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The Iron Giant
171 Plays3 years ago
Though it was a flop in theaters, The Iron Giant from 1999 has become a cult classic in the years since and introduced many to both director Brad Bird and Vin Diesel. David Weinberger of the Shonen Flop Podcast joins Perry to discuss the reasons why this movie continues to remain popular. But it's not all praise, we also find more than a few areas of improvement.
Listen to David on the Shonen Flop Podcast.
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Transcript
Hogarth's Tense Encounter with Authority
00:00:15
Speaker
You're late for dinner, Hogarth. Your mom's working late tonight, Hogarth. So it's just us guys, and we're gonna have a little chat. Sit down. How's that? A little too bright? Good. Forgive me, Hogarth. I wanted you to learn something. What can I learn from you? You can learn this, Hogarth. That I can do anything I want, whenever I want, if I feel it's in the people's best interest.
00:00:45
Speaker
The giant metal man. Where is it? I don't know what you're talking about. You don't? Wow. Does this ring a bell? No? How about this? You've been careless, Hogarth. It doesn't prove anything. It's enough to get the army here with one phone call. Then what's stopping you? Where's the giant? You can't protect him, Hogarth. Any more than you can...
00:01:14
Speaker
Protect your mother. My mom? It's difficult to raise a boy all along. We could make it more difficult. In fact, we could make it so difficult that it would be irresponsible for us to leave you in her care. And all that that implies. You'll be taken away from her, Hogarth? You can't do that! Oh, we can. And we will. He's in the junkyard. I'm copping the scrap off Culver Road.
00:01:44
Speaker
junkyard course food for the metal eater i wouldn't worry about this hogarth it isn't really happening this is only a bad dream
Introduction to Shonen Flop with David Weinberger
00:02:09
Speaker
Welcome to the Superhero Cinephiles Podcast. I'm your host, Perry Constantine, and welcoming a new guest and a fellow podcaster, and that is David Weinberger. David, how you doing today? I'm doing pretty well. Thanks for asking. How are you doing today? I'm doing good. Thank you. So before we jump into today's discussion, we like to kind of let new guests talk a little bit about themselves. So why don't you tell people what your deal is?
00:02:34
Speaker
So to get back to it, so my name is David. I am one half of the Shonen Flop podcast where me and my co-host Jordan talk about the wonderful world of manga that ran in Shonen Jump. For those who may not be familiar, Shonen Jump is the largest magazine in the world. It's things where Dragon Ball Z, One Piece, Naruto all came from, but not everything in that series can be a hit.
00:02:56
Speaker
There's a lot of garbage in it, too. So me, Jordan and a guest, we take a look at the lesser known series and see were they a flop or not and what they did wrong, what they did right.
History of Shonen Jump and Podcast Details
00:03:05
Speaker
Ultimately, what could they have done to potentially become a hit?
00:03:08
Speaker
And you can find us at shonenflop, that's S-H-O-N-E-N-F-L-O-P. And you can find us on Instagram, or sorry, you can find us on Spotify, iTunes, YouTube, or wherever else you find your podcasts. And on Twitter at shonenflopcast. Very cool. Yeah, and we'll have all the links and all that in the show notes so people can easily find it there. So how long have you guys been doing the show?
00:03:33
Speaker
We just had our two year anniversary about three weeks ago, actually. So yeah. So I know we're just still a baby podcast.
American vs. Japanese Comic Industries
00:03:45
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I know what that's like. So what are some of the what do you think so far is like the best unfairly canceled manga that you've read so far? So we actually just did a special where we ranked every single series we'd ever read. And it's actually kind of depressing how many of the series are just kind of garbage.
00:04:03
Speaker
So, some of the good ones we've read is probably Time Paradox Ghostwriter, and that's a manga about an author who is aspiring to success, and he has a magical microwave that sends him copies of Shonen Jump from the future and he starts plagiarizing that magazine. Some other favorites include Double Tiese, which is pretty much, what if you had the energy of the Fast and Furious but it was about playing a form of chess?
00:04:28
Speaker
Okay. And more akin, which is what if Beatles for could talk and it's a, it's a very interesting and fun series, but we have read some absolutely absurd things that I don't think I even have the time to go into all of the absolute garbage that we've had the displeasure of reading. So, um, some of them are fairly flop them. I would say one in 10 series is something I don't regret reading.
00:04:52
Speaker
When we started the podcast, we've been hitting gems and then we were like, well, we have run a lot of garbage. Yeah. It's funny when you think about the American industry because the American comic industry, there's usually a ton of stuff that gets unfairly canceled, but I guess because the Japanese manga industry is so huge and so much more successful, they tend to have a lot more flops than that are fairly flopped.
00:05:16
Speaker
Mm hmm. For sure. Yeah. And I am. I'm unfortunately not as well versus in American comics. I used to be really big into when I need to get back. We actually used to have a book club in my discord. I'm not sure if you use discord much, but every month. But unfortunately, the person who ran it just got too busy to keep going. That's too bad. So let's talk a little bit about how you got into this stuff, because you mentioned in your in our correspondence before we jumped on the show that you're you're a fan of superhero movies and yes.
David's Comic and Superhero Movie Journey
00:05:43
Speaker
So what was kind of like your gateway into the world of like superhero movies, comic books, all this kind of like nerdy stuff? I feel...
00:05:52
Speaker
Um, I had a high school teacher that was super into comics. So I think that was a big influence of it. And then I think really just, I was in the sweet spot for when the MCU started. I was in like ninth, 10th grade and I just, you know, followed it from there. And, uh, it's been a lot of fun. I've seen every MCU movie at least twice. Cause I rewatched them all. And then some of them I've seen probably five plus times, including I've seen Thor dark world three times. Cause I had to for a podcast. So.
