Movies - The Iron Giant

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	Movies - The Iron Giant

The Iron Giant is a 1999 animated science fiction film, directed by Brad Bird, produced by Warner Bros. Feature Animation, and released by Warner Bros. Pictures. It was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Script (written by Tim McCanlies), and for the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation. It is loosely based on a 1968 children's book by Ted Hughes, The Iron Man. A young boy named Hogarth Hughes discovers an amnesiac "iron man", and saves him from electrocution. Grateful, the childlike robot becomes friends with him. Hogarth, with the help of the beatnik Dean, has to stop a U.S. military force led by a general and his egotistical federal agent from finding him and killing him out of paranoia. There are many sly references to the Cold War, the McCarthy era and science fiction films and TV of the age. The characters are voiced by a cast that included Harry Connick Jr., Jennifer Aniston, John Mahoney, and a then relatively unknown Vin Diesel.

Tagline: It came from outer space!

Synopsis

Intro

The story starts in the fall of 1957, when a large, flaming object is seen plunging through space towards Earth, where it crashes into the Atlantic Ocean just off the coast of Rockwell, Maine. This meteorite turns out to be the Iron Giant, a 50-foot tall robot of unknown origin and purpose.

Hogarth Hughes is home alone as his mother Annie has to work late again waitressing at the local diner. We never see or hear anything about Hogarth's father, but a photograph of a man standing next to a military jet in the boy's room leads one to the possibility that the father was a fighter pilot killed in the Korean War. Hogarth is watching a cheesy science fiction film on the television when its reception fails.

Hogarth goes outside with his BB gun in hand and finds the TV antennae chewed up on the ground. Seeing a trail of destruction leading off into the woods, Hogarth follows a path of wrecked trees to the power station.

He comes upon the Giant in the process of trying to eat the metal at the power station. The Giant gets shocked into nearby powerlines and is electrified. Hogarth heroically saves the Giant by shutting off the station's main power link. His mother comes looking for him; and despite his best efforts, Hogarth cannot convince her that the iron giant was real, or that it was still in the woods as they drove off.

The Antagonist

The next day, pompous and self-centered U.S. Government agent Kent Mansley arrives at the power station as part of his investigation into reports of a strange object that landed off the Maine coast. With the recent launch of the satellite Sputnik 1 by the Soviet Union on October 4, 1957 (seen orbiting Earth as the movie opens), a shocked America became even more paranoid of the Iron Curtain nations during the Cold War.

Apparently Mansley was sent to Maine to see if the meteorite report and smashed power station were all part of a secret Soviet weapon aimed at the United States. At that time, Americans feared that if the Soviets could place a satellite into Earth orbit with their rockets, they could just as easily launch a nuclear bomb on the U.S. with very little warning in a matter of minutes.

Mansley finds Hogarth's smashed BB gun with part of his name on the remains of the gun stock. Mansley is ready to leave the power station and drop the whole investigation as not being important enough for him, when he suddenly discovers that half of his car is missing! Mansley tries to find a witness to verify what has happened, but by the time they return, the entire automobile is gone (the Giant was hungry).

Meanwhile, Hogarth goes into the woods with a camera to find the Giant again. When he does, the Giant tries to follow him home, not understanding or heeding Hogarth's pleas to remain behind. But when the Giant accidentally causes a train wreck, Hogarth changes his mind and lets the Giant follow him home, hiding him in his barn. We also learn from these scenes that the Giant's parts can function independently to reassemble themselves and that he can survive the impact of a speeding train.

At the same time, the engineer of the wrecked train tells Mansley that the train ran into "a giant metal man" and points to Hogarth's house as a likely place to find a telephone. He calls his superior in Washington, D.C., who angrily tells him to get more evidence. As he leaves, he realizes that the BB gun he found belonged to Hogarth.

The Giant meets Dean

In order to conceal the Giant, Hogarth relocates the Giant to the nearby scrap yard; as the Giant is happy with the massive amounts of metal present for him to eat. The proprietor, a metals artist named Dean, agrees to let him stay the night.

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Movies - The Iron Giant

Synopsis

Intro

The Antagonist

The Giant meets Dean

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