The Iron Giant
The Iron Giant is a 1999 American animated science fiction film produced by Warner Bros. Feature Animation and directed by Brad Bird in his directorial debut. It is based on the 1968 novel The Iron Man by Ted Hughes (which was published in the United States as The Iron Giant), and was written by Tim McCanlies from a story treatment by Bird. The film stars the voices of Jennifer Aniston, Harry Connick Jr., Vin Diesel, James Gammon, Cloris Leachman, John Mahoney, Eli Marienthal, Christopher McDonald, and M. Emmet Walsh. Set during the Cold War in 1957, the film centers on a young boy named Hogarth Hughes, who discovers and befriends a giant alien robot. With the help of a beatnik artist named Dean McCoppin, Hogarth attempts to prevent the U.S. military and Kent Mansley, a paranoid federal agent, from finding and destroying the Giant.
This article is about the 1999 science fiction film. For the viaduct in England, see Bennerley Viaduct.The Iron Giant
- Tim McCanlies
- Brad Bird[a]
Brad Bird
Steven Wilzbach
- July 31, 1999 (Mann's Chinese Theater)
- August 6, 1999 (United States)
87 minutes[3]
United States[4]
English
$31.3 million[5]
The film's development began in 1994 as a musical with the involvement of the Who's Pete Townshend, though the project took root once Bird signed on as director and hired McCanlies to write the screenplay in 1996. The film was animated using traditional animation, with computer-generated imagery used to animate the Iron Giant and other effects. The understaffed crew of the film completed it with half of the time and budget of other animated features. Michael Kamen composed the film's score, which was performed by the Czech Philharmonic.
The Iron Giant premiered at Mann's Chinese Theater in Los Angeles on July 31, 1999, and was released in the United States on August 6. The film significantly underperformed at the box office, grossing $31.3 million worldwide against a production budget of $50 million, which was attributed to Warner Bros.' lack of marketing and skepticism towards animated film production following the box office failure of Quest for Camelot in the preceding year. Despite this, the film was praised for its story, animation, musical score, characters, the portrayal of the title character and the voice performances of Aniston, Connick, Diesel, Mahoney, Marienthal, and McDonald. The film was nominated for several awards, winning nine Annie Awards out of 15 nominations. Through home video releases and television syndication, the film gathered a cult following[7] and is widely regarded as a modern animated classic, and one of the greatest animated films ever made.[8][9][10] In 2015, an extended, remastered version of the film was re-released theatrically,[8][11] and on home video the following year.[12][13]
Plot[edit]
In October 1957, during the Cold War, an object from space crashes in the ocean just off the coast of Maine and then enters the forest near the town of Rockwell.
The following night, nine-year-old Hogarth Hughes investigates and finds the object, a 50-foot-tall alien robot; he runs away but then returns to save the robot when he gets electrocuted while trying to eat the transmission lines of an electrical substation. Hogarth eventually befriends the Giant, finding him docile and curious. When he eats railroad tracks in the path of an oncoming train, the train collides with him and derails; Hogarth leads the Giant away from the area, discovering that he can self-repair. While there, Hogarth shows the Giant comic books and compares him to the hero Superman.
The incidents lead paranoid U.S. government agent Kent Mansley to Rockwell. He suspects Hogarth's involvement after talking with him and his widowed mother, Annie, and rents a room in their house to keep an eye on him. Hogarth evades Mansley and leads the Giant to a junkyard owned by beatnik artist Dean McCoppin, who reluctantly agrees to keep him. Hogarth enjoys his time with the Giant but is compelled to explain the concept of death to the Giant after he witnesses hunters killing a deer.
Hogarth is interrogated by Mansley when he discovers evidence of the Giant after finding a photo of him next to Hogarth and summons a U.S. Army contingent led by General Shannon Rogard to the scrapyard to prove the Giant's existence, but Dean (having been warned by Hogarth earlier) tricks them by pretending that the Giant is one of his art pieces. Later, while playing with a toy gun, Hogarth inadvertently activates the Giant's defensive system, firing a laser beam in the process. Dean yells at him for nearly killing Hogarth, and the saddened Giant runs away with Hogarth giving chase. Dean realizes that the Giant was only acting in self-defense and catches up to Hogarth as they follow the Giant.
The Giant rescues two boys falling from a roof when he arrives, winning over the townspeople. Mansley spots the Giant in the town while leaving Rockwell and has the Army attack the Giant after he has picked up Hogarth, forcing the two to flee. They initially evade the military by using the Giant's flight system, but the Giant is shot down and crashes to the ground.
