3 realized they didn’t know how to write Chuck without the BuyMore, without Morgan, etc. So the first several episodes the season were very awkward and felt off, I think because they were trying to put everything back together without it seeming ridiculous. And especially with the relationship between Chuck and Sarah being kindof tense and bitter, I was starting to consider giving up on it, but it finally turned around became good again.

Despite the “putting everything back together again” feel, the season 2 finale did have a big permanent change in that Chuck does still have the upgraded intersection that lets him be an action hero. This changes the dynamic of the show quite a bit because he’s no longer the helpless one, and also that he has to learn to control his emotions for this part of the Intersect to work properly. Which, I have mixed feelings about, because part of the appeal of the show was that the male lead is not macho, is not aggressive, is prone to talking about his feelings at inopportune times during the middle of missions. After the first few episodes I think they made it work, and it felt like a solid show again, albeit a quite different show, it still had the parallel BuyMore hijinks, still had the comedy with the action, still had the relationship stuff between Chuck and Sarah.

And while the season is slow to start, some of the reveals and happenings later in the season are the best in the series yet. So, I’d still highly recommend watching, just trying to push through the first 3 or 4 episodes if it’s seeming dull.

TV REVIEW: Chuck Season 2

written by David Steffen

In the premier season of Chuck, the title character Chuck Bartowsky (Zachary Levi) had been living an unextraordinary life working at the BuyMore after being kicked out of Stanford based on false accusations of cheating, and dumped by his girlfriend. Until he gets an unexpected email from Bryce Larkin (Matt Bomer), (the one who got him kicked out Stanford), that contains coded images containing government secrets that download themselves into Chuck’s brain, and after that if he sees something that is in the Intersect (the name for the computer storing the data), then he will suddenly know the information. So Chuck has been working with CIA Agent Sarah Walker (Yvonne Strahovski) who has been posing as his girlfriend, and NSA Agent John Casey (Adam Baldwin) who has been posing as a co-worker at the BuyMore. Season 2 ran from 2008-2009.

As season two starts, the team goes on what Chuck thinks will be his final mission, to retrieve a component needed to make a new computer-based Intersect so that Chuck can retire. What he doesn’t know is that Casey has been given orders to kill Chuck as soon as the new Intersect is running, because he’s too much of a liability. (Since this is all in Episode 1 of the season you can guess that neither does our title character get killed nor does he get to go back to normal civilian life).

Season two was a great build from season one, expanding on a great formula. The BuyMore still plays the comedic foil to the more serious spy action. The main difference in format from the previous season is that Chuck is getting more accustomed to the spywork, the action, and the lying, which makes sense, but it’s still good old sensitive Chuck, usually trying to talk about feelings on a mission while everyone else is trying to concentrate on not being dead. There are some major revelations having to do with Chuck’s family in this season that are awesome and fun.

I loved season two just as much as season one. Highly recommended, fun, generally lighthearted, with lots of spy action.

GAME REVIEW: Baba Is You

written by David Steffen

Baba Is You is a puzzle game developed by developer Hempula Oli and released on Steam in 2019.

At first glance it seems like a pretty typical block-pushing puzzle game, where you move a character around and push blocks to reach the designated goal. But in this game, some of the blocks are words that when combined form the fundamental rules of the level, and the object is modify those rules to make it possible to reach the goal. The title of the game “Baba is You”, because every level in the game has to have a “___ Is You” rule which defines what kind of object is the player character. While many of the levels have Baba Is You rule to define Baba as the player character (Baba is a white four-legged creature), Baba is only you because of that rule… as you will discover if you accidentally break the “Baba Is You” sentence without replacing it with something else, and will not be able to continue, having no player character.

So let’s say the rules say that you win by touching the flag, but the flag is surrounded by impenetrable walls. Depending on the pieces available, you could win by making the walls pushable, or by making something besides the flag the way to win. Lots of different combinations are possible based on what rules are defined in the level and which ones are malleable (while all words can theoretically be pushed, often they are placed in unreachable parts of the level to make those rules basically immutable for the level).

