Big Hero 6 (2014)

 "That is both disgusting and awesome..."

A somewhat unusual Marvel film here, but an inevitable consequence of said comics giant being swallowed by the greedy jaws of Disney. Awesome Stan Lee cameo aside, the obscure Marvel origins are minimised in order to make a Disney kids' film, and the result works well.

Hence there's no Silver Samurai and no Sunfire. The setting is not Japan but the amusingly named "San Francokyo". But it's all very Disney with the plot, characters and humour having all the kid-friendly charm we might expect. So Hiro inevitably becomes the, er, hero while Baymax becomes the kind of cute robot we might also expect from Disney. I don't know the source material myself (I Googled it; 1998 is well after my comics-reading days) but it adapts amazingly well to the modern house style of a Disney kids' film.

There are some awesome ideas, like the Microbots (wasn't there something like these in the Bob Budiansky Transformers comics in the '80s?), Alan Tudyk as the (spoilers) red herring and all the cool robotics. But it's a heartwarming tale of a boy coming to terms with grief at its, er, heart while at the same time, with the character of Professor Callaghan, showing us the terrible things that grief can make us do. Plus, of course, Hiro gets five, yes five, comedy superhero sidekicks (because that's what they are) with powers.

It's definitely a Disney kids' film which will appeal mainly to kids (not Little Miss Llamastrangler, sadly; it is apparently lacking in princesses), but is a charmingly different little superhero film.