The Iron Giant is a quirky, charming film, a sharp contrast to the sugary, music-laced extravaganzas produced by the dominant creator of children's movie fare.
The Warner Bros. film tells the story of Hogarth, an imaginative young boy growing up in rural Maine in the 1950s, and his encounter with a robot who falls to Earth. Hogarth befriends the metal giant and tries to protect him from the Army, who wants to destroy him. But in the end, it is the Iron Giant who saves Hogarth and his entire town.
The film is loosely based on a children's book of the same name by former British poet laureate Ted Hughes (originally published as The Iron Man in Britain.) Hughes originally made up the story to comfort his children after their mother, Sylvia Plath, committed suicide in 1963.
The book is widely recognized as a children's classic, which makes it all the more impressive that director Brad Bird's drastic changes didn't ruin the film. Aside from shifting the setting from England to rural Maine, Bird changes the Giant's provenance from the ocean to outer space, which provides the film with an undertone of American paranoia in the age of Sputnik.
Bird, who has worked on acclaimed animated television series including The Simpsons, The Critic and King of the Hill, also added new characters, including Dean, a beatnik junkyard operator who befriends Hogarth and the Giant, and Kent Mansley, the evil Federal agent who tries to destroy the Giant.
Bird even admits changing the focus of the story. While the original book emphasizes the cycle of life, the movie examines the tension between destiny and free will, as the Giant struggles against his destructive instincts. Hogarth helps the Giant understand that, although he was built to be a weapon, he doesn't have to kill.
Perhaps because of its complex and intriguing background, The Iron Giant manages to seem at the same time like an innocent fairy tale and an interesting morality play. (Parents should note that some scenes might be too scary for young children, such as when Hogarth first meets the Giant, and the metal man accidentally almost electrocutes himself.)
But the film's most impressive accomplishment is the transformation of a mute, metal man into a sympathetic character who exudes humanity. Considering that most animated films make real human beings seem like two-dimensional caricatures, this is an impressive achievement indeed.
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