The game gradually builds up, adding more nouns and verbs and adjectives to further complicate how you have to think about the rules to break them sufficiently to beat the level, such that even levels where you only have a few movable pieces can still be stumpers for quite some time and I find myself often picking through them in my mind as I’m doing other things, trying out different combinations of the available rules, and most of the stumpers I’ve figured out when I’m NOT playing.

The headspace of the game feels very similar to the headspace of a particularly novel and interesting computer programming task, takes you a while to get your head around it but then it is so satisfying when everything turns out the way you imagined. This game will probably be particularly appealing to people who enjoy that kind of challenge.

I haven’t finished the game yet, but I am well and truly hooked and I’ll keep picking at the remaining levels until I get them, and it’s very satisfying when I get one of the stumpers I’ve been stuck on for a while.

Visuals
Cute, in a simple way.

Audio
Fine, though I usually play with the sound off; it doesn’t appear to have made much difference.

Challenge
SO challenging puzzle game, though the game has a well-designed difficulty curve, the first levels breeze by because they’re ingraining the basic rules into your head, but as the simplest cases of those are exhausted and more words are added it becomes frustratingly difficult.

Story
No story, particularly, Baba is moving around a map trying to reach new areas, but you don’t really know what the point of it is.

Session Time
You can quit at any time, and any given level probably only takes a couple minutes once you figure out the strategy, so it’s easy to pick up and set down.

Playability
The movement is very easy, just arrow keys and you can also wait. Other things in the levels only move when the character moves so you can take your time to think if you need to, it’s not a game of fast fingers. The challenge is not in the difficulty of the gameplay.

Replayability
Haven’t finished the first playthrough yet, but I imagine it wouldn’t necessarily have a lot of replay value because you’ll know the puzzles, but maybe there’s some collectibles or unlockables to enhance that.

Originality
It is based around a familiar type of game but with rule rewriting system I’ve never seen before, ends up making it a whole new kind of game.

Playtime
I haven’t finished it yet, but I’ve spent 14 hours of playtime on it, and I’m sure the playtime will vary wildly from player to player based on how fast they solve the puzzles.

Overall
This is an excellent puzzle game if you enjoy mind-warping mental challenges and especially if you have a sort of programmer brain that likes playing with the framework that everything is built on, that when faced with a challenge that seems insurmountable, enjoys rebuilding the entire structure to make it surmountable. I highly recommend it though I warn you that it might drive you to distraction. It’s listed at $15 on Steam. If you’re not sure you understand what I mean by rearranging the rules, watch the video at the bottom of this review, it gives some useful examples.

BOOK REVIEW: The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

written by David Steffen

The Forever War is a military science fiction novel written by Joe Haldeman and published by St. Martin’s Press in 1974. It was followed by the sequels Forever Peace (1997) and Forever Free (1999) and A Separate War (1999), but it works as a standalone book (presumably having been sold and published as one).

The protagonist of the story is William Mandella, a soldier in an interstellar war against an alien adversary (known as the Taurans) that no one understands. Even though humanity now has the technology to travel through wormholes for quicker interstellar travel, travel is still very slow from a bystanders point of view, and because of time dilation at very fast speeds, relatively fast for the travelers. This has major implications for the length of the war as well as the way an arms race will play out, because when your ship and a Tauran ship make contact their technology could be hundreds of years more or less advanced than yours depending on the planet of origin and time of departure. Mandella, through several long tours, experiences a much longer stretch of the war than most of his fellow soldiers, taking some civilian time in between.

I thought the novel did very well at the military SF part of the story, using the alien conflict as a metaphor for our wars, in the hopelessness and separation and desperation of soldiers, doing whatever they can to survive their tour. This was magnified by the complications of space travel and fighting an alien when you don’t know their technology or language or anatomy. Haldeman wrote the novel after serving as a soldier in Vietnam, and his experience shows through in the feel of the story, it feels very real.