00:06:18
Speaker
the sacrifices we make to be on the shows. But I'm really glad, though, I didn't have to regret that I rewatched Iron Giant for this episode. Yeah, we we actually we actually just did a recorded an episode on The Dark World fairly recently. So that's a pretty time. Oh, geez. Now, why would you do that?
00:06:33
Speaker
Oh, no, I actually the dark world. It's not my favorite. All right. It's definitely down on the list, but it's not a movie I hate. I'll put it that way. OK, that's right. But I also had a kind of a similar experience where I also had a high school teacher who was very into comics, who has actually been on the show before, too.
00:06:52
Speaker
And he, even though I was into comics before I met him, he was kind of, he was a cool guy who was into comics that made me realize like, oh wow, we don't have to be ashamed of this. We can be open about liking comic books and stuff like that.
00:07:06
Speaker
For sure. I remember I had a great experience where I actually, I had a great experience where me, him, and our friend of mine, we went through top 10 and he explained all the experiences. Though actually on that note, on my show, we actually had the artists of top 10 as a guest, which was really exciting.
00:07:25
Speaker
Mm hmm. Is that the the Ellen Moore comic, you mean? Yes. Oh, so we had Zander, sorry, Zander Cannon. I knew it was going to start with a Z. So, yes. So we had the pleasure of having Zander Cannon on one of our episodes. Oh, very cool. Very cool.
The Iron Giant's Cult Following
00:07:38
Speaker
All right. So today we're talking about like you like you had mentioned, The Iron Giant, which was a 1999 film, animated film that came out
00:07:50
Speaker
didn't do very well in the theater. It was kind of, it only made a 31 million of its 50 million budget. And it was,
00:08:00
Speaker
but it developed a really big cult following. And it's kind of probably most notable for being like the thing that really kind of launched Brad Bird and brought him to a lot of people's attention. Now I, when this movie came out, I never saw it when it came out. Cause I was, there's like when I was just starting high school, I believe, I think it was like in my first year of high school, first or second year when this came out. So I was kind of in that stage when I'm like,
00:08:27
Speaker
Oh, American animation. That's all kid stuff. I don't want anything to do with that. Brad Bird would be so upset to hear you think that. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I've definitely matured since then, but that was kind of the attitude of a lot of like animated stuff that wasn't, you know, Japanese animation at the time. It was just kind of like, oh, American animation. It's all for kids. You know, it's not worth watching or anything like that. It was definitely that kind of like,
00:08:51
Speaker
edgy teen edgelord type of bullshit phase that I was going through. Exactly. What about you? Because this obviously you were younger than me because you said you were you were like nine or 10 when the MCU started coming out. No, I was in nine for 10th grade. Okay, so yeah, so you're a little bit younger than me. So what what was your experience when this movie came out?
00:09:14
Speaker
Let me think about that. Also, by the way, um, I have a fan on the background, so let me know if it's too loud. I've found that in my recordings, it doesn't pick up. I just want to give you a heads up that for any reason I got off of it's causing issues. I'm not picking up anything. So we're good. Okay. And if you hear that Jocelyn, that's just me drinking water. Okay. Um, so.
00:09:30
Speaker
Yeah. So that 2002, I think I was about 11 years old. So yeah, definitely a little bit behind you. And I do remember actually seeing this in theaters. I think I was just going on like message boards and people were hyping this movie up. So I made sure to go see it. I distinctly remember in high school talking to my film studies teacher, I lent him a copy of it, which he swears he gave back. He never did. So I lost my copy of the iron giant. Very upset about that. It was a special edition.
00:09:54
Speaker
Um, so I definitely remember this being a really fun movie and that's really what stuck out to me is I've always loved the iron giant and I just, to be honest, I was overdue to rewatch it. So I'm so glad that I got to rewatch it for this show.
00:10:07
Speaker
Okay.
Watching The Iron Giant: Experiences and Themes
00:10:08
Speaker
Yeah. So that's, yeah. So my first experience actually watching, cause I, you know, like I said, when it came out, I remember seeing the ads, but wasn't really interested in it. And I had been hearing about this movie, you know, for years, like everybody been saying like the iron giant is so good. And it's one of those things, you know, everybody tells you that there's this movie you have to watch, you have to watch and you're just like, Oh yeah, I'll get to it. I'll get to it. And then you just never get around to watching it. And I had actually bought it about like,
00:10:35
Speaker
I think it was probably like a year or two ago when I was back in the States visiting and I was at a used DVD store and they had it. So I picked it up for like something like two bucks and then just put it in my collection. And just like with, I've got like a hundred movies that I haven't watched in my collection. So it just became another one of those on the, I'll get to it someday pile. So I'm actually really glad that you picked this. Cause I'm like, oh good. Now I can finally watch this movie.
00:11:00
Speaker
Yeah, I wasn't sure if it quite met the definition of superhero, but it does have all that Superman stuff. So I figured I might as well just try and go with something that hopefully no one else has thought of recommending. Right. Yeah, it's not. I mean, I think it's definitely one of those movies that's kind of skirting the edges of the superhero genre, but it it's close enough and it's my show. So I make the rules so I could say it's a superhero movie.
00:11:23
Speaker
That's fair. I feel like if I was forced to do something R-conventional, maybe I would have done like one of the Japanese, like a Super Sentai or Kamen Rider, which are Japanese, just because like, man, it's hard to find something that's not on, that's already been covered now. You'd have over 100 episodes. Yeah. We're getting to that point now. We're going to have to start scraping a little bit. But surprisingly, there's still a bunch that we haven't covered. What would you say is the most lowest hanging fruit you haven't covered yet?
00:11:51
Speaker
the first Spider-Man movie. How's no one done that? Or like pretty much most of the X-Men movies surprisingly we haven't covered. Like we've done X2, we've done Days of Future Past and we've done First Class and Logan and Dark Phoenix and that's it. But like X2 has not been covered yet, The Last Stand, the other two Wolverine movies, those haven't been covered yet. So yeah, I don't know. It's just one of those things. We only just recently finally had someone to come on to talk about Spider-Man 2. So yeah, it's kind of surprising.
