Cartoon: "The Iron Giant" (1999).
In 1957, with Sputnik in orbit and America in a panic over the communist threat,
youngster Hogarth Hughes (voiced by Eli Marienthal) stumbles over a newly-arrived
visitor from space - a towering robot with a dented dome that has given it
amnesia. After rescuing the wonderful being from electrocution at a power plant,
Hogarth hides it in a junkyard run by sculptor Dean McCoppin (Harry Connick Jr.) while
paranoid government agent Kent Mansley (Christopher McDonald) searches for the
creature that has been taking sizeable bites out of cars and other metal structures.
Realising that it has been constructed as a weapon, the giant decides that it doesn't
want to be a gun, but when Kent calls in the army and even summons a nuclear strike,
defence mechanisms switch on and a tragic outcome looks likely.
After the scrappy, opportunistic Space Jam, this second fully-animated feature
from Warner Bros is a delightful surprise. Based on a children's story (The Iron Man)
by the late Ted Hughes, this plays an interesting riff on the magical friend theme so common
in American film and deserves points for its unfashionable commitment to pacifism. For a cartoon,
it boasts a very sophisticated depiction of the 1950s - a glimpse of a "duck and cover" atomic instruction
survival film in school, a warmly affectionate depiction of the espresso-chugging hipster Dean and his abstract sculpture projects,
and Kent's right-wing nutcase militarism. After so many Japanese cartoons in which robot warriors blast anything that moves while their young pals cheer them on,
it's refreshing that this hinges on the wish of the giant not to be a weapon.
Of course, the big attraction is the iron giant itself. At one stage, it
transforms into a scary alien being with War of the Worlds heat-rays
and impressive zapping capability, but it is mostly a lovably old-fashioned,
clanking robot with a big chin and the square shoulders of a 1950s
refrigerator. Animation auteur Brad Bird (the director), a veteran of The
Simpsons and King of The Hill, makes this a fully-realised
character which should delight any kid. Perhaps because it has a certain
subversive tone, this was overlooked in America; it deserves a bigger audience
overseas, where its message as much as its charm will most likely be far
better received.
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