21
votes
Movie of the Week #14 - The Iron Giant
Final movie for January is Brad Bird's animated The Iron Giant from 1999.
Feel free to add any thoughts, opinions, reflections, analysis or whatever comments related to this film.
The schedule for February is:
- 5th: Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse
- 12th: The Aviator
- 19th: Batman Begins
- 26th: Gangs of New York
I had to count on my fingers and toes to reconcile the fact that this film is nearly a quarter-century old with reality.
When it was first released, the characters were all culturally-anchored cardboard cutouts of 50s stereotypes. With that many more miles on the odometer, I wonder to what extent kids today (ostensibly still the target audience) have those same cultural anchors.
Also, the gag about this film in Ted Lasso was on the nose.
I absolutely love this movie and I have a very fond memory of my kids playing "Who Am I?" on car journeys.
My youngest at the time would always go "I'm very tall. I'm silver." and the other two would shout "The Iron Giant!". This went on for months, and my youngest used to get upset because he couldn't think of any other character.
I remember when this came out and I thought I was probably too old for that kind of stuff at the time. Well, now I am old enough again to appreciate what this is and it was great. It has a structure that is very similar to Spielberg's ET, but I prefer the humor in this and it doesn't go overboard with the sentimentality. Loved the animation, especially the autumn colors.
I've watched this movie more times than I can count over the years, and it still manages to make me cry nearly every time I do. IMO, it's damn close to being a perfect film. The story is great, the voice acting is great, the animation is great, and even the CGI elements still look really good too, especially considering it's 25 years old now.
If you haven't seen this movie, you're missing out! Go watch it now!
I was born a few days after this movie came out. I grew up with a VHS copy of it, it's one of the more pristine VHSs that I own.
Growing up I don't think it was ever a favorite of mine. I had a relatively clear memory of the "We are going to die for our country" scene and of course the "Superman" scene from when I was a kid. It wasn't until 2019 that I decided to re-watch the film. And that was essentially the first time I watched the film.
I know a lot of people think about this film when they think about great animated cinema. I'm more likely to think about WALL-E or even Bird's own Ratatouille.
It's a great film though. It's a really funny movie. Brad Bird is great at visual comedy, and not just in animated form because there's a lot of visual humor in Ghost Protocol. It's a love letter to sci-fi B-movies from the 50s, which I've seen enough to be familiar with some of the references, Invaders From Mars being one of them. I also love the 50s aesthetic, that's a texture I'm always for, and in animated form, it gives it an extra layer of romanticism.
Bird has often been criticized as being a neo-con and an Ayn Rand fanatic. In some circles it's even been accepted as fact that he's a Rand-head. The only movie this may apply to is The Incredibles. Some people try to shoe-horn Ratatouille into it by ignoring that the rat is the one cooking and instead focusing on the "the descendant gets ownership of the restaurant over the hard-working business partner" part of the film. Which also ignores the characters. And then they always erase Iron Giant or make an exception to it. Because it's very much not in line with that. It's saying we don't have to be what we were born to be. And it has vaguely liberal anti-gun/pro-peace messaging.
Rewatching this makes me wish Bird actually made Force Awakens (which he was going to). I like Force Awakens, but I can only imagine how much better the overall trilogy would have been if Bird had made that film instead. He couldn't do it because he was working on Tomorrowland, which bombed so hard it halted his career for a little bit and kind of forced him to make Incredibles 2. Hopefully he makes a comeback though.