Hogarth is knocked unconscious, but the Giant assumes that Hogarth is dead, and in a fit of rage and grief transforms into a war machine and returns to Rockwell. Mansley convinces Rogard to prepare a nuclear missile launch from the USS Nautilus, as conventional weapons prove to be ineffective. Hogarth awakens and returns in time to calm the Giant while Dean clarifies the situation to Rogard.
Rogard is ready to stand down and order the Nautilus to deactivate its primed nuke, but a panicked Mansley snatches Rogard's radio and orders the missile launch. The missile is targeted to hit Rockwell, where it will destroy the town upon impact in the resulting nuclear detonation. Mansley attempts to escape, but the Giant intervenes, and Rogard has Mansley arrested. To save the town, the Giant bids farewell to Hogarth and flies off to intercept the missile. As he soars into the missile's path, the Giant remembers Hogarth's words, "You are who you choose to be," smiles contentedly, and declares himself "Superman" as he collides with the weapon. The missile explodes in the atmosphere, saving Rockwell, its population, and the military forces nearby, while the Giant is presumably destroyed, leaving Hogarth, Dean, Annie, and Rogard devastated.
Months later, Dean and Annie, now a couple, have a chat at a memorial of the Giant made by Dean, standing in Rockwell. Hogarth is given a package from Rogard containing a screw from the Giant, which is the only remnant found. That night, Hogarth finds the screw trying to move on its own and, remembering the Giant's ability to self-repair, happily allows the screw to leave.
The screw joins many other parts as they converge on the Giant's head on the Langjökull glacier in Iceland, and the Giant smiles as he begins reassembling himself.
In addition, Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas voice the train's engineers briefly seen near the start of the film. Johnston and Thomas, who were animators and members of Disney's Nine Old Men, were cited by Bird as inspirations for his career, which he honored by incorporating their voices, likenesses, and first names into the film.[15]
Production[edit]
Development[edit]
The origins of the film lie in the book The Iron Man (1968), by poet Ted Hughes, who wrote the novel for his children to comfort them in the wake of their mother Sylvia Plath's suicide. In the 1980s, rock musician Pete Townshend chose to adapt the book for a concept album; it was released as The Iron Man: A Musical in 1989.[17] In 1991, Richard Bazley, who later became the film's lead animator, pitched a version of The Iron Man to Don Bluth while working at his studio in Ireland. He created a story outline and character designs but Bluth passed on the project.[14] After a stage musical was mounted in London, Des McAnuff, who had adapted Tommy with Townshend for the stage, believed that The Iron Man could translate to the screen, and the project was ultimately acquired by Warner Bros. Entertainment.[17]
In late 1996, while developing the project on its way through, the studio saw the film as a perfect vehicle for Brad Bird, who at the time was working for Turner Feature Animation developing Ray Gunn.[17] Turner Broadcasting had recently merged with Warner Bros. parent company Time Warner, and Bird was allowed to transfer to the Warner Bros. Animation studio to direct The Iron Giant.[17] After reading the original Iron Man book by Hughes, Bird was impressed with the mythology of the story and in addition, was given an unusual amount of creative control by Warner Bros.[17] This creative control involved introducing two new characters not present in the original book, Dean and Kent, setting the film in America, and discarding Townshend's musical ambitions (who did not care either way, reportedly remarking, "Well, whatever, I got paid").[18][19] Bird would expand upon his desire to set the film in America in the 1950s in a later interview:
Themes[edit]
When he began work on the film, Bird was in the midst of coping with the death of his sister, Susan, who was shot and killed by her estranged husband. In researching its source material, he learned that Hughes wrote The Iron Man as a means of comforting his children after his wife, Sylvia Plath, died by suicide, specifically through the metaphor of the title character being able to re-assemble itself after being damaged. These experiences formed the basis of Bird's pitch to Warner Bros., which was based around the idea "What if a gun had a soul, and didn't want to be a gun?"; the completed film was also dedicated to Hughes and Susan.[38][39] McCanlies commented that "at a certain point, there are deciding moments when we pick who we want to be. And that plays out for the rest of your life", adding that films can provide viewers with a sense of right and wrong, and expressed a wish that The Iron Giant would "make us feel like we're all part of humanity [which] is something we need to feel."[21] When some critics compared the film to E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Bird responded by saying "E.T. doesn't go kicking ass. He doesn't make the Army pay. Certainly you risk having your hip credentials taken away if you want to evoke anything sad or genuinely heartfelt."[33]
Reception[edit]
Critical response[edit]
