The Iron Giant

I saw The Iron Giant in the summer of '99, by myself. I don't really remember what drew me to the film beyond the high praise it was getting from critics; maybe I was just bored on a Saturday. I remember not being terribly impressed with the opening 15 minutes of the film, lynch-pinned on a slapstick scene involving a squirrel. But by the time the lead character, Hogarth, settles down in front of his black-and-white TV to watch a 50s-era sci-fi film involving a living, man-eating brain on the loose, I knew I was hooked. The scene puts the film in a specific place in time - early in the Cold War - and foreshadows the humor and tone for the rest of the movie.

The basic plot of TIG is horribly derivative, and is nearly a clone of E.T. The Extra Terrestrial. What differentiates The Iron Giant is its deadpan sense of humor and the the way it uses Cold War paranoia to enhance the fish-out-of-water device. It was a masterstroke of Brad Bird (an unknown to this point) to set his story here, and allows him to pull in other pop culture devices (e.g. Superman's appearance in Action Comics) - not just to add era credibility, but to integrate those elements in to the story thematically. It would be as if Hot Tub Time Machine had actually used 80s excess to make a point or to drive a plot device, rather than to wink at the audience and move on. Another example are the shots and numerous mentions of Sputnik to comment on the fact that the "enemy" came from space.

Other than the endearing appeal of Studio Ghibli, I think of The Iron Giant as the last in the era of hand-drawn animation (which made a short-lived comeback with The Princess and the Frog). In fact, TIG wasn't strictly hand-drawn, and boasts the first-ever fully CGI character in a feature-length film (take that, Jar Jar). The CGI animators, incidentally, wrote a program that would add a slight "squiggle" to the outline of the Giant so it better integrated with the hand-drawn bits. The CGI effect is subtle, but really gives the Giant mass and a "space-age" feel.

My frequency of viewings of the film have increased from once a year to twice a week since I exposed the film to my 3-year-old son. And I have to admit, it gets me every time. ("You can fly!). No wise-cracking sidekick. No spontaneous music numbers. No jokes about body functions (ok, there is half a joke). Just classic story telling backed up by a mix of classic and new-age animation. Love it.

Amazon: The Iron Giant (Special Edition)