Are You With Us?: The Iron Giant
By Ryan Mazie
August 26, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com
The Iron Giant takes place in the “I Like Ike”-era of 1957, somewhere off the coast of Maine. Hogarth Hughes (voiced by Eli Marienthal) is our central character – young, ingenious and brave. With a squeaky/spunky voice, just think of the never-say-never Cowgirl Jessie from Toy Story. Hogarth is a contrast to the other townsfolk, who are wrapped in Cold War paranoia. Highlighting the feeling of the times, Hogarth's school shows film reels such as the Duck-and-Cover tutorial, “Atomic Holocaust.” With his single mother (voiced by Jennifer Aniston) working the late-late shifts at the diner, Hogarth sneaks out one night to investigate a rumbling in the woods. To his amazement, he encounters a Godzilla-sized Iron Robot that looks as if it could have come straight from the midnight B-monster movies his mother warns him not to watch.
It turns out that the unknown is not always bad. The robot – a metaphor for foreign fear – is a smart, playful machine. The only problem is that he is taking giant bites out of the town’s metal roofs and cars for food. Hogarth hides the robot in a junkyard run by beatnik Dean (voiced by the undeniably cool Harry Connick Jr), but matters get complicated when the US military, led by the paranoid trigger happy Kent Mansely (Christopher McDonald), starts poking around.
When a movie can make you laugh, cry, and tense up all in 86 minutes, you know that it is powerful. And powerful it is. Upon release, The Iron Giant earned rave reviews (averaging an astounding 97% on Rotten Tomatoes) for its emotional impact and I could not agree more. Rarely outside of the magical realm of Disney and Pixar do animated movies carry genuine emotion, but this Warner Bros (one of the only majors who hasn’t tapped the revenue potential of animation) venture bottled it. Perhaps this is the case because it was directed and co-written by Pixar honcho Brad Bird.
Bird was given an unusual amount of freedom on the project due to the film being put on the developmental fast track, allowing the studio very little time for arguing. He turned the film from being a quasi-musical like Tommy with songs by Pete Townshend into a current kiddy DVD staple. Based off of the 1968 Ted Hughes novella, The Iron Giant marked Bird’s first feature film debut on his so-far spotless track record.
Bird left WB for the Mouse House-owned Pixar, where he headed some of my favorite films, The Incredibles and Ratatouille. With the aid of fellow screenplay writer Tim McCaniles (who went on to the less exciting TV show Smallville), Bird creates imagination from normalcy the way a child does. The rich moral themes and plausible underlying nature of the characters elevate the story and the anti-gun message that rings true for everyone. Under Bird’s sharp eye, The Iron Giant also marked the first successful wedding between traditional and computer animation. The Giant proved too hard to be drawn traditionally, not having a natural fluency in its movements, so CG stepped in. The decision was a wise and unnoticeable one. Against the sprightly drawn animation, the tin giant balances the color palette. I am excited to see what Bird does next when he steps away from animation for his first live-action directorial feature with Mission: Impossible IV.
When CG animation emerged in the late '90s, the films used the gimmick of A-list star voices to lure in audiences, having them guess whose character voice belonged to who. This practice started to spill into traditional animation which once had only professional multi voice-actors do the work. And while The Iron Giant packed a fair load of star power for the time, the celebrity voices were less of a marketing ploy, but more of a natural fit.
Aniston, who was at a career and personal high point with Friends and boyfriend/future ex-husband Brad Pitt, brought a realistic approach to her voice-over. It is easy for actors to over-extend their voices, exaggerating their lines as if they feel not having their face on the screen will somehow tone it down. Aniston welcomingly stays grounded and never seems to talk louder or more enunciated than a typical performance. Aniston later went on to become a sad-sack Meg Ryan 2.0, meandering in a sea of successful yet clichéd romantic comedies and gracing the covers of People and Star.