The civilian and some of the interpersonal parts of the story even during the military sections, I found much harder to get into. I don’t know if this is a consequence of shifting general views in the 44 years since the book was published, but whenever he was going through a civilian part of his life, I was ready for that part to end–in particular the character’s views on homosexuality as the culture around him grew more and more to accept homosexuality as the norm. (The character didn’t strike me as homophobic, exactly, but it sometimes seemed like that was all he could see about the people around him)

Overall I thought it was good military SF, lots of actions and strategy, though frustrating at times.

GAME REVIEW: Ittle Dew 2+

written by David Steffen

Ittle Dew 2+ is a Legend of Zelda inspired action/adventure puzzle game released for the Nintendo Switch in November 2016 by Nicalis–other iterations of the game have been released for other platforms, but the + in the name signifies additional content included from Ittle Dew 2.

Ittle the adventurer and her flying fox familiar Tipsy crash their raft on another island full of dungeons and treasure. They are immediately confronted by an odd stranger with books strapped to the top of his head who tells them they must not explore the island. But in the crash their raft broke into eight pieces which have somehow ended up at the end of 8 dungeons guarded by puzzles and enemies.

I have not played the first Ittle Dew game, so I don’t know how this one compares to that one, but there wasn’t any point where I felt like the gameplay suffered because I wasn’t familiar with the predecessor. The games easy to pick up–all you can do at first is move and swing your weapon. As you find additional items in dungeons then the gameplay gets more complicated as you figure out how to use those to solve puzzles. It is very similar in style to the NES and SNES iterations of Legend of Zelda, with a broad overworld with dungeons, each of which has an item and a boss. For those who don’t like open-ended exploring it is more directed than its source material in that the next “logical” dungeon for you to visit is marked on the map–so if you just want to power through it without broadly exploring, you certainly can.

The game eases you into the difficulty in that right at the beginning the enemies really don’t attack you and the puzzles are very tutorial level. But the game does get genuinely difficult by the end both in puzzles and gameplay. One aspect I thought was really well done was that, although an immediate use of each item is immediately apparent, they generally have at least a handful of major ways in which each item can be used to help solve puzzles, and some of them are not obvious, you have to experiment, try to mix them, see what happens. I’m not sure I’ve even figured out all the permutations of the items, because there are some puzzles I haven’t solved and I feel like I’m missing something even though I’ve gotten the major items at least.

This game was a lot of fun, especially if you already know you like Zelda-like games, it’s well worth your time.

Visuals
Simple, fun, cartoonish look.

Audio
Fine, though I often played with the sound off.

Challenge
Later levels of the game, particularly the boss battles, and some of the later puzzles, are very challenging and often took me several tries. Some of the optional areas of the game like the dream dungeons I haven’t completed because the puzzles there are quite challenging–there are quite a few ways to use each tool you find on the way that aren’t immediately obvious, so it takes quite a bit of experimentation to figure these out.

Story
Slight, but fun. It’s a game that’s clearly designed for people who have played a ton of Zelda-like games before, so they have fun playing with the tropes and poking fun at some of the sillier ones.

Session Time
As with all Switch games, you can put the console to sleep at will, so that makes it easy to pick up or put down at a moment’s notice.

Playability
Not hard to pick up, the controls expand as you gain more items to use. Some of the later puzzles are in part challenging because it’s not obvious all the different possible uses of a power.

Replayability
There are optional dungeons and a whole set of dungeons in the dream land that are particularly challenging because you can only use one item in each of them, along with collectibles like extra hearts there’s plenty for extra play-throughs.

Originality
It is intended as a parody of the popular Zelda series, especially the ones from SNES and earlier with the 3/4 overhead view, so it’s not a game whose popularity is based on its uniqueness. But it takes those familiar elements and does some fun new things with it.

Playtime
The Switch says that I played this for 10 hours, which has been mostly focused on the standard dungeons. There is certainly a lot more to explore that I haven’t touched.

Overall
If you like real-time fighting and puzzle games, you’ll enjoy this. If you’re a fan of the Legend of Zelda series, even more so, since you’ll get the references. Fun, and the later puzzles and boss battles are challenging even for an experienced gamer. $30 on the Nintendo site if you want to play it on Switch. Ittle Dew 2 (without the plus) is available on Steam for $20, I think that does not include some of the extra dungeons and etc.

