“SU-PER-MAN.” Two Cents Soars with THE IRON GIANT

Two Cents is an original column akin to a book club for films. The Cinapse team will program films and contribute our best, most insightful, or most creative thoughts on each film using a maximum of 200 words each. Guest writers and fan comments are encouraged, as are suggestions for future entries to the column. Join us as we share our two cents on films we love, films we are curious about, and films we believe merit some discussion.

The Pick

Criminally unsupported by Warner Bros. after the studio’s first foray into feature animation (gosh darn you, Quest for Camelot) hit with a thud, The Iron Giant has nonetheless become revered as a modern classic of animation alongside writer-director Brad Bird’s later ventures with Pixar, the Academy Award winning The Incredibles and Ratatouille.

The Iron Giant took a tempestuous path towards the theater, beginning life as a musical adaptation of Ted Hughes’ pacifistic tract The Iron Man, with songs by The Who’s Pete Townshend. This was in the early 90s, when the Disney Renaissance had proven to other studios just how much money, awards, and money there was to be made in candy-colored cartoons loaded with musical numbers and adorable animal sidekicks.

Enter Brad Bird, who promptly cut the songs, nixed studio notes asking for animal sidekicks (and for hip hop to be added to the soundtrack), and relocated the story to an autumnal period piece focusing, with at times extraordinary bluntness, on matters such as Cold War nuclear paranoia, guns, and death, life, and the soul.

The studio appreciated none of this. Believing the film was a lost cause that would never draw any of the big merchandising bucks, they opted to dump the film with a minimum of marketing, only to be caught completely flat-footed when test audiences and critics immediately fell in love. The Iron Giant flopped on arrival.

But audiences found the film anyway, and today the story of how lonely Hogarth Hughes (Eli Marienthal) befriends a massive, but massively lovable, metal giant from outer space (Vin Diesel) is regarded as a childhood classic, a reputation cemented when a version of the giant was given a hugely prominent spot in the climax of Steven Spielberg’s pop culture bonanza Ready Player One.

Below, a mix of lifelong fans and relative newcomers to the film weigh in on whether or not this particular superman still flies.

Next Week’s Pick:

Next Friday sees the release of Rampage, which appears to be a big, silly film about Dwayne Johnson mixing it up with bigger, sillier monsters.

So let’s celebrate with a film that is biggier (totally a word) and sillierer (also a word).

Big Ass Spider came out in 2013, and received a surprisingly positive critical reception, with many praising the film’s cheerful energy and self-aware schlock. The film is currently available to stream on Amazon Prime.

Would you like to be a guest in next week’s Two Cents column? Simply watch and send your under-200-word review to twocents(at)cinapse.co anytime before midnight on Thursday!

Our Guests

Trey Lawson:

I saw The Iron Giant for the first time a year or so ago, on Blu-ray. In ’99 I was just old enough to be less keen on seeing animated theatrical features, and on top of that I tended to be pretty skeptical of non-Disney animation. Actually, it’s probably best that I didn’t see it back then. I was something of a sensitive child, and I am fairly certain The Iron Giant would have WRECKED me. Hell, it wrecked me when I first saw it as an adult. And yeah, sure, on one level it’s more or less the E.T. formula — but the retro sci-fi vibe conveyed through the art and the 1950s setting give it an identity all its own. Also the departures from that formula are what make The Iron Giant so thematically rich. E.T. was a healer and sort of pacifist from the start, whether any of the humans around him realized it or not. But the Giant faces what is essentially an existential struggle — he doesn’t really know what he is, and ultimately refuses the purpose intended by his designers. The film is beautiful, and it somehow manages to be heart-breaking and heart-warming all at once. I definitely regret waiting so long to see The Iron Giant, but given the circumstances I can safely say without a hint of nostalgia that it deserves every accolade it has been given. (@T_Lawson)

Husain Sumra:

The Iron Giant never fails to fill me with hope. It’s a warm blanket of a movie, perfectly enjoyed with some nice hot chocolate and a toasty fireplace. Brad Bird does a wonderful job of adapting a story about peace and also making it about what it takes to be a good person.

