30 for 30: 1999 — "The Iron Giant"
"You are who you choose to be."
What’s this all about? I turn 30 on Sept. 26, 30 days from the start of this series. To celebrate, I’m going to watch one movie a day for 30 days and spend 30 minutes writing about each one. This post is about 1999. Click here for the original newsletter in the series. Other entries: 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998
Director Brad Bird’s pitch for “The Iron Giant” boiled down to “What if a gun had a soul, and didn’t want to be a gun?”
He was still reeling from the shooting death of his sister at the hands of her estranged husband, and Bird later found out the book “The Iron Man” was written by Ted Hughes to comfort his children after the suicide of their mother, Sylvia Plath. The thought of a weapon that could put itself back together and avoid causing destruction appealed to Bird, and thus, the movie version of “The Iron Giant” was born.
So loss and personal choice are built into the film from the get-go. Those are two big topics for an animated kid’s movie, but “Iron Giant” doesn’t shy away from them. It trusts that the kids watching it are emotionally intelligent enough to deal with them.
The story is a fairly simple “E.T.” riff with a 1950s-Norman Rockwell/Cold War vibe: Hogarth Hughes finds a giant, metal-eating robot one night near his Maine coastal town. He befriends the giant and teaches it life lessons: “It's bad to kill. Guns kill. And you don't have to be a gun. You are who you choose to be. You choose. Choose.”; “Souls don’t die.” Meanwhile, G-man Kent Mansley is on the Giant’s trail, convinced it’s a Soviet spycraft meant to destroy America. Hogarth must save the Giant while convincing the rest of the town that the Giant means no harm.
It all culminates in a tear-jerking moment in the end where the Giant sacrifices himself to save Hogarth and his town, finally making his choice about who he wants to be.
It didn’t do well at the box office, largely because Warner Bros. was getting bearish on animation towards the end of the decade, and certainly didn’t know how to sell toys for a movie where its main action figure would be a pacifist robot. ( That’s why I’m still annoyed at how Warner Bros. finally started marketing him, but as a weapon meant to kill people in movies like “Ready Player One” and “Space Jam 2.”) It would go on to become a cult favorite due to VHS sales and repeat airings on Cartoon Network.
I never saw this in theaters when it came out (although I took Taylor to see it on a date when the movie was re-released because she loves this movie almost as much as I do). I think the first time I saw it was on a VHS at a cousin’s house one Christmas. I was blown away. I was so used to Disney animation that I didn’t know movies could look like this, or get at such huge topics without having to sing a song. And I was most surprised at the fact that I cared so much for the Giant by the movie’s end, despite him being voiced in grunts and growls by Vin Diesel. The Giant is one of the most soulful animated characters of all time, and he barely has a few full sentences’ worth of dialogue.
The film’s idyllic northeastern setting also makes it easier to handle a lot of the film’s points about American paranoia in the ‘50s. One scene shows Hogarth during a bomb shelter drill and another shows him reading a comic with a villain called “The Red Scare.” Mansley’s character is a personification of America’s tendency to always assume anything foreign is a threat. But, just like the heavy themes of loss and personal choice, the film states those things matter-of-factly and doesn’t beat the viewer over the head with them. This is an animated film, and it definitely shows instead of tells.
I love this movie and am so glad it’s getting more of the recognition it deserves.
Up next: It’s a new millennium, but the next movie features a story that’s a riff on one of the oldest pieces of literature in the world: 2000’s “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”
Letter of Recommendation
1999 was truly overflowing with great movies, and most of them are profiled in “Best. Movie. Year. Ever.: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen” by Brian Raftery. I’ve also greatly enjoyed “Gene and Roger,” Raftery’s podcast on Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, which traces the film critics’ relationship from cross-town rivals to lifelong friends. Take a listen here on Spotify.
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