MOVIE REVIEW: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

written by David Steffen

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is a fantasy action/adventure movie tie-in to J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter universe, distributed by Warner Bros pictures in 2016. It shares a title with one of Harry Potter’s textbooks in the Harry Potter series, written by Newt Scamander. And it has also been published as a standalone book by J.K. Rowling in 2001.

In 1926, before he wrote his famous book Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Newt Scamander traveled to the United States with a magical bag full of magical beasts, in order to return one of them to its native habitat in the American southwest. Newt accidentally switches bags with a local N0-Maj (the American word for “Muggle” or non-magic-user), an aspiring baker. Demoted Auror (hunter of dark wizards) Tina Goldstein arrests him for the disturbance caused by one of the escaped creatures, but they decide to work together to find the bag and contain all the escaped creatures again. Meanwhile, something magical and powerful is killing people in the city, but Newt is certain it’s not one of his creatures. But the only way to prove that is to recapture all the creatures again. There is an anti-magic in New York at the time, led by No-maj (another word for Muggle, a non-magic-user)Mary Lou Barebone, head of the New Salem Philanthropic Society. The anti-magic sentiment is strong in New York at this time and any magician caught is in danger from the No-Maj population, as well as risking the larger magical society, and Newt’s activities here aren’t exactly legal even within the magical population.

This movie was a lot of fun! Largely because it’s great to have a chance to jump back in the Wizarding World since the main line of Harry Potter books and movies is over. This is the first foray (at least that I remember) into the USA Wizarding World and it’s interesting to see how the laws and customs and wordage are different in the American setting than the British. Although the characters are only familiar in a vague historical sort of way, there is plenty here to engage the watcher, and Newt is an interesting character with at least some laudable goals even if he does seem to make an art of self-delusion (“these creatures aren’t dangerous!” as he works very hard to prevent them murdering random passersby). It works better than any of the Harry Potter movies in my opinion, and I think the reason for that is there’s no book source to compare it unfavorably to, while the Harry Potter movies were all books first that were adapted into movies, this was made to be a movie.

Action packed, a fun return to the universe we know and love but on a new continent we haven’t seen in Harry Potter stories. A lot of fun!

HUGO REVIEW: Short Story Finalists

written by David Steffen

It’s award season again, and these are the nominees for the Hugo Award, voted by supporting members of this year’s WorldCon. This category covers fiction of less than 7500 words. I love to use the Hugo Awards as a recommended reading list, and I hope you enjoy the stories as much as I do!

1.“STET,” by Sarah Gailey (Fireside Magazine, October 2018)
Written as a heavily-annotated synopsis for a research paper about the life-or-death choices of self-driving cars. I love stories that are written as documents, and this has three levels: the synopsis, the annotations by the editor suggesting changes, and the responses from the author responding to the editor’s suggestions. (“STET” means “let it stand” when responding to editorial suggestions). This hits a lot of my favorite things, between an emotional story, a document-style format, several layers of storytelling, and very concise format. There is a very emotional story here, but much of it is inferred from the tone and the atypical wording for a research paper and the responses to that. Loved it.

2. “The Tale of the Three Beautiful Raptor Sisters, and the Prince Who Was Made of Meat,” by Brooke Bolander (Uncanny Magazine 23, July-August 2018)
Fairy tale about a trio of velociraptors and the prince who is too foolish to ignore all of the warnings. Hilarious and fun spin on fairy tales with a non-human point of view and follows through on its exemplary title.

3. “The Rose MacGregor Drinking and Admiration Society,” by T. Kingfisher (Uncanny Magazine 25, November-December 2018)
A group of fairy folk are pining over Rose MacGregor, the one who got away. They are so accustomed to being the ones to be pined over, they’re not sure what to do with themselves when it happens in reverse! This is an entertaining reversal that has the feel of tall tales from the fey about this unconquerable person unique in a world of otherwise entirely conquerable people.

