A box office disappointment at the time of its release, The Iron Giant has grown a cult following and recently marked its 25th anniversary.

I have to admit that this was my first viewing of the film. You’d have to ask my parents why we didn’t see it when it came out, probably because of the lack of marketing. I’ve been meaning to watch for a few years now but with The Wild Robot opening in theaters, I decided that now was the time. If not for the Olympics in August, I probably would have found time to review the film for its 25th anniversary then. Honestly, I don’t know why I didn’t think to watch earlier this year and pre-schedule. In any event, it makes for quite the robotic double-feature! Sadly, it is not streaming on Max.

There’s a universe where The Iron Giant is one of the highest-grossing animated films of the 1990s. Unfortunately, the marketing department’s lack of marketing came back to bite it in the tuchas. The film’s high test scores shocked Warner Bros. at the time since they clearly didn’t think about marketing tie-ins. The studio just didn’t have faith in an animated film performing at the box office. They changed it up for home video but by then, the initial damage was already done. Thankfully, they got things in order for the awards campaign, winning nine Annie Awards in fifteen nominations. The film was competing against itself in several categories. It was released two years before animated films would be eligible for Best Animated Feature at the Oscars.

Brad Bird just happened to see Ted Hughes’ book at Warner Bros. and the rest is history. Bird’s film takes audiences back to the early days of the Cold War in 1957. It’s not surprising that the citizens of Rockwell, Maine react in such a manner. Being an animation fan, I love how he incorporates two of Disney’s Nine Old Men, Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas, into the film. They appear early on as train engineers.

Hogarth Hughes (Eli Marienthal) discovers this giant alien robot (Vin Diesel). While he initially freaks out, he soon hears this robot being in pain and begins to befriend him. Hogarth hides the Iron Giant from his mom, diner waitress Annie Hughes (Jennifer Aniston), at any cost. Meanwhile, he’s able to get beatnik artist Dean McCoppin (Harry Connick Jr.) to help. Unfortunately, both the U.S. military and federal agent Kent Mansley (Christopher McDonald) are on the hunt. Remember, it’s the late 1950s and paranoia runs deep. Mansley is the perfect example of a federal agent during this time. His behavior is enough that he orders a nuclear missile to be fired at the Iron Giant, not realizing that he will destroy the Maine town.

Given that it’s now 25 years later, a sequel is probably unlikely. What’s nice to know is that there is a happy ending. Annie and Dean also become a couple during the epilogue. The military gifts Hogarth with a screw–the only part of the giant that they could find. When Hogarth sees the screw trying to move on its own, he realizes that the giant is okay because of the ability to self-repair.

Interestingly, Dean, Kent, and the army were not in the original Ted Hughes book, published back in 1968. Dean and Kent could not be more different from each other. Once Bird came on board, he moved the setting to America and clearly had a different vision than Pete Townshend and Des McNuff, who mounted a stage musical in London. Bird approached it more from an angle of “What if a gun had a soul and did not want to be a gun?”

Behind the scenes, Michael Kamen handles the scoring duties. As such, it makes the film the very rare Brad Bird project to not be associated with Oscar-winning composer Michael Giacchino. When Kamen first heard the Bernard Herrman cues from 1950-60s sci-fi films, it scared him. He turned to eastern Europe to find an orchestra–Czech Philharmonic–and recorded the Annie Award-winning score in a week. Most surprisingly, Kamen recorded the score without the traditional sync methods–instead, treating it like a classic piece of music. In watching the bonus features, Kamen describes the scene with the deer as Bambi-esque and heartbreaking. He took it personally and came up with a theme for the forest as a character. Kamen would later associate characters with certain instruments with the orchestra.

The Iron Giant more than holds up over a quarter-century after its release. There’s so much to enjoy between the performances, music, and animation.

DIRECTOR/STORY BY: Brad Bird
SCREENWRITERS: Tim McCanlies and Brad Bird
CAST: Jennifer Aniston, Harry Connick Jr., Vin Diesel, James Gammon, Cloris Leachman, John Mahoney, Eli Marienthal, Christopher McDonald, M. Emmet Walsh

Warner Bros. Pictures released The Iron Giant in theaters on August 6, 1999. Grade: 5/5

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