User-submitted post by Brandon Smith
Despite being based on a Marvel Comics property, Disney’s marketing for their upcoming film Big Hero 6 hasn’t played up the film’s connection to the Marvel Universe (unsurprisingly, since Marvel announced earlier in August that they were severing their ties with the film). And according to several new interviews with John Lasseter at a Burbank event promoting the film, it was more a case of giving Disney complete creative freedom. As Vulture reports, “Without question, it was made 100 percent here,” said Lasseter. “They’d forgotten the books existed.”
He also went on to dispel rumors of a supposed ‘rift’ growing between Disney and Marvel, allegedly the reason why Marvel backed away. “We have a fantastic relationship with them,” John told the Hollywood Reporter.
The event, attended by Lasseter, directors Don Hall and Chris Williams, and producer Roy Conli, showcased 25 minutes of finished footage to a gathering of Oscar bloggers, in an obvious attempt to give the film an early push for awards season, whose talks have recently been revolving around How To Train Your Dragon 2, The LEGO Movie, The Boxtrolls, and The Book Of Life.
Despite the creative parting of ways between Marvel and Disney, co-director Don Hall compared Big Hero 6 to a recent major Marvel film, Guardians Of The Galaxy. “They do feel like distant cousins,” said Hall. “Guardians is a Marvel movie, but it’s sort of gone off on a different branch. It indicates that fans of superhero movies are willing to try new flavors.”
Don Hall continued to reiterate Big Hero 6‘s standing as a very different kind of superhero movie, as the different ‘powers’ the characters posses all have a basis in science and technology. “There are no mutants, and no people irradiated by gamma rays,” says Hall, jettisoning two very typical superhero origin tropes. In fact, Don Hall noted that, for the most part, it really isn’t a superhero movie (at least in a traditional sense): “We don’t call it a superhero movie,” he said. “We call it a super nerd movie.”
On the subject of a Marvel/Disney animated film set within the live-action Marvel Cinematic Universe continuity that currently houses Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, and of course, Guardians Of The Galaxy, Lasseter said: “If we went directly into the Marvel Universe, that would mean we’d work more directly with Marvel.”
Big Hero 6 arrives in theaters on November 7.
What do you think? How might an animated Marvel/Disney film fit into the Marvel Cinematic Universe?
Photo: Hollywood Reporter