00:12:21
Speaker
It's taken us this long to get to one of these.
Cold War Themes in The Iron Giant
00:12:23
Speaker
Oh yeah. That was actually my first pick of Spider-Man 2. And then when I saw it, I was like, all right, everything's probably taken, so I'll do the giant. But this was a good one. And it's very much influenced by the...
00:12:35
Speaker
It's much more, I wouldn't call it so much a superhero movie. It's much more of a pulp movie. It's very much in that kind of vein. I got a lot of like flesher vibes watching it too from like the old Superman animated shorts they used to do back in the what like 1930s, 1940s. Oh yeah, I remember those. They used to run them on Cartoon Network sometimes. Yeah, I mean, and they're like public domains. Like everybody has released a DVD of them. Oh, that's awesome.
00:13:01
Speaker
Um, so what were some of your thoughts, uh, rewatching this movie? I, um, I would say that the first thing was this movie is very slow paced in a way. I don't think they make movies anymore. Like they let the scenes kind of.
00:13:18
Speaker
I'm trying to think of the proper term, but like they really let the scene just play out. There's not a lot of hard cuts. There's not a lot of franticness. It's still of course, well-directed and well shot, but it was, there's a very deliberate kind of slowness to the pacing and editing of the film. And to be honest, like I a hundred percent do not think any real, they probably could release a movie. That's this slow pace targeted towards children nowadays.
00:13:41
Speaker
Yeah, I think it would definitely, they would have definitely edited down to like, I mean, cause it's not a long movie. It's not a long movie. Right. So you would have probably been able to edit it down to maybe like a little over an hour and change with just by cutting down on some of those scenes.
00:13:56
Speaker
At least for, you know, like you said, for more modern kid on students. My impression was I did feel that the pacing was a lot slower than I expected. Just judging from what I'd seen about the trailers and all that. And it seemed like it was a much more fast paced movie than it actually turned out to be.
00:14:14
Speaker
But I wasn't bored watching it, right? It wasn't like the pacing was so slow that I felt bored watching it. The pacing was slow, but it was fine. It didn't feel like it was unnaturally slow or anything like that. Although one thing I will say is I was kind of surprised when I'm getting to the end of the movie and
00:14:36
Speaker
I'm looking at the clock and I'm like, wait a minute. I've been watching this movie for about an hour now and it's under an hour and a half and they haven't even begun to get towards like the big climactic event yet. Yeah. I definitely, I think if I watch this and someone said, how long do you think that movie is? I probably would have said two hours and change. Yeah. Yeah. I could definitely see that.
00:14:59
Speaker
Uh, do you know how long it's actual runtime is? I know it's one hour 40. It's, uh, according to Wikipedia, it's 87 minutes. There was an, um, an extended remastered version of the two extra minutes with two extra minutes. Okay. So it's not that much of a, um, so yeah. Um, so yeah, it's just 87 minutes, just under an hour and a half.
00:15:19
Speaker
Yeah, that's the problem is they probably it's probably why the pacing is so slow as you literally can't make a movie shorter than this and release in theaters. Yeah, probably. I think and I think another thing is a lot of animated movies, they were targeting them, especially at this time period.
00:15:37
Speaker
They were kind of shooting for like 90 minutes is the absolute limit of them. Like if you look at a lot of the DC direct to video animated movies, they're all under 90 minutes. And someone pointed out to me one time that it was because they were airing them like on Cartoon Network and all that and they would split it up into like three episode blocks basically. So that's, or two episode blocks. That's why they had it edited the way they did.
00:16:01
Speaker
That's really interesting. Yeah.
CGI in The Iron Giant: Simplicity and Effectiveness
00:16:03
Speaker
I was looking at quest for Camelot, which was like kind of their contemporary and that likewise is 84 minutes.
00:16:08
Speaker
Yeah. And that was actually, there was a lot of skepticism about this movie because of Quest for Camelot, because that had completely tanked. And this was a weird time for animation because this was a time when you had some other studios that were kind of trying to compete with Disney, but it was before Pixar had really kind of broken in. And
00:16:31
Speaker
And so like you had these small little movies that were done that weren't Disney films that, and some of them were actually pretty good, but they were very kind of, they're kind of like almost written off. Like American animation was in this really weird kind of growing pains phase, I remember. Yeah. It's also, this is really one computer assisted animation and that really changed the game where, how far you can get off your budget. Like it's actually quite interesting. I do wonder who was deliberate that really,
00:17:02
Speaker
The iron giant, the CGI holds up pretty well, but it's literally the easiest thing you can do in CGI. Why is it a large mechanical, like, like with lots of sharp edges? I think something else that they did, which was smart is that they didn't. They didn't go overboard with the CGI because that's the, that's the fault of a lot of early CGI animation is they're like, we can do all this stuff with computers. Let's like throw all the bells and whistles we can onto it. And then when you look at it now, it looks.
00:17:30
Speaker
It's just, it looks completely, and I think I'm not sure if it was Brad Bird who made this decision or someone in the animation department or whoever it was, but someone said, we wanna try to make this look as close to hand-drawn animation as possible, right? We're using CGI, but we're using CGI to animate something that would traditionally be 2D instead of trying to make it look like 3D animation. I think that,
00:17:57
Speaker
Also the fact that it's, like you said, it's, you know, it's very simple animation, right? It's a, you know, it's a hard edge mechanical robot. So it's much easier to animate as opposed to like, if you're doing the human. But I think that focusing on that simplicity and just saying, we're going to use CGI to do the simplest thing instead of going overboard with it. I think that was a very good decision. Yeah, I completely agree.
