Iron Giant: sputnik with legs
The dilemma for all the 'tin men' in literature/media has always been Do I have a heart or not? From Oz to Star Trek to director Brad Bird's The Iron Giant. But The Iron Giant is so much more, too. It opens with a meteor (the Iron Giant, here) hurtling through space, through Earth's atmosphere, and landing deadcenter in the eye of what looks to be a hurricane off the coast of Maine. Which is of course Stephen King country, where anything can happen. It does
The year is 1957. The place is Rockwell--as in Norman, vintage Americana. And the boy is Hogarth Hughes (Eli Marienthal), only child of single mom Annie Hughes (Jennifer Aniston), which is to say he's in bad need either of an imaginary friend or a father figure. As luck would have it, he gets both and then some, living out every boy's dream of having his own personal, Optimus Prime. To complicate things, though--or, rather, to allow things--this robot (Vin Diesel) has a dent in his head which results in amnesia, which means Hogarth has to train him (not it), teach him all the cool stuff John Connor teaches the T1000, not the least of which is that the soul lives on after the body dies (or, it's bad to kill, but not bad to die). Which yes is important.
But there are more immediate concerns, too: this robot has to eat. A lot. And his food of choice is metal. Meaning, in the Maine woods, he has to venture again and again into populated areas, which eventually attracts the attention of secret government agency man Kent Mansley (Christopher McDonald), something of a bungler who is initially made out to be a lantern-jawed Fox Mulder, but soon reveals himself as the Smoking Man in his younger, animated days. Meaning Hogarth's giant robot is, to him, all his Cold War paranoia come frighteningly to life. The robot did land in the eye of a hurricane, after all, and what are hurricanes if not the turbulent middle ground of opposing convective forces? It's democracy vs. communism, writ small in the New England of forty years ago. And yes, soon enough Mansley has his finger on the button, looking to usher us a little deeper into the Atomic Age.
Playing opposite Mansley, however, is Beat junkman Dean McCoppin (Harry Connick, Jr.), who agrees to give Hogarth's robot both room and board (scrapped cars), and--as we all do--eventually falls for this robot which, although it's in keeping with how robots were 'supposed' to look in the 50s, is nevertheless animated as being extremely expressive. It's all about body language, well-placed grunts. King Kong stuff. And of course his mood-ring eyes, which only go red (mad) in the presence of guns, which is evidently his (the robot's) original identity surfacing--an identity he'll need when the army turns against him, as they have to.
But of course that's never been the question, either--whether the robot would be villified and then given a chance to redeem himself. The bigger question has been who will step up as Hogarth's father? Mansley is the initial choice, but his liberal use of chloroform and nuclear arms kind of puts him out of the running. Leaving the one who, in the 50s, would never have qualified: Dean, the Beat. As for how The Iron Giant ends, think Fox and the Hound. It's pretty much the same story, except, whereas Fox and the Hound is set in the timeless, nostalgic backwoods of Where the Red Fern Grows, The Iron Giant has a little more sociohistorical context. That context has a downside, too, though: in the 50s, the common epithets were 'scout,' 'chief,' etc, which we don't use anymore. But The Iron Giant--because it is trying to be a period-piece--does. And that use almost comes off as an endorsement of those terms, even though it is the bad guy Mansley who uses them. In addition, though there's no outright profanity, there are a few 'what the hell's,' which perhaps today's children don't even notice anymore. All in all though, and despite the occasional irresponsibility, the highest endorsement I can give The Iron Giant is that I'll buy the video when it comes out, so my son can watch it when he's old enough.
(c) 1999 Stephen Graham Jones, http://www.cinemuck.com
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