When people typically think of animation, the first thing that will come to mind is Disney, and this isn’t without merit. Disney is so ubiquitous in American culture and cinema that not knowing of the company and its creations is a mathematical impossibility. You don’t go through life without watching at least one Disney film as a child, and in many cases it’s more than one that have been watched until the VHS tape starts falling apart. And while I will always be appreciative of the work that the company has put forward (for heaven’s sake they more or less established animation as a valid art form with their first several feature-length films), there’s a certain problem that has surfaced because of their widespread familiarity: People seem to forget that there are other animated films outside of Disney.
To be fair, I think a lot of it stems from the fact that “Disney” is or more or less synonymous with “animated movie,” which is just something that happens when the name of a certain product dominates its genre or area for so long. But the result is a lack of certain amazing achievements in the genre getting undermined, left unknown, or forgotten because they don’t have a giant corporation with decades of tradition or backing their advertising.
In 1989, Disney emerged from the pool of mediocrity that they had been festering in for the past decade or so with The Little Mermaid—a return to the musical princess film which began their empire and that hadn’t been seen since Sleeping Beauty in 1959. Prior to the release of that film, Don Bluth (a former Disney animator who broke away from the company after disagreements over how films should be handled) and his band of animators--many of whom came from Disney as well--had created their own animation studio and became the first real competition for Disney in decades. Throughout much of the late 70's and 80's, Disney struggled to produce films that could stand up against the more critically acclaimed creations of Bluth. Not to mention the films were taking longer and longer to complete, with The Black Cauldron's production dragging on for five years.
The success of Mermaid kick-started their Renaissance which, depending on who you ask, ended anywhere between 1995 with the under-performance of Pocahontas at the box office and 1999 with Tarzan. Throughout the early and mid 90's, Disney was basically obliterating the box office in terms of animated films, producing some of their most well-known, critically acclaimed, and financially successful features in the company's history within the span of six years. The term "animated movie" would come to be associated, irrevocably it seems, with Disney for people of my generation in large part because of this explosion of masterpiece-level output.
Naturally, the success of Bluth and Disney would spawn imitators from various different companies like Twentieth Century Fox as well as result in brand-new animation studios such as DreamWorks. The result was a pretty meaty collection of animated films between 1990 and 2000 that were...largely unsuccessful. That's not to say they weren't good--Warner Bros.' Cats Don't Dance in 1997, DreamWorks' The Prince of Egypt in 1998, and Fox's Anastasia in 1997 still hold up today as solid pieces of animation and film making. But the monopoly that Disney had on the industry because of their success enabled most people to either ignore or be left unaware of the films that other companies were putting out. By 1999, when the DR was finally coming to a close, the attempts by other studios to create animated feature films had fallen largely under the radar. Thus, the myth that "All Animation is Disney" continued to be perpetuated, this time with money and critical acclaim to back them up.
And caught up in all of this was Brad Bird's first creation: The Iron Giant. Bird had previously been working under Turner Feature Animation, which ended up merging with Warner Bros/Time Warner, and he was allowed to jump from that department to direct this feature. He would later go on to become one of the most recognizable directors in Pixar's stable, responsible for two of their most popular films, The Incredibles and Ratatouille. At the time, Warner Bros.' only animated films to their name were Cats Don't Dance and Quest for Camelot, the latter of which was such a box office failure that Warner lost much interest in their animation department. The budget for Giant was chopped considerably, production time cut in half from what was typical, and Warner's monitoring of the film was less stringent. But the result was that Bird and his team of animators had far more artistic freedom. They were left largely alone by Big Brother as long as they were showing progress and creating good work.