Character Roles and Dynamics in The Iron Giant
00:18:20
Speaker
Um, now, one of I also to rewatching because now I'm you know I'm a man in his late 30s so watching this movie now as a man is late 30s. This is, I'm watching this movie and I'm definitely feeling like I am so not the target audience for this movie. Because it's not that I didn't like it or anything like that it's just that when I watch movies where young children are the main character it's it's really hard for me to kind of connect to it so
00:18:47
Speaker
Like I found myself connecting a lot more with Dean than anyone else in the movie. I mean, Dean is probably the best character in the movie. I also have like, what is it? Like the Mandela effect where you have like a false memory. I swear that Johnny Depp played him in this movie. Oh, really? I don't know why, but I had this very vivid memory. I was voiced by Johnny Depp, which is not true. No, it's not. It was Harry Connick Jr., actually, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Harry Connick Jr.
00:19:16
Speaker
It's interesting, Johnny's up wasn't even on like the list of, they actually list the considered actors for him and Johnny's up wasn't even on that list. So I don't know where I got this idea that Johnny's up played him. I mean, I could see Johnny that playing him though. Yeah, I definitely could. I think like, especially that first scene he's in when he's in the diner with the sunglasses and all that. And he's like this, this beat neck kind of character. See, I could definitely, he's definitely got some adept vibe or at least, you know, pre lazy Johnny Depp. Yeah.
00:19:44
Speaker
Jennifer Aniston, she also kind of surprised me because I'm listening to her and I knew she was in this, but it was still kind of funny watching the movie and just thinking like hearing her voice. I'm like, I still can't believe that Jennifer Aniston, like something about it just didn't, I knew it was her voice, but something about her, I think it was just different from the characters I'm used to seeing her play. Yeah, it was a very subtle performance and it was interesting that she was in it. And I feel like I just,
00:20:11
Speaker
I think her fine. I also had an issue where for some reason on HBO Max, the audio leveling was really bad. And I actually had trouble here. So I had to keep changing. So it makes it hard for me to truly know the quality of the performances because I struggled to hear them sometimes because just for HBO Max, for some reason, it's really bad audio leveling for this movie. Oh, OK. See, I watched it on the DVD, so that didn't have those issues. But Vin Diesel also really impressed me in this and just.
00:20:37
Speaker
Because I said we did bloodshot fairly recently. And I said on that on that episode that my issue with Vin Diesel as an action star is that I don't feel like he's leading man action star material, right? He's not like a Dwayne Johnson. He's not like a Jason Statham. He's not he doesn't have that same kind of of presence.
00:20:59
Speaker
that a lot of other action stars have. But in something like this, in these more character-based roles, like when he does the voice of the Iron Giant, when he does the voice of Groot, or in something more subdued like in Pitch Black, right? He's great. What do you think of his voice?
00:21:18
Speaker
I think he did a great job. It was like, I mean, he has what, maybe 10 lines. It's very much like his performance in gardens of the galaxy. So I don't have much to say about it. I think this was definitely before his career. This is definitely pretty fast and furious, I would say. Yeah, yeah, definitely.
00:21:35
Speaker
Yeah, so it's definitely not a star shower. And it is I think it's more to be honest, it's going to be best known as a piece of trivia that he had like 10 lines in this movie over anything else in terms of those contributions to this film. Well, I think that's one of the things I've heard the most about this movie since like Vin Diesel voiced the Iron Giant like after he hit it big with the Fast and Furious movies. I think a lot of people went back and then kind of took another look at this movie because of that or maybe to the first look at this movie. Yeah.
00:22:07
Speaker
So what are some other things that kind of stood out to you watching it this last time? So, let's see. I also really appreciate that they actually had a child voice in the main character. I think the performance was a little wooden, but this was actually a child voice. Yeah, yeah. Which is always a nice, it's always a nice treat when you actually have a child performing. Right.
00:22:33
Speaker
Um, something I was surprised to rewatch is just how heavily the, the cold war themes were. Yeah. Right. I mean, really talk about duck and cover, which is, you know, become a lot more relevant nowadays with what's going on.
00:22:44
Speaker
Right, but also like the Sputnik stuff, like all of that being in there and just like how xenophobic Kent Mansley is in this. And yeah, I was kind of surprised at how heavy a lot of the themes are, but they do a good job of like giving you a little bit of these themes and kind of making, it does a good job of making you feel what it was like to be alive back then. I mean, it doesn't go,
00:23:08
Speaker
Obviously it's a movie about, you know, a boy and his iron giant, but it's, it's still, it keeps it relatively grounded despite that. Yeah. I mean, the entire movie does a great job of just being a metaphor, especially with the, um, I forget, sorry, I am terrible with character names. Let me get the list of characters up.
00:23:30
Speaker
with I think Ken, with Ken and how he's just kind of represents in the Karthi era, just red scare where I really liked that metaphor of how he becomes so self-destructive. He literally is self-destructing at the end of the movie where he's literally going to kill himself because he's become so obsessed with this dealing with the enemy ideology. Right, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that was pretty, it's kind of shocking to watch that in a kids movie, actually, when I think about it, especially because, you know,
Metaphors of Authority and Fear
00:24:01
Speaker
portraying the government agent as the villain, right? That's not something you see happen in a lot of kids movies. Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's not unheard of like look at like ET and there's other ones where they're like children interacting with the friendly alien or what have you. So I think that's kind of what it's playing into is that sort of trope where there's a certain fear of authority. And I think that's why I think that
00:24:27
Speaker
Dean is such an interesting because he is a counterculture character, and by being counterculture, he is a supportive one. Like that restaurant scene, or Diner Show at the Star, is a really great scene where he was like, yeah, I saw it too. Like, did you really? He's like, no, but I wanted to make that guy feel like he was being supported. And that just speaks volumes about the nature of Dean's character and, you know, how he's the only person that really is able to tolerate the giant. Mm-hmm.
