Based loosely on British poet laureate Ted Hughes’ classic children’s novel, The Iron Giant is a worthy addition to the Warner animation library. It’s a stylish and evocative tale well told, a nostalgic boy-meets-robot fable that works on so many levels that both kids and parents will be happily engaged throughout.
The film opens with an image of Sputnik in lonely orbit, establishing both setting and mood in one shot. It’s 1957, a time when America’s collective psyche was plagued by fears both technological and political. The Russians—who had quickly emerged as the post-WWII bad guys—had just won the first lap of the space race, shattering the myth of American technological invincibility. What better time and place for a story about a gigantic alien robot?
The giant is shown rocketing to Earth, the only real explanation given for its origin. Hiding out in the Maine woods, the metal-eating colossus is first encountered by young Hogarth Hughes, an adventurous, tousle-haired lad who tracks it after it eats his home’s TV antenna one night. The two become fast friends after Hogarth saves the giant from being zapped by high-voltage wires. Naturally, as word begins to spread about tractors with tooth marks and possible Martian invaders, a nosy G-man (voiced with fanatical, better-dead-than-Red fervor by McDonald) shows up and rents a room from Hogarth’s waitress mother (Aniston). With the help of Dean McCoppin (Connick), a Kerouac-reading, motorbike-riding free thinker who tries to coax art from the scrap metal in his junkyard, Hogarth tries to conceal the giant from those who would destroy it to appease their own xenophobia. Naturally, he can only succeed at this for so long, and when the man-made technology of the A-bomb threatens to destroy the entire town, it’s up to the giant to save us from ourselves. Yeah, it’s a pretty obvious moral, but even that is in keeping with the spirit of movies like The Day the Earth Stood Still.
The story may be as straightforward and predictable as any kids’ movie, but it is no less entertaining to adults. Bird, who has also worked on TV’s The Simpsons and King of the Hill, knows that animated films are more than cartoons, and he spices things up with numerous touches that speak to the tenor of the times. Aside from the Beatnik character, there are funny pokes at ‘50s sci-fi creature flicks and the absurd “duck-and-cover” school films that tried to make the possibility of nuclear war seem like a minor inconvenience. Best of all, the art is rendered in a colourful comic-book style that recalls the covers of those old Amazing Stories magazines with the Martian death machines and jut-jawed heroes. There’s even a sequence that brings to mind the unforgettable Martian warships in the 1953 film version of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. To any sci-fi aficionado, the movie contains a wealth of riches that will reward multiple viewings.
The Iron Giant is a wonderfully imaginative take on Hughes’ technology-age parable, richly drawn, with an unforced sweetness that comes not from pointless musical interludes, but from the enchanting story itself. In every way, it deserves to be called a classic in its own right.
(3.5/4)