The Iron Giant was released in the summer of 1999 as a film adaptation to the poet Ted Hughes' novel The Iron Man. The story takes place in 1957 in the small town of Rockwell, Maine during the height of the Cold War (and if the name sounds familiar, you might be thinking of the Norman Rockwell paintings that were so popular in this era as they reflected a perfect and idealized perception of "white picket fence" America). Our central protagonist is a young boy named Hogarth, a quirky kid who likes science fiction, comics, and capturing various animals from the woods to keep as pets. He lives with his mom, Annie, with a father that is absent but believed to be deceased, most likely through a war-related casualty as he is seen in pilot gear in one of Hogarth's photos. Through a series of events, Hogarth comes across the Iron Giant in the woods and quickly forms a relationship with the strange creation of unknown origin, teaching him how to speak and what it means to be human. Along the way, he runs into a dude named Dean, an artist and very obvious member of the Beatnik generation, who helps Hogarth keep the Giant's existence under wraps once the (paranoid) government becomes involved.
Technically, the film combined elements of traditional animation as well as CGI for the titular character of the Giant, with great care taken to make sure that the computer-generated images blended with the hand-drawn ones. Work from various artists including Norman Rockwell, Edward Hopper and N.C. Wyeth influenced the design of the film and Bird even had several students from CalArts (where many of the more famous directors and animators for Pixar and Disney attended classes) pitch in for minor animation work because of the hectic production schedule.
The result? The Iron Giant made $31.3 million internationally at a budget of $50-70 million. It lost money, and it lost it bad.
It's easy to dismiss box office failures as bad movies. Often times, there's a reason they lose money. But while box office success is often a good way to determine things that are worth seeing, it isn't the most reliable method. In the case of The Iron Giant, the financial loss had less to do with the quality of the film and more to do with the fact that Warner Bros. had no idea how to market it. Advertising your animated film was hard enough because of the Disney monopoly, but when the company doesn't even bother to put effort into making their film known...there's a serious problem. It failed because no one really knew about it, not because it wasn't good.
And man, is this film far from "not good."
What makes this film such a beautiful piece of work is a combination of many things. First and foremost, it is a fantastic piece of animation and a shining example of how CGI can be meshed well with traditional animation. The designs of the characters are Disney-like in the eyes and hair, but their overall look and movement are distinct from most other animated works, Disney or otherwise. They are pleasing to look at and move with as much fluidity and consistency as you'd expect from a big-budget animated picture even though the schedule and budget for it wouldn't lead you to believe that. The Giant's design is one of the best in terms of robots that I've seen: his long and spindly limbs juxtaposed against a wide, square chest work amazingly well to create a human-like shape without subtracting from his robotic elements. His big, headlight-esque eyes convey an amazing range of emotions, from joy to sadness and anger, and everything in between. They also somehow manage to animate his mouth to words in a way that you forget he can't actually form an "O" with it.
The Giant (Vin Diesel) himself is somewhat of a blank-slate character, with much of his appeal coming from the fact that he suffered an injury to the head and consequently knows nothing of who he is or what he's supposed to be doing. He isn't dumb, but child-like; everything he learns in the course of the film is through Hogarth's instruction or his own experiences. He wants to be good and he wants to be accepted by the people in the town and has a hard time understanding why they are afraid of him. His logic is the same as a kid, which works great against the actual child character of Hogarth who demonstrates a high level of maturity and understanding despite his propensity to run around alone at night and eat Twinkies for dinner.
The supporting cast are all just as beautifully realized--Annie (Jennifer Aniston) is a prime example of a single mother done right. She loves her son to the moon and back but is constantly fighting to find a balance between working several jobs and raising a rather difficult young boy by herself. Despite her frustration, she's never painted to be unnecessarily cruel or thoughtless. She's just exhausted. There are even moments where she allows Hogarth to be his strange self, most notably during a dinner scene in which he covers up trying to get the Giant's rogue hand out of the house through a rather hysterical prayer. When confronted with the reality of the Giant, she is the only person aside from Dean who doesn't want to destroy him.