00:24:52
Speaker
It also speaks a lot about that time period, right? And just like how, and I like that too, that he had that line because usually in a movie like this, nobody would be supporting someone who's coming up with these outlandish theories or anything like that. You wouldn't have any adults who were really kind of like standing by the kid, like trusting the kid and all that, but you have that in Dean a lot. And I really liked that aspect of it.
00:25:21
Speaker
Yeah, I think something else that unrelated says, I think it's very interesting to how he is the son of a single mother and they don't really talk about the father. And it's very much left up to your interpretation. I think that was a very powerful creative decision and it does of course let, oh frickin' what's his, I always forget his name of the agent. Can't just slot in so well into the presence of his mother in a way that if he had a father figure it wouldn't have worked.
00:25:49
Speaker
Yeah, I think so too. Now, according to Wikipedia, it says that Hogarth's father was, he was an Air Force pilot who died in the Korean War. But I can't remember if there was any real references to that in the movie or any like, or if there were, then I kind of, I missed that. Yeah. I, I'm with you as well. But one thing that kind of took me out of it a little bit was the,
00:26:15
Speaker
the military guy, the general, Rogard, who he, you know, he eventually sides with Dean and the kid. And, you know, he's against Kent, like, you know, launching a nuclear, and I feel like that's where the movie felt like they had to play it a little bit safe. And they kind of had to show that Kent was an outlier. Whereas in reality, I think a Rogard type character would have been, whoa, yeah, let's bomb the shit out of him. That's fair.
00:26:46
Speaker
What are some other things here? One of the things that surprised me is that John Mahoney of Frasier, he played, he ended up playing Roguard in this. Really? Yeah. I had no idea. It's so interesting how there's so much talent in this movie and you just don't know about it. Yeah. Because everyone is just kind of very subdued.
00:27:06
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that's another thing is I think that's probably another reason why maybe it didn't quite find so much of an audience at first is it is like, and this kind of ties into what we were saying before about the pacing. It is very subdued, it's very up until the end. And even that's not that big of a situation. It is a very low key film. It's not like,
00:27:32
Speaker
I'm trying to think of what other animated movies were coming out at the same time that have been comparable to this, but it doesn't seem like it would have competed very much with them on that same level. No, and I think that's a really good observation. I mean, yeah, so I'm looking at this now and it says that we had Tarzan come out at the same time, Toy Story 2 came out at the same time. So all these movies that were much bigger and much more
00:27:59
Speaker
impactful, whereas this one definitely was much smaller in scale overall.
00:28:10
Speaker
Yeah. And I, it's funny though, you say that small in scale when it's about a giant robot, but that is true. Like it's just him. There's, there's really no big set pieces to this movie either. And it's so interesting how really the action of it is only in the last like 15 minutes where I really would have fought people to discover the giant further in, but it was like.
00:28:30
Speaker
I think I had it written down. It was like, yeah, I thought that it was really past the 50 minute mark when anything more conventional happens. And that just really shows the interesting pacing of the movie. And that's why you'd think, oh, this is probably a two hour movie. Cause after premature an hour in is when the plot really ramps up, but because the movie is only an hour and 20 minutes, that means that it's entirely just the climax of when you really feel the plot is starting. I think too, that, um, the,
Critique of Moral Dilemmas
00:29:01
Speaker
Another thing, something they could have done, and maybe it would have taken a different type of movie, a different focus of this movie altogether, because it's very much on
00:29:09
Speaker
Hogarth trying to, the whole movie is just about this idea that Hogarth has trouble finding people to relate to. That's why he keeps bringing in all these stray animals he finds. That's kind of why he relates to Dean in the first place because Dean's also this outsider type. And I wish we would have seen maybe a little bit more of that because it's not really reflected so much in the town. I think you could have done more with that
00:29:35
Speaker
with the whole idea of the red scare aspect of it and with like the, and have like the town's reaction to that kind of stuff. Because we don't really get a lot of that. And then we see in the, you know, when the giant saves the two boys, right? You know, people are kind of, you know, people are thankful towards him and the town's people kind of realize, oh, he's this, you know, he is a helpful guy. But there's none of that,
00:30:01
Speaker
lead up to it, right? Nobody even knows he exists until really that point. So I think that's maybe not a failing, because that's probably not what the movie was really trying to do, but I think that's something else that they could have done to kind of inject a little bit more drama in it was maybe have the giant be revealed a little bit earlier. I think so, but then it's also, I guess, so would you have wanted the movie to be substantially longer then?
00:30:28
Speaker
Not really, but I think they could have edited down some of the, the other stuff and yeah. Right. Maybe not substantially longer, but I think you could get this up to maybe an hour and 45 minutes and do a little bit more stuff with that without.
00:30:43
Speaker
without so I think it wouldn't have been too much long it would have improved the pacing a little bit more I think if you'd done something like that especially because there's this whole fascination the giant has with Superman right yeah and that that plays into where like the Superman thing is fun but I feel like they didn't talk about it much to really
00:31:02
Speaker
be such a part of the character arc. Like maybe it would have been fun to have seen him try to save someone and fail. And then, you know, this is really when he gets his redemption. Cause it's not really like he needed to redeem himself because everyone, by the point that he has to sacrifice himself, everyone knows what he is. He doesn't have to prove anything. He's not say a martyr. Right. Exactly.
00:31:22
Speaker
And it is a little frustrating how like everything Kent is saying is pretty easily disproven. And so it would have been nice for them to have been some moral, some morally gray stuff, not necessarily because the giant was acting evil, but just because he's such a large figure. And sometimes when you try and do the right thing, it doesn't always work out. And that's really a lesson that wasn't built into the fabric of the series. Cause the giant is always besides, you know, being childlike or animalistic, like a dog, he doesn't do anything amoral.
