The Iron Giant Blog
Choosing “The Iron Giant” was a very easy decision for me to make. This is probably one of my favorite animations of all time. The 86-minute PG rated film came out in 1999, featuring Eli Marienthal, Harry Connick Jr., and Jennifer Aniston. I had never heard of the film before class, and didn’t know if I would like it, but after about 5 minutes, I knew this would be a favorite. Jennifer Aniston is my favorite actress, so the fact that she was the mom’s voice was the icing on the cake.
“The Iron Giant” is about a young boy, Hogarth, who finds a giant robot while exploring through the woods. At first, Hogarth is scared of the giant, but after coming in contact with him, realizes he is just as innocent as he is big. Hogarth and the giant become friends, and to keep the giant out of danger, Hogarth brings him to a junk yard owned by Dean McCoppin, a new friend. While Hogarth is trying to keep the giant safe from harms way, Kent Mansley, a government agent, is trying to discover this giant and destroy him. The movie tells the wonderful journey of these two new friends and the struggles they face along the way.
This animation, directed by Brad Bird, has had 19 award wins and 14 nominations, including the Sierra Award for Best Nominated Film, the Golden Reel Award for Best Sound Editing, and the Young Artist Award for Eli Marienthal’s phenomenal voice-over talent. The film was featured in 1999, competing with two other well-known animations, Toy Story 2 and Tarzan. Opening weekend the film made $5,732,614 in just the United States.
Brad Bird came up with the idea after a visit to the Warner Bros. studio. He was flipping through some sample artwork projects and found a young boy and a giant robot. When Warners asked Bird if there was anything he was interested in, he pitched the idea for “The Iron Giant” and they went for it.
After reading over some of the movie reviews, it seems that the rest of the world feels the same way about this movie. I could not find one review that said anything even slightly negative toward the film. Every review talked about how it was the best animation they have ever seen. There were older people who said they don’t even have children and loved it. It says a lot when a PG rated animated movie gets a good chunk of a movie reviews from older people saying they cried during it and thought it was amazing. I thought this was one of the best, if not the best animation I have ever watched and am actually very surprised that I had never seen it before my senior year of college. I thought everything about it, including music, voices, and visual images, were awesome. They picked a great cast for the voices and the music was catchy and went perfect with the movie. The actual animation was so believable, unlike a lot of other animated films I have seen. There was just something about the characters that made you want to keep watching. Within 10 minutes of the movie, I felt like I was emotionally invested in all of the characters. I am very excited that we got to watch this movie in class!
