Overlooked Greatness: The Iron Giant (1999)

There's more than one great iron man!

By: Amy J. Aniobi
Published: Tuesday, January 20th 2009 at 1:43 AM

Photo: Warner Bros.

I love movies with robots! From Batteries Not Included to Short Circuit — I grew up on that stuff. Maybe that's part of why I'm so drawn to The Iron Giant, which feels like a throwback to an older style, both in animation and delivery. I feel that where WALL-E failed to teach a message — not simply present the problems — concerning our future, The Iron Giant succeeded.

I also am a sucker for sap. Classic animation plus sappy dialogue equals me crying. So when the young boy who befriends the giant in The Iron Giant watches his friend sail skyward and whispers, "I love you," I lose it. Seriously, I had The Iron Giant on repeat for 24 hours straight the day a cable network channel (deservedly) aired a marathon about two years after its release. And with every "I love you," I embarrassingly and very audibly choked back tears while my family watched, appalled. It was appalling.

When man and machine harmoniously meet, cinema truly becomes magical. I'd like to argue that, with this thought in mind, The Iron Giant is magical. Rotten Tomatoes recently ranked it as #14 in its list of the top fifty animated films of all time. IGN (Imagine Games Network) ranks it as #10. And I rank it as my personal #1. Here's why:

1. The animation: I love my Shrek and Finding Nemo like the next clownfish, but I also believe hand-drawn animation still deserves a place on the big screen. The team working on Iron Giant used both CGI and hand-drawn animation to bring the tale to life, which makes for a finished style that is unlike any other animated movie. Even the coloration of the film stands out. Saturated in suburban earth tones, Iron Giant evokes the past in picture alone. That definitely deserves applause.
2. The dialogue: With Brad Bird at the helm, this movie was destined for animated greatness — but primarily a film is only as good as its story. Don't worry; it's not as sappy as my tears make it out to be. Tim McCanlies put his pre-Secondhand Lions time to good use with Giant. He pumped out a revision of Bird's original draft in three months, and though I don't know if he's responsible for all the witty scenes, I'd like to extend a ‘bravo.' The writing is true to the time period during which the story takes place yet witty and current enough for a mature (read: older) sect of viewers to stay in step with it.
3. The unlikely heroes: That means a metal man and a bookish young boy. If we're discussing realistic heroes, the metal man is out. If we're talking Disney heroes — who are all popular, smell like sugar and look like Zac Efron — Iron Giant's young protagonist wouldn't even get to sit at their lunch table. But Hogarth Hughes, one of the weirdest named protags in animated history, earns his spot. He's smart enough to stump a government agent and tenacious enough to teach a robot to love. Awww. Furthermore, despite his young age, Hogarth is the caregiver for the robot and his adult friend, Dean (voiced by Harry Connick Jr.), teaching them both the values of compassion and friendship and carving one's own path. That leads me to…
4. The message: Not all movies have to have one, but animated features for kids really are expected to, right? How else are the infants going to learn about interracial dating (Shrek) and the wisdom of smoking marijuana in moderation (Finding Nemo)? Iron Giant announces its main lesson directly: "You are who you choose to be." Watching Hogarth play the part of Moral Compass, we quickly catch on that the Giant, our new, high-tech friend, can either be good or evil — Superman or Atomo — and it's up to him to make the choice. So maybe the message casts a bit of a wide net (really, you can be anything: a doctor, a rhombus, a pony — anything!), but it at least sets the kids off on a good path.
5. IRON! Movies with "iron" in the title historically do well. Please see Iron Man. And/or Man in the Iron Mask. You can probably ignore Iron Eagle II.

Despite its obvious brilliance, Iron Giant was plagued by bad parenting, and today's favorable ratings belie its box office reception. When the film premiered it was a box office… what's the opposite of "smash"? Skid mark? The top brass at Warner Bros. admittedly failed to market the film with the attention it deserved. After heavy critique, they wised up for the DVD-release — even finagling the day-long devotional that left me weeping — but the damage had already been done.

Wait, what am I saying? Damage? More like "tactical accident." Now, unlike the over-marketed Space Jam, Iron Giant rests in the annals of Cult Status-dom for a host of reasons: its stellar story, its depiction of the Cold War, its E.T. parallels, its loveable cast. And I get to talk about it to you. Did you know Jennifer Aniston did the voice of Hogarth's mom? Word to your mother. So go dig through those annals. You'll like what you find.

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