00:31:51
Speaker
Right. The closest we ever get is when Hogarth points the toy gun at him and his defense system kicks in. That's it. And we never see anything. I was expecting to see a little bit more of that after that scene happened, but it's just, it's kind of like just gone very quickly and we don't deal so much. And I think there's a lot you could do there with, you know,
00:32:15
Speaker
I think if I were writing this movie, I think I would have put that scene a lot earlier and I would have had the giant try to maybe suppress his programming or something to avoid that happening again. And so then when the danger really does come, then it's a situation when it's like, well, I promise not to use violence anymore, but now my
00:32:37
Speaker
family, for lack of a better word, is in danger. What am I supposed to do now? I think that would have made it a lot because there is there is no moral quandary that the giant faces really. Yeah. Or even Hogarth, like Hogarth doesn't really face any sort of moral quandary either. Like they're just basically in the right the whole time.
00:32:54
Speaker
Yeah. That's the problem is I think the good characters are too good in the evil care. Like literally the evil character is fine killing children. And I think that just kind of takes away where you just can't have someone that plainly evil. I know he's supposed to represent like abnormality and what have you in the red scare, but there's just like a point where there's just, there wasn't enough ethical playing around in this movie to make it not feel like it was above being a well done children's movie.
00:33:21
Speaker
If anything, I think if you'd combined aspects of Kent and Roguard together to create a more complex character, I think that would have been a little bit more interesting as opposed to having this one character who's very level-headed and he's working for the government, but he's very level-headed. He knows when he's made the wrong move. And the other character just being a complete total asshole, a fucking asshole, then yeah, that makes it harder to really kind of relate to that. And yeah, you're right.
00:33:50
Speaker
the only time the good characters ever do anything wrong, it's very small and they quickly realize their mistake. Like when Dean sends the Iron Giant away and or when, I can't even think of when Hogarth accidentally, he accidentally causes the train accident, right? And even that's very minor in comparison. So yeah, there's not a lot of that stuff going on. I think for all the time the movie spends,
00:34:19
Speaker
dealing with these like slice of life stuff. A lot of that stuff could have been trimmed in order to make room for some more character development. Yeah. Now, do you think the train would have been more interesting if it was a more severe accident? It might have, like it might have. I mean, I don't, I'm not sure if you could do that in a kid's movie, right? Have like the hero kill, you know, kill some train passengers, even accidentally, but it definitely would have, um,
00:34:48
Speaker
change the stakes a little bit. And it definitely would have added some more, some more conflict for the characters to deal with. I think, I think so. But also, you know, talking about the Superman thing. And like you mentioned that the Superman aspects not really that touched upon. Because you also think about the time period this takes place in 1957. You know, this is still the golden age and Superman's much more of
00:35:12
Speaker
a social justice type character in this time period as well. So I think when you're setting it in the Cold War and you've got that whole Superman thing going on, there's so much more you can do with that, that I feel the movie doesn't even barely scratch the surface of what you can do with that. Yeah. And then would you have wanted there to have been a sequel or do you think that's unnecessary? I'm not sure because I think, I don't think, maybe not a sequel, but I think I just wouldn't have a rewrite of this script more than anything is what I would have wanted to do.
00:35:43
Speaker
Yeah. I don't know. What about you? Because I know, I'm not sure if there was, it seems to set itself up for a sequel, but I'm not sure if there's any actual talk about a sequel. I think they said they would have been fine. They would have had no issues making a sequel, but they didn't think a sequel was necessary. Okay. Yeah. I don't think a sequel would have really helped at all. I think it would have
00:36:09
Speaker
I can't imagine anything they would have done in the sequel that would have, there's obviously a lot more you can do with this character, but I don't think it's anything that these filmmakers would have wanted to do with the character. I assume they would have played into the origins more probably. Right, that's probably what I'm, that's probably the only thing I could think of as well.
00:36:34
Speaker
And this is still too, like the, because looking at the themes of this, you know, Brad Bird was coping with the death of his sister when he was making this and even- Yeah, I wasn't aware of that context. And it was even based on a children's book written by, what was his name? Ted Hughes, who, you know, after Sylvia Plath committed suicide, who was his wife, he had wrote this book to kind of comfort his children.
00:37:05
Speaker
And so Bird's pitch to Warner Brothers was what if a gun had a soul and didn't want to be a gun? Yeah. And I feel like it doesn't quite live up to that promise because I don't think we see enough of that conflict in the giant. Yeah, I feel this movie needed in our 20 minutes.
00:37:22
Speaker
And probably maybe some tighter pacing. So maybe a net of like an extra 25 to 30 minutes to really get a stronger message out, maybe have another set piece or two to really show because you really only see the giant actually doing his thing once in the entire movie. Right. Yeah. I mean, we just get that brief little hint of it early on. And then in the background, we see the, the laser blast, but that's it.
00:37:43
Speaker
And I think that too, understand what the giant is capable of would have also been really good. So that's why I would have moved, again, you move that scene with Hogarth earlier in the film, you maybe see him like create a giant weapon or something and pointed at Hogarth and then Dean steps in and then the giant realizes what he's done. All of that, I think would have made for a lot stronger. Because it also would have shown Hogarth that,
00:38:10
Speaker
you know, yeah, this guy, you know, it's, you know, this, this, this, you know, this basically, you know, wild animal, for lack of a better term, he would have, he does love you, he does care for you, but at the end of the day, he's still what he is. So there's that question too. Yeah, I completely agree. I think too, like having a little bit more with, um,
00:38:33
Speaker
maybe Annie discovering the giant earlier and having more of a reaction to it, I think would have also helped out a little bit more with that. So you would have had a little bit of a push and pull between Annie and Dean, right? Because Annie seems very, pretty overprotective of Hogarth. Like, you know, don't go to bed, you know, be in bed by eight. Well, yeah, she is a single, I mean, that's what happens when you're a single mother. Well, yeah, yeah, it's absolutely understandable. So I would have liked to see that come into more with, in regards to the giant.
