Brian Truitt

USA TODAY

Superheroes are invading the world previously ruled by talking animals and ice princesses.

Big Hero 6, in theaters Nov. 7, is the 54th movie from the Walt Disney Animation Studio but the first to utilize characters from their pals over at Marvel Comics. The result: comic-book action-adventure and major spectacle mixed with humor and emotion in its story of a kid hero and his robot.

"They're the beating heart of the movie," says Don Hall (Winnie the Pooh), co-director with Chris Williams (Bolt).

While the voice cast won't be announced till later in the summer, the first Big Hero 6 teaser is released online Thursday introducing 14-year-old teenage prodigy Hiro Hamada and the compassionate nurse robot Baymax.

In American-Japanese mash-up locale San Fransokyo, Hiro is a brazen, fast-talking kid inventor who is squandering his potential, and it's his older brother, Tadashi, who wants to steer him toward being a more productive member of society.

Baymax comes into his life, too, and when "forces of antagonism" rise and a mystery develops in the city, Hiro turns his squishy, soft and pliable robot meant for a career in health care into an armored fighting machine ready to save the day, Williams says. "As he's doing that, they form a relationship and a bond that Hiro wasn't counting on."

The youngster also forms a heroic team with his big bro's talented teen friends: adrenaline junkie Go Go Tamago, neat freak Wasabi No-Ginger, master of chemistry Honey Lemon and resident fanboy Fred.

They do have a long way to go before they're the Avengers, however — instead of superheroes, these kids are super-nerds, according to Hall.

"No one's a god, like Thor, and there's no super-soldier serum or anything like that," Hall says. "It's all their brains and tech."

The main question knocking around in the heads of the directors at first was, "What does a Disney superhero movie look like?" The late-1990s Marvel comic on which the movie was very loosely based was "a love letter to Japanese culture," so an anime influence and Asian flavor is definitely in Big Hero 6, says Hall.

Plus, they wanted to honor the Disney legacy but also give it a personality all its own with a cinematic look and scientific bent.

"It became really, really interesting in immersing ourselves in the tech world right now and leveraging that into superpowers," Hall says. "At every turn we try to give the audience something they haven't really seen before."

Adds Williams: "Working here at Disney animation, it's easy for us to connect to nerdy types. In our building, we have a few — ourselves included. There's certainly a lot of inspiration all around us."