Vin Diesel, in one of his finest performances (which is kind of sad when you think about it), voices the Giant. Though his voice is altered, having a human as the initial basis brings a fullness and personality to the character – eliminating the hollow echo that results when a computer generates dialogue. Diesel quickly became a bona-fide action star with his testosterone filled Pitch Black / The Fast & the Furious / xXx trifecta of cool chases and epic explosions. Diesel did show his surprisingly skilled acting abilities in the criminally under-seen Sidney Lumet talky gangster courtroom flick Find Me Guilty. However, he quickly returned to his bread-and-butter - Fast & Furious.
Connick is the perfect fit for cool cat Dean, with his smooth-talking voice and artsy attitude. He still primarily focuses on his successful singing career, but is still one of my favorite actors to watch. I hope takes on movie roles more often. With a resume that ranges everywhere from this to Independence Day to P.S., I Love You, his choices are always surprising, never repetitive, and rarely weak.
But the voice casting of Marienthal is the movie's master stroke. About 12 at the time of recording, Marienthal has that quick-paced excited energy in his voice where he slings out words a mile a minute the way only a grade-schooler can. Plucky and brave, but also weak and vulnerable when needed, Marienthal truly does bring Hogarth to life. Sadly, his career was shortly put to rest with his biggest post-Iron Giant credit being Stifler’s brother in the American Pie franchise, which is nearly as un-killable as the Giant in this film.
McDonald plays the wacked-out G-man and is a highlight as the film’s villain trying to kill the lovable Giant.
“People just aren’t ready for you,” says Hogarth reasoning to the Giant on why he must stay hidden for the time being. But he might have also been talking about American audiences at the box office.
Released August 6, 1999, The Iron Giant wasn’t so giant at all with a miniscule $5.7 million (about $9 million adjusted) opening weekend good for ninth place. With extremely small dips, the film muscled its way to around $23.2 million overall ($36.24 million today). The summer produced very few kiddie hits besides the Disney produced Tarzan and Inspector Gadget. With a hefty $70 million price tag, an additional $80 million overseas helped the cause. The poor domestic performance was blamed on a gigantic marketing misfire (the trailer alone gave the movie about five different tones and showed the ending). Even Bird and McCaniles publicly called out the studio for the atrocious ads. So for the home video release, WB regrouped and had tie-ins with companies like Honey Nut Cheerios, General Motors, and AOL. The plan obviously worked, turning into a favorite for all ages. Cartoon Network showed the film for 24 hours in the early 2000s on Thanksgiving, helping it gain a cult following as well. A special edition DVD release was soon to follow. It holds all types of goodies ranging from deleted scenes to sequence analysis to a hilarious full-length version of the Duck-and-Cover movie briefly shown in the film.
The Iron Giant was one of the last traditional animation movies to have made a mark on audiences. As CG-animation became a cheaper and more exciting option for studios, the biggest nail in the coffin was when WB made Scooby-Doo in 2002. Taking a traditionally animated cartoon and making it a hybrid live-action/CG animated movie, Scooby was a giant hit and Fox’s Alvin & the Chipmunks films were even bigger. However, audiences still show a craving for these types of traditional films. The Simpsons Movie in 2007 was a giant worldwide hit and Disney’s new princess fable The Princess & the Frog broke the century mark at the box office last year. It seems as if the only place where 2D animation is still ubiquitous is on television.
The Iron Giant is with us today for a laundry list of reasons. With themes of Cold War-era Russian-brought terror making a comeback this year with the fun Jolie-hit Salt and the real-life Anna Chapman version of it, themes of the unknown being bad are always prevalent. Plus an anti-gun message sweetly but not bluntly told holds true. Yet, most importantly, The Iron Giant never dumbs itself down for the younger audience, giving them more credit than most films nowadays.
How did WB go from making this to Cats & Dogs 2: The Revenge of Kitty Galore? Talk about a major step backwards.
As magical as anything Disney has touched with a great imagination and even bigger heart. I think that even though it is over 11-years-old, there won’t be any signs of rust on this Iron Giant for a long time.
Verdict: With Us
3 out of 4 stars