The Iron Giant received critical acclaim.[56] On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 96% approval rating based on 142 reviews, with an average rating of 8.20/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "The endearing Iron Giant tackles ambitious topics and complex human relationships with a steady hand and beautifully animated direction from Brad Bird."[57] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 85 out of 100 based on 29 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[58] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.[59] The Reel Source forecasting service calculated that "96–97%" of audiences that attended recommended the film.[45]
Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times called it "straight-arrow and subversive, [and] made with simplicity as well as sophistication," writing, "it feels like a classic even though it's just out of the box."[60] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 3.5 out of 4 stars, and compared it, both in story and animation, to the works of Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki: "Like the new Japanese animated films, The Iron Giant is happy to be a 'real movie' in everything but live action. There are no cute little animals and not a single musical number: It's a story, plain and simple... It works as a lot of animation does, to make you forget from time to time that these are moving drawings, because the story and characters are so compelling." He concluded that it was "not just a cute romp but an involving story that has something to say."[61] The New Yorker reviewer Michael Sragow dubbed it a "modern fairy tale", writing, "The movie provides a master class in the use of scale and perspective—and in its power to open up a viewer's heart and mind."[62] Time's Richard Schickel deemed it "a smart live-and-let-live parable, full of glancing, acute observations on all kinds of big subjects—life, death, the military-industrial complex."[63] Lawrence Van Gelder, writing for The New York Times, deemed it a "smooth, skilled example of animated filmmaking."[64] Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal felt it "beautiful, oh so beautiful, as a work of coherent art", noting, "be assured that the film is, before anything else, deliciously funny and deeply affecting".[65]
Both Hollywood trade publications were positive: David Hunter of The Hollywood Reporter predicted it to be a sleeper hit and called it "outstanding",[66] while Lael Loewenstein of Variety called it "a visually appealing, well-crafted film [...] an unalloyed success."[67] Bruce Fretts of Entertainment Weekly commented, "I have long thought that I was born without the gene that would allow me to be emotionally drawn in by drawings. That is, until I saw The Iron Giant."[68] Peter Stack of the San Francisco Chronicle agreed that the storytelling was far superior to other animated films, and cited the characters as plausible and noted the richness of moral themes.[69] Jeff Millar of the Houston Chronicle agreed with the basic techniques as well, and concluded the voice cast excelled with a great script by Tim McCanlies.[70] The Washington Post's Stephen Hunter, while giving the film 4 out of 5 stars, opined, "The movie — as beautifully drawn, as sleek and engaging as it is — has the annoyance of incredible smugness."[71]
Box office[edit]
The Iron Giant opened at Mann's Chinese Theater in Los Angeles on July 31, 1999, with a special ceremony preceding the screening in which a concrete slab bearing the title character's footprint was commemorated.[72] The film opened in Los Angeles and New York City on August 4, 1999,[46] with a wider national release occurring on August 6 in the United States. It opened in 2,179 theaters in the U.S., ranking at number nine at the box office accumulating $5.7 million over its opening weekend.[73] It was quick to drop out of the top ten; by its fourth week, it had accumulated only $18.9 million—far under its reported $50 million budget.[6][5][73] According to Dave McNary of the Los Angeles Daily News, "Its weekend per-theater average was only $2,631, an average of $145 or perhaps 30 tickets per showing"—leading theater owners to quickly discard the film.[45] At the time, Warner Bros. was shaken by the resignations of executives Bob Daly and Terry Semel, making the failure much worse.[45] T.L. Stanley of Brandweek cited it as an example of how media tie-ins were now essential to guaranteeing a film's success.[6]
The film went on to gross $23.2 million domestically and $8.1 million internationally for a total of $31.3 million worldwide.[36][5] Analysts deemed it a victim of poor timing and "a severe miscalculation of how to attract an audience."[45] Lorenzo di Bonaventura, president of Warner Bros. at the time, explained, "People always say to me, 'Why don't you make smarter family movies?' The lesson is, Every time you do, you get slaughtered."[74]
Accolades[edit]
The Hugo Awards nominated The Iron Giant for Best Dramatic Presentation,[75] while the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America honored Brad Bird and Tim McCanlies with the Nebula Award nomination.[76] The British Academy of Film and Television Arts gave the film a Children's Award as Best Feature Film.[77] In addition The Iron Giant won nine Annie Awards out of fifteen nominations, winning every category it was nominated for,[78] with another nomination for Best Home Video Release at The Saturn Awards.[79] IGN ranked The Iron Giant as the fifth favorite animated film of all time in a list published in 2010.[80] In 2008, the American Film Institute nominated The Iron Giant for its Top 10 Animated Films list.[81]