The ability to be good lies in all of us, and we often need some kind of North Star or example to point us in the direction and tell us how. Superman, when done well, is one of these fictional North Stars, and it’s so heartening to see him referenced in that way — kind of hilarious when looking at the DCEU so far, but I digress.

The Iron Giant is literally a giant weapon, a gun built to destroy. He makes his own choice not too, and that choice is harder than if he were to just live out and do what comes natural to him. It’s a warm reminder that being good isn’t easy, and doing the right, good thing is often harder than not. I can’t wait to show my kids this movie. (@hsumra)

The Team

Justin Harlan:

I began my attempt to rewatch Iron Giant with a question to my 9 year old.

“Cash,” I asked, “Want to watch Iron Giant? I need to write about it.”

Cash replied, “Nah, Dad. Can we watch Happy Death Day or Monster Squad instead?”

My son’s sensibilities are surely being shaped by me and never has this been more evident than here. For, as I began to check out Iron Giant for the first time in several years, I quickly remembered how little I care about it. It’s surely a good film, but not one that does much for me.

The film works for me tonally and the story is definitely one that jives with my genre tastes. Somehow it just doesn’t do much for me — perhaps due the animation, perhaps something else. Nonetheless, my reaction feels exactly like my son’s initial reaction to me… it’s fine an all, but nah… not really my thing. (@ThePaintedMan)

Brendan Foley:

I saw this film as a kid, loved it, cried extremely hard at the scenes where I was supposed to, and promptly moved on to other things. Kids have a lot going on.

It’s only been in the years (decades, if we’re being honest) since that I’ve truly come to reconcile with just how hugely important this film is to me. Bird’s exquisite script manages to express whole worlds of emotional and spiritual power within a short runtime and simple story. Scenes like Hogarth teaching the Iron Giant what a soul is, why it’s OK that things die, continue to possess devastating power with the way they express such powerful, such profoundly human, ideas in a way that can be grasped and understood by children. And on top of all of that, this is still one of the better Superman films ever made, fully understanding and encapsulating what makes the big blue Boy Scout such an important touchstone in our culture, in a way that the vast majority of live action films have not.

But really, The Iron Giant does what you hope all children’s fiction will: It finds simple ways to convey great truths. “Guns kill, but you don’t have to be a gun.” “Souls don’t die.” “You are who you choose to be.” Bird communicates these ideas with heart and with humor, all building to that final, perfect coda, as the Giant takes everything he has learned and chooses precisely who and what he wants to be.

“Suuuuuuuuperman.”(@theTrueBrendanF)

Austin Vashaw:

I wasn’t particularly interested in this one when it first released, at an age in which I was too cool for cartoons and too stupid to realize that’s not a thing (and if it was, I wasn’t it). At some point I did watch it, but it didn’t resonate with me at the time.

Since then I’ve become a big fan of director Brad Bird through his subsequent films Ratatouille, The Incredibles, and M:I Ghost Protocol, so when the Blu-ray finally released snapped it up, hungry for a rewatch — and this time it didn’t disappoint.

While it does have a few dopey parts (the scene where Dean loudly announces himself unzipping to release a squirrel from his trousers is cringe-inducing), these are far outweighed by so many genuinely affecting moment highlighting lessons on death, sacrifice, heroism, moral conviction, and friendship.

On this rewatch I decided to introduce it to Liv. At 3 she’s really a bit too young for it, and she was upset when Giant went into attack mode like a bad guy. But while she couldn’t engage with the plot, she must have picked up on the subtext, because as Giant ascended to stop the incoming missile, she beat him to the punch on his most famous line: “Superman!” That’s the power of movies. (@VforVashaw)