Dean (Harry Connick Jr.) isn't played as a typical hippie bozo, though his personality is certainly one that suggests he may have smoked weed once or twice in his life. He's intelligent and thoughtful while also being a bit eccentric. He makes his living as a junk man and part-time artist, using the scrap metal from the junk yard to create sculptures. He's exactly the type of person who would be willing to accept Hogarth's friendship with the Giant, and his interactions with Hogarth as a father figure are some of the most touching in the entire film.
Then, of course, is the brilliant antagonist, Kent Mansley (Christopher McDonald), whose name alone makes me giggle every time I say it. Kent is the quintessential paranoid government official who consistently feels like he is under appreciated, using the possible existence of the Giant to boost his own career and notoriety. He is arrogant, threatening, pushy, and relentless in getting what he wants, but the film also takes plenty of opportunities to make jokes out of his character. Kent is a someone who could very much exist in the real world, but he is never portrayed as someone to be emulated.
The time period in which this is set was also a fantastic choice. The Cold War paranoia of the country and the way we viewed foreigners creates the ideal environment for The Giant to appear, as conflict stemming from fear of the unknown happens naturally. Hogarth's willingness to trust and appreciate him, since he is young and more optimistic, clashes consistently with every other character. Those reactions fuel the main conflict with Kent as well as smaller ones with Annie and Dean and allow for various themes and ideas to pop up without feeling forced or awkward.
And that's what solidifies this film as a masterpiece: The way it handles its themes and weaves them into the plot flawlessly. There are several of them that pop up, including what it means to be a human and to have a soul, the frailty of life and inevitability of death, bravery in the face of terrifying circumstances, nature vs. nurture, and even what constitutes a hero. The Giant's origins are never revealed, but if anything that omission makes the movie stronger. It doesn't matter where he came from; He's here, he exists, and he has to make decisions about who he is based on his current circumstances, even when his programmed "killer instincts" rear their ugly head. In fact, The Giant fights his inner gun nature often as he tries to figure out who he is and who he wants to be. Through his experiences with Hogarth, he learns the value of choice: how just because you want to be or do something doesn't always mean you should.
Hogarth uses Superman (who was experiencing a ridiculous amount of popularity during that era along with various other science fiction comic books) as a role model for The Giant, showing how both of them were aliens who came to this planet and have the ability to do good for people rather than be forces of destruction. This connection is strung throughout the movie, culminating in a climax that will leave even the biggest and toughest man sniffling.
That isn't to say the movie isn't fun. It's got plenty of comedic moments to balance out the intense emotional ones without ever feeling like too much or out of place. Dean and Hogarth's interactions produce some of the most hilarious conversations, and as I mentioned above, the movie has a heck of a good time poking fun at Kent's character on numerous occasions. He's the victim of one of the most successful poop jokes in movie history, and that's pretty impressive.
The end result is a story that is funny, heartwarming, charming, and best of all doesn't talk down to its audience, most of which were meant to be young kids. It's one of the greatest pieces of both animation and storytelling produced in the last thirty years.
The negatives? There aren't many. My biggest complaints are the use of language and the slightly overdone "guns are bad" theme. The cursing isn't excessive, but in a film that is aimed at young kids, certain phrases and words I felt could have been left out and nothing would have been lost. It's also pretty clear that Bird is anti-gun, which is fine, but every now and then the message tends to hit a bit hard. What saves it is that there's more than one message being projected throughout the film, so even when it's at the most obvious, you could still make an argument that it's referring to any one of the other themes.
Since it's release onto home video, the film has started to gain a following. People are beginning to recognize that it even exists, and in a world that is so Disney-centric when it comes to animation, the best thing for an animated movie without that company's stamp is to be known. The biggest travesty is that Warner Bros. expressed interest in re-releasing the film on Blu Ray, but they only want another bare-bones version like the "Special Edition" DVD released in 2004 without any special features or bonus material. Bird has been fighting to get them to include more, but as of right now they seem to be at a stalemate.
Even so, if you haven't watched this movie, do so. It's available on various platforms including Amazon, iTunes, and many other streaming sites. And if my excessive rambling still hasn't convinced you, the trailer does a good job of that:
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