4. “The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington,” by P. Djèlí Clark (Fireside Magazine, February 2018)
Based on apparently true piece of documentation showing that George Washington purchased “nine negro teeth”, this tells the stories of the nine people whose teeth became part of George Washington’s dentures, and what made each of them who they were and how their tooth’s presence affected Washington. With the format this is a small collection of flash fiction with a common theme, interesting and compelling and each one very brief and to the point.

5. “The Court Magician,” by Sarah Pinsker (Lightspeed, January 2018)
This is the story of the boy who will become the court magician, always hungry to learn the secrets of the tricks, who will keep on no matter the cost. This is a story of power and the power behind the power, where there is always a trick behind everything.

6. “A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies,” by Alix E. Harrow (Apex Magazine, February 2018)
This is a story about witches and librarians and kids desparate for escape, and how a witch librarian would try to help them. Portal fantasies have always been one of my favorites, so this is up my alley

MOVIE REVIEW: Monsters University

written by David Steffen

Monsters University is a computer-animated children’s movie comedy produced by Pixar, released in June 2013. It is a prequel to 2001’s super-popular Monsters Inc, which starred monsters James “Sully” Sullivan and Mike Wazowski working in the scare factory scaring human children to produce power for the monster city and accidentally let a human child into the monster world.

As you might guess from the title, Monsters University takes place in Mike (Billy Crystal) and Sully’s (John Goodman) college days, as they’re just starting. At the beginning of the movie they’re just starting school, both enrolled in the scarer program and they haven’t even met yet. But they don’t quickly become friends like you might expect if you’ve seen the other movie. Studious, hardworking model student Mike is constantly frustrated by lazy Sully who expects to cruise through college on his family name and reputation and his natural intimidating size. But Monsters University is no easy ride, and least of all of the scare program, which Dean Abigail Hardscrabble (Helen Mirren) watches over harshly.

They both fail their final exams, Sully because he’s lazy and Mike because he’s not scary, and as a last ditch effort they form a team to join the university’s Scare Games, making a wager with Hardscrabble that they can re-enter the program if their team wins. These future-friends and now-enemies must join forces if they want to have a chance at their dream future.

Pixar is one of my favorite moviemakers, and Monsters Inc is one of their classic films that I love through and through. It is great to see Mike and Sully onscreen again, albeit in a very different era of their lives when they weren’t buddies. If I had seen this movie first, I think I might’ve loved it for what it is. But, given that I am well familiar with the first movie, I found that the looming memory of what will be for Mike and Sully just… made me sad.

In this movie we see Mike as young and enthusiastic and idealistic and driven to achieve to fulfill his lifelong dream of becoming a scarer. He is clearly the student who is the most academically well-versed in the profession of scaring the university has, and the university claims to be an academic institution. It’s not a boot camp or physical training, it’s a university, so academics should rule. The faculty repeats again and again that scaring isn’t just about being born with a scary appearance, it’s about applying yourself. No one applies themselves more than Mike, and in the end, we already know… he’s going to fail, because although he works at Monsters Inc, he is not a scarer. He is an assistant to a scarer. His lifelong dream did not work out, and the Mike we see in Monsters Inc, while still energetic, has lost much of his drive for achievement his younger self had–he is content to be second fiddle to Sully’s natural talent and appearance, and he doesn’t even seem to realize that he doesn’t even get the secondary accolades he deserves–being covered up by a logo on the commercial, by a barcode on a magazine cover, and he doesn’t even realize. The university system for monsters is a sham of pomp and circumstance, where monsters are told that they have to strive to achieve, but through every example they are shown that this is not true, that monsters who are born scary will be rewarded and monsters who are not born scary will not be. No one in the movie seems to understand, even by the end, what a hollow facade their supposed education is.

Maybe, considering the major twists of the first movie, where it turns out the scaring profession in itself is based largely on lies, that children are not actually deadly to discourage empathy for them in a power system that’s based on scaring them. So, maybe it’s appropriate that the education for an occupation based on lies be based on a sham education as well. But I felt like in Monsters Inc, most of the monsters except for a few in leadership roles were oblivious to the lies, while I felt that the University’s lies were pretty plain.