00:39:02
Speaker
because especially that also plays into
00:39:06
Speaker
the idea of kind of the parent that kids want and the parent that kids need. Cause I think you, that's another dichotomy you could set up with Dean and Annie where, you know, Dean's this really cool laid back guy. He's the kind of guy that you would, that a kid would want to have as a parent. Whereas Annie is, you know, she's much more strict. She's much more concerned. And even though kids may not like that, that is more of the parent that you need. So I think having a little bit more drama there in regards to that would have been interesting too.
00:39:35
Speaker
Yeah, do you like that they got together? I didn't really think too much of it because it just kind of seemed like it was expected. Yeah, it just felt like it was kind of arbitrary. Yeah, exactly. It definitely felt arbitrary. So I didn't think too much of it because I had expected it right from the start. It seemed like it was so obviously going to happen. So I just, and I know they kind of, another thing they could have done, right, that you kind of set up Kent here,
00:40:02
Speaker
as a potential third point on that love triangle, but it never quite develops, right? This movie, I think that's what's frustrating about this movie is, and I didn't really realize this until, I wasn't expecting to have this kind of conversation when we started this, but it, but that's good, it's good. And like, I was, it would have, now that I'm thinking about it, I would have liked to see more of that because now knowing that Hogar's father was a soldier, like,
00:40:31
Speaker
having Kent there as kind of like a replacement for him. And, and whereas Dean is like the complete opposite of her husband, it would have been so much more interesting to set up that kind of conflict and that kind of dynamic. Yeah. I feel like that's something that they had to cut for time is really exploring his father. Right. Yeah. There's a lot of stuff that feels like it was, it was cut out or not even put in the movie in the first place. And I think
00:40:57
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, as much as good, and I'm not saying, you know, for anyone who's, you know, listened to this and shaking their fist at me right now, like I don't think it's a bad movie by any stretch of the imagination. I just think there are so many different things they could have done better. Yeah. And I think that makes sense. So how is this, how is this colored your perception of it now that you're rewatching this movie and, you know, re approaching this, this classic from your childhood?
Reassessing The Iron Giant's Impact
00:41:23
Speaker
I mean, I think to be honest, I think my opinion stays the same. Like I enjoyed it, but it wasn't, I mean, there's a reason I haven't rewatched this movie in probably a decade is, I remember it being a good movie, but not a movie I always need to constantly rewatch. Like if I have kids, I'm sure I'll show it to them at some point, but it's not the top of the list, you know? Yeah, I think I got the same feeling too. Like I was watching this, you know, my daughter's only about one now, so she's not quite old enough to understand it, but, and she was, you know, she watched like the first five minutes with me and then she fell asleep.
00:41:53
Speaker
but she's not at that age yet where she can really sit and pay attention to a movie. But I think when she gets older, I would definitely, I think I have definitely show this to her. Yeah. I mean, like I said, I am impressed that it did do some things that I wouldn't expect a kids movie to do. And maybe this is me expecting too much of a kids movie in the end because I think it kind of impressed me too much by being so direct with the cold war themes that I wanted it to do more.
00:42:22
Speaker
Yeah. And it's interesting how the Cold War themes didn't exist when this movie came out or when the book it's based on came out. Yeah. That's a good point too. I never considered that. And so yeah, when was, when did the book come out? 1968. 1968. Oh, okay. Okay. So it came out after that time. So yeah, it is interesting that Byrd decided to set it in this time period.
00:42:49
Speaker
What do you think was the reason behind that? Do you think it was really just the Cold War themes, or do you think there was some other reason why? I mean, I feel like that was really the best setting for this, because also, obviously, I couldn't do it nowadays, because it was too connected to hide something like that. And I think it was just having a theme like this in the 80s would have been overdone, because people have been like, oh, it's like E.T., but with a giant robot instead. Right, yeah. So I think the 60s really added an interesting sense and a peacefulness to everything, like the duck and cover element really is a 60s capstone.
00:43:19
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. And it turns out that a lot of people did actually compare it to ET when it came out. Well, there you go. Also, this one, Roger Ebert actually compared it to Hayao Miyazaki. So, which I'm not sure, I can see kind of that, but I feel like Miyazaki is,
00:43:46
Speaker
he's much more direct, he's less shy about addressing the themes he wants to address. And that could just be like, you know, working in the Hollywood studio system and, you know, Brad Bird not wanting to ruffle too many feathers with an animated movie about the cold war. But like I had just watched, I teach a class in Japanese film and like just the other day we did The Wind Rises and that is, you know, such a,
00:44:13
Speaker
blunt criticism of Japan during the war. And it's a Japanese movie. So in a Japanese kids animation, no less. And so yeah, I thought, or like, you know, something like Grave of the Fireflies too, which is also a very blunt denunciation of war overall. But this one, it plays it very safe in comparison to Miyazaki.
00:44:35
Speaker
Yeah, that's also just he didn't have a lot of budget too because this was considered a fairly low budget movie so I'm sure that has heavily restricted his ability to have really done what he wanted. Right. Yeah. Like I said $30 million budget. I'm sure that or no $50 million budget and I'm sure most of that went into the CGI effects. Yeah.
00:44:57
Speaker
Speaking of the CGI and the Iron Giant's design, that was actually, it was actually designed by Joe Johnston, who he directed the Rocketeer, he directed Captain America, the First Avenger. Oh, wow. Yeah, and he's, he also directed Jurassic Park 3, but we don't talk about that. But I think he was, it was a good choice because he's got a very strong pulp sensibility and you really see that reflected in the design of the giant and,
00:45:26
Speaker
You know, when I think about stuff like the Rocketeer, when I think about the first Avenger, when I think about the design he did for this, you know, I feel like I want to see him make, that guy especially make more movies in this time period.
