Feature Friday: Iron Giant

The fall of 1999 was an exciting time in my life. I was quickly adjusting to a new job, had just recently moved into the apartment I still currently reside, and was making preparations for a wedding that would never come to pass. Oh, and the end of the world was neigh, as Y2K was only a couple months away. Ah, the good old days. :)

It was around this time that my college buds and I started getting anxious about an animated movie about to be released. There had been a buzz for several months about a guy named Brad Bird and how his new film, The Iron Giant, was going to blow everyone away. Reports were coming in saying that this was going to be as big as Star Wars. We were skeptical, of course. But nothing was going to keep us from seeing it. The reports were not wrong. The movie was everything it was hyped to be. An instant classic in the making. A little film with a big heart. Too bad no one saw it.

Title: The Iron Giant
Year: 1999
Director: Brad Bird
Staring (voice): Jennifer Aniston, Harry Connick Jr., Vin Diesel, James Gammon, Cloris Leachman, Christopher McDonald, John Mahoney, Eli Marienthal, M. Emmet Walsh

It's 1958. 14 year old Bobby Fisher has won the US Chess Championship, there is a Chinese Civil War, Russia's "spy" satellite, Sputnik, has fallen back to Earth, keeping the Cold War efficiently cool, and a 50 foot tall extraterrestrial alien robot has crash-landed in the woods behind 9 year old Hogarth Hughes' house.

Sounds like an old black & white movie just begging to be ripped apart by the MST3K guys, doesn't it? Well, you'd be wrong. Set in a small seaside town in northern Maine, The Iron Giant is more akin to a coming of age story than a cheesy sci-fi flick. The town has that Norman Rockwell Americana feel about. Think of it as "A Boy and His Dog." Only, with "Robot" instead of "Dog," and you get the idea.

Hogarth (Marienthal) is a young boy who lives with his waitress mother. Hogarth's Dad is never mentioned, nor even seen (except for a brief photo in Hogarth's room), so it's up to Annie (Aniston) to be both Mother and Father. This can be tiring, as Hogarth's imagination sometimes gets the better of him. Plus, he's a 9 year old boy. Trouble just has a way of latching onto him. So, when he overhears a fisherman's tale of an alien monster that crashed his boat the night before, Hogarth can't resist taking up the chase.

Early on in the film, we discover that Hogarth doesn't have that many friends, so when he stumbles across tall, dark, and Diesel, the bond between them is that much stronger. Due to his injuries sustained in crash-landing, the Giant has lost his basic logic circuits, and his original programming. When Hogarth finds him, he's a blank slate, waiting for new orders. At first, Hogarth can't believe his luck. Imagine, his own personal 50 foot robot! The possibilities are endless.

However, the sleepy little town doesn't have one stranger in it's mists; it has two. Enter Kent Mansley (McDonald), government agent, and a McCarthy-era trained, Red Scare fearing, full blown conspiracy theorist. To say he harbors nothing but contemptment for the "visitor," is an understatement. Mansley's paranoia and unnerving ability to be in the right place at the most unfortunate times, make him the ultimate wrench in Hogarth's plans. Maneley could have been completely over the top for the comic responses alone, but Bird was smart enough to imbue him with an eerie controlling and a malicious side that lets you understand the character better, and allows him to get his comeuppance in the end.

And just when you think it's all over for Hogarth and his pal, help comes in from an unlikely source: the beat-nick, artistic Dean McCoppin (Connick Jr.) Dean owns the scrap-yard, where he works on his sculptors and fends off the idle stares of the local townspeople, who don't understand his views and opinions. As much a social pariah as Hogarth, Dean comes to find a little piece of himself in the Giant and the persecution cast upon him.

By the time the army shows up and inadvertently activates the Giant's defensive program, the ending is almost inevitable. With the town, and his new friends, in danger, the Giant must do what he can to save them.

Bird, who won an Oscar for the Incredibles, has written an amazing screenplay, based on Ted Hughes' 1968 Iron Man. The set design, the period feel, the awesomely ridiculous Nuclear Prevention "Duck & Cover"-esque survival film shown in Hogarth's classroom. Bird really outdid himself in setting the stage.

This is an overall great film that, regardless your age, can transport you back to your childhood, and show you the true meaning of friendship.



Have a great weekend. Stay warm!

-Jos

"Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art.... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival." ~C.S. Lewis