In this movie we see Sully as a lazy student, expecting to ride through life on the fame of his family and his natural scariness/charm. By the end of the movie he supposedly learns his lesson but, as much as I love Sully in the original Monsters Inc, it always felt to me like his scariness wasn’t anything he worked hard for, he was just born looking that way, he had the natural presence, and that’s how he kept being a top scarer, resting on his laurels. I just considered that part of his character, and it didn’t bother me in Monsters Inc, it’s much like other stories where charming character succeeds at sales or any number of other fields that are based on personability. But since much of the narrative of Monsters University was based on the idea of him redeeming himself from being a lazy student resting on his laurels, knowing where Sully ends up undermined his whole arc for me.

So, while I loved seeing the characters again, the movie as a whole just made me sad from knowing what the future holds for Mike and Sully. If you don’t think knowing where this story goes would bother you, I think it was otherwise a fun movie, but I found it hard to get out from under that.

There was also one major plot point that didn’t make sense given the context of the first movie, this is a SPOILER. At one point in the movie, Sully and Mike get trapped in the human world and end up scaring a group of adults to power a door from the human world side. This has never been suggested to be possible. Monsters at Monsters Inc are supposed to always shut the closet door so their humans don’t sneak through–if the door just opens whenever a human gets scared on the human side, then kids would be slipping into monster world all the time. A kid would get scared in the dark and their parents would check the closet and find a doorway to another world there. And given that this is a prequel, this major revelation should’ve already been common knowledge by the time of Monsters Inc.

MOVIE REVIEW: Big Hero 6

written by David Steffen

Big Hero 6 is an animated action comedy science fiction movie released by Walt Disney Animation Studios in 2014, which is loosely based on the Marvel superhero team of the same name.

Hiro Hamada is a 14-year old high school graduate living in San Fransokyo (a combination of San Francisco and Tokyo apparently?), who spends his free time building robots to fight on the illegal underground bot fighting circuits. His big brother Tadashi shows him to the advanced research lab where Tadashi has been spending his time inventing a balloon robot with nursing capabilities, and Hiro quickly makes friends with the other young researchers as well as the lab’s director Robert Callaghan who invites Hiro to apply to join the lab by entering something in an inventing competition.

Soon after, a disaster at the lab takes the life of Callaghan and Tadashi, and Hiro is left to pick up the pieces of his life. But Baymax was in Tadashi’s bedroom at home at the time of the accident, and activates to help Hiro cope with the loss of his brother. Hiro recruits Baymax’s help, and the help of his friends, to get to the bottom of the accident at the lab.

Baymax is lovable and hilarious from the first minute he’s onscreen, in part because of his unusual architecture as an inflated balloon built around a flexible skeleton, built to be nonthreatening to help with his healthcare functionality. Even as he gets pulled further and further away from his core purpose for the sake of the story, Baymax’s focus is always on helping Hiro heal from the loss of his brother. This is both funny and sad. Funny, because Baymax is always so well-meaning, he is always looking out for others at all times, that he interrupts action scenes to verify that what he is doing is helping Hiro feel better. Sad, because he is so trusting and Hiro honestly takes advantage of someone he calls a friend, by pretending that a quest for revenge is equivalent to grief counseling.

Spoilers in this paragraph: I normally don’t discuss big plot points in reviews, but in this case I wanted to talk about a particular point that did bother me, although I like the movie as a whole. This ongoing choice to take advantage of Baymax comes to a head during one of the major climaxes of the show when Hiro asks Baymax to kill in the name of his quest for revenge, and Baymax can’t harm a human being because of his programming. Instead of trying to understand this, Hiro removes his healthcare programming chip, which is like lobotomizing a friend because your friend doesn’t agree with you. I feel like that was more than just a mistake, that was a mind-rape of a friend who trusted him, and while the movie made it clear that was a bad choice, I felt that it glossed over the consequences.

But overall, loved the movie, lots of fun action, lots of funny stuff. Great for kids too. Since we watched the movie, my 4-year-old asks me on a daily basis “Do you remember the Baymax movie?”