Would Baymax Kill?

A brief exploration of the use of robots and artificial intelligence in children’s science fiction; comparing Big Hero 6 (dir. Chris Williams and Don Hall, 2015) and The Iron Giant (dir. Brad Bird, 1999)

Big Hero 6 is an animated film taking place in the fictional city of San Fransokyo. It follows a young boy, Hiro (Ryan Potter), as he sets out to stop the villain, Yokai (James Cromwell), with the aid of his friends and his deceased brother’s healthcare robot, Baymax (Scott Adsit).

The Iron Giant is an animated film about Hogarth Hughes (Eli Marienthal) and an alien robot, the Iron Giant (Vin Diesel). It follows their developing friendship as the government seeks to hunt down and destroy the Iron Giant.

Asimov’s laws can be equated to the moral compass and ethical opinions that humans develop, the use of them in children’s films allows the audience to see a simplified version of a moral compass and are able to see how ethical opinions can change. Big Hero 6 is helpful in exploring Isaac Asimov’s Laws of Robotics as Baymax is a robot designed to do no harm and undo the harm caused by others. The Iron Giant is also useful as it shows a different interpretation of these laws, and the acceptance of the original laws; much like how humans come to accept others’ opinions as well as follow their own moral compass, their human ‘programming’.

An audience of children means an audience that can be easily influenced or manipulated, something that filmmakers need to be aware of. This means looking at the characterisation and motivation of the villains, and how they compare to the presentation of the heroes. Filmmakers must rely on creating an influential good within a film where the bad may be tempting. Big Hero 6 shows a tight-knit friendship group and The Iron Giant creates a close family unit. Both groups are left with the hope that their robot companion is still alive, whereas the villains are punished for their actions and are seen as being isolated at the end of their films.

There is psychological reasoning behind why robots are given certain characteristics, such as simple speech patterns and child-like movements, as well as why robots are commonly used in children’s science fiction.

Critical and theoretical perspectives

In 1942, Isaac Asimov developed the fictional three laws of robotics in order to create an ethical system between humans and robots. The rules are as follows; “a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm”, “a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law” and “a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.” (Asimov, 1942).

In many science fiction films, these rules have extended to human-created robots and androids. Baymax is a brilliant example of this; he has been programmed to heal human injuries, both physical and mental, and on multiple occasions states that it is not in his programming to harm humans in any way. Hiro is seen to alter his code in order to kill Yokai, a clear violation of these laws, and something that is not a robot’s fault but rather is a human’s fault.

Baymax’s original body is lost accordingly as he follows the Second and Third Laws, he sacrifices himself in order to allow Hiro and Abigail (Katie Lowes) to survive.

The Iron Giant can be seen as the opposite of Baymax, he is not human-made and his purpose is to kill. He seems to have his own altered version of the laws, he protects his own existence when a weapon is pointed at him by entering a ‘combat’ mode. By the end of the film, he seems to learn Asimov’s First Laws of Robotics; instead of roleplaying a villain when playing with Hogarth, he wishes to play Superman, a character who epitomises good and is seen as the protector of humanity. Later he sacrifices himself in order to save the town from a missile, not protecting his own existence as it goes against the First Law.

Filmmakers have an understanding that a child audience is “impressionable, uneducated and requiring moral guidance” (Brown, 2017). This means that messages should be displayed in a way children will be able to understand, and Big Hero 6 does this through a squishy, marshmallow-like robot with childlike actions, a character that children are able to relate to and enjoy.

Brown also comments that films “are instruments of moral and behavioural instruction” (2017) this is important when looking at children’s films in particular. Films are used to educate children through simple moral messages such as ‘violence is bad’ and ‘friends and family are good’, as well as portraying more complex themes such as grief and finding their identity.

Earlier children’s science fiction often paints a black-and-white representation of heroes and villains. Kent Mansley (Christopher McDonald) in the Iron Giant is painted like this, he is a basic character displaying bad character traits, being incredibly selfish, manipulative and arrogant.

Yokai in Big Hero 6 is an example of a more complex villain in more contemporary science fiction cinema; he is shown as destructive and the reason why Tadashi (Daniel Henney) dies, yet he is also shown to be incredibly loving, all his actions were in order to find a form of justice for the loss of his daughter. This can complicate the idea of what is good and bad, children can see his loss as a logical reason behind his destructiveness and killer intentions.

Both characters face their comeuppance at the end of their films; Yokai is arrested and cannot be with his daughter, and Kent is left humiliated and presumably removed from his position and arrested. This shows children that there are consequences to their actions no matter how ‘good’ the reasoning behind their actions may be.

Bandura’s 1977 Social Learning Theory (SLT) shows behaviour being learned by observing, modelling and imitating behaviour, attitudes, and emotional reactions of others. SLT can be applied to most children’s films, especially science fiction films as they frequently follow the protagonist in a new or different environment, facing challenges they haven’t met before and developing friendships with new people. The Iron Giant interprets and imitates Hogarth when giving him the switch from the power station after he saw Hogarth using it, he also learns basic English by copying what Hogarth says and even learns about the concepts of grief and death after a deer he’d met earlier is shot. By mimicking how children learn on screen, children are able to relate to what the Iron Giant is experiencing and are able to apply what they’ve seen to real-life scenarios.

Bibliography

Asimov, I (1942) ‘Runaround’. Astounding Science Fiction, (March).

Brown, N. (2017) The Children’s Film: Genre, Nation, and Narrative. Columbia University Press.

Hesiod (2017) Cicero: On Education and Humanism. Available from https://hesiodscorner.wordpress.com/2017/10/04/cicero-on-education-and-humanism/. [Accessed 10th January 2023].

Filmography

Big Hero 6. (2015) Directed by Chris Williams and Don Hall [Film] United States: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

The Iron Giant (1999) Directed by Brad Bird [Film] United States: Warner Bros.