00:45:39
Speaker
Yeah, I think this is definitely an era, but the problem is, is I think why the eighties are so big is now everyone who was a kid in the eighties now gets to make these movies. And I really lost our opportunity for the sixties and which is slowly starting to become less of a living, you know, for starting to lose the people that were alive in this era.
00:45:58
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, there's maybe a little bit too much focus on the eighties as of late. Oh, yeah. It's a great it's a great decade. But something else to watch in this movie and also thinking about what he did with The Incredibles and also just like the the sheer pace of action in Ghost Protocol, like makes me wonder, like, how come nobody has thought to give Brad Bird a Superman movie now?
00:46:25
Speaker
So I, people have been saying Brad Bird would be perfect to direct the Fantastic Four. So I'm really hoping that happens. That would be, yeah, he would definitely be good for that too. And John Watts has now stepped down from that. So who knows, it's a possibility. That's why I'm hoping.
00:46:43
Speaker
I mean, I would love to see him direct a Fantastic Four movie. I would love to see him direct a Superman movie too. I think either one of those, I mean, I think this movie definitely, The Incredibles definitely shows he's got a lot in him to do a Fantastic Four movie. This I think definitely shows he's got a lot in him to do a Superman movie and Ghost Protocol proves that he knows how to handle the action.
00:47:02
Speaker
Oh, yeah. First of all, it was great. Yeah. I mean, that, that tower scene, every time I watch it, it's just like heart stopping. I can't wait though for the next one. Yeah. Yeah. Did you see any topic? Not yet. No, I know. That's great. I know. I want to see it, but you know, we've got, we've got one kid running around and we got another one coming soon. So it really kind of restricts the time I can go out to the theater. Yeah. Um, so we'll probably have to wait till that one comes out on video, but yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing it. I mean, people have been saying it's even better than the first one.
00:47:33
Speaker
It's way better than seeing an IMAX if you can. I will, yeah. I'm hoping I can find a way to, but we'll see how that works out. Okay, Dave, anything else we really wanted to talk about with Iron Giant? Because it's not a long movie, and I think we kind of touched on a lot of the big things that kind of stood out to me, and even moved into some stuff that I wasn't expecting. No, I think I had a bunch of notes, and I really think that we covered everything that I want to discuss. Yeah.
00:48:02
Speaker
The sum up I would say about this, and you mentioned it's on HBO Max, so people can easily watch it now. Or you might want to play around with your audio settings. Yeah, I'm not sure what was going on with that. Yeah, it's a good movie. If you've got kids, I think it's definitely worth watching with them. I feel like if I had watched this movie when I was a kid, then I think this movie would have a much bigger impact on me.
00:48:31
Speaker
And it's one of those things where I've talked about this before on this show, but when you're a kid and you watch something at the right age, it kind of stays with you for a while. And I think that's what the case is with this movie for a lot of people who were kids when it came out. Yeah, I completely agree. Okay. What about you? Do you have any other final notes about this movie? No, I think this movie just, it holds up really well. It is a little slower paced, but I definitely would don't regret getting to watch it again.
00:49:01
Speaker
Yeah, it's a fun watch. I'm glad I finally got a chance to watch it. It unfortunately didn't quite live up to the potential that had been set after years of hearing how amazing it is, but overall I liked it. I thought, like I said, I really liked the Dean character in it. I thought Vin Diesel did a lot of really good voice work because
00:49:21
Speaker
it seems like originally they were going to electronically modulate the voice, but they didn't in this. So that's all his voice acting. And I don't know, I really feel like Vin Diesel is much better as a voice actor than a action star.
Final Thoughts and Podcast Promotion
00:49:37
Speaker
Yeah, but yeah, okay, Dave, why don't you tell people one more time where they can go and find you then?
00:49:42
Speaker
All right. Well, first of all, thank you again, Perry, for having me on the show. This is a ton of fun and it was great having a chance to rewatch it, but you can find me, my co-host and a guest every single Monday on the show to flop podcast. That's S H O N E N F L O P. Where we look at some weird and wild manga seeing what they did wrong, what they did right, what they could have done to have prevented being a flop. It's a ton of fun. Appreciate if you check us out. We're on, as I said at the start, we're on Spotify, iTunes, YouTube, or wherever else you get your podcast.
00:50:11
Speaker
Okay. Very cool. All right. Yeah. And thanks so much for, and we'll have all that information in the show notes again. But yeah, thanks so much for coming on. You're more than welcome to come back on anytime you want. Oh, thank you so much. Okay. That does it for this episode of superhero cinephiles, a little bit shorter than our usual episodes, but you know, every now and then that's okay. It happens every now and then. And so you guys can
00:50:32
Speaker
Get on with your day. You don't have to listen to me. Too long. Then it's probably it's probably the fact the movie is about 40 minutes shorter than ever. So you probably. Yeah, I think that's a big part of it, too. But anyway, superhero cinephiles.com is the website, Super Cinema Pod on Twitter and Instagram.
00:50:48
Speaker
And remember, if you sign up for our Patreon subscription, even at any level, dollar a month, whatever it is, then you get these episodes a week early, and you also get access to the Superhero Cinephiles Book Club companion podcast, where I, sometimes alone, sometimes with the guests, do cover different comic books and graphic novels and stuff like that. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll talk to you next time.
00:51:15
Speaker
If you enjoy the Superhero Cinephiles, then you'll also love my companion podcast, the Superhero Cinephiles Book Club. All my Patreon subscribers get access to this exclusive podcast where I review superhero comics and graphic novels. Not sure what comics you want to read next or what you should dive into? I've got you covered on that. I'll be doing reviews, recommendations, and also talking to you about useful entry points.
00:51:35
Speaker
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00:52:18
Speaker
Thank you for listening, and as always, good night, good evening, God bless.