"The Iron Giant" 25th Anniversary Retrospective: Why Being Wrong is A Beautiful Thing

We all missed the mark on Warner Bros.' modern classic - in some ways, it's better that way.

December 31, 2024

In 1919, angered by their owner Charlie Comiskey’s unjust treatment, the Chicago White Sox conspired with gamblers to throw that year’s World Series. Chick Gandil, Eddie Cicotte, Claude “Lefty” Williams, Fred McMullin, Swede Risberg, Buck Weaver, and “Shoeless” Joe Jackson played poorly to lose the series and net a profit. Although there was a last-second change of heart, a threat against Williams’ wife the night before Game 8 forced the pitcher’s hand, and he re-committed to the cause, surrendering four runs in the opening frame and the series along with it.

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It’s been over a century since the scandal rocked the baseball world, and the narrative is that the White Sox, who had won the World Series only two years prior, would have swiftly dispatched the upstart Reds had they played on the level. Such assertions were inevitable: the scandal is a story first and foremost, and all stories have narratives surrounding them designed to elicit a specific response from the audience. If the team that threw the series was indubitably superior, their decision has legitimate repercussions.

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In reality, we don't know which team would have won. The Reds had the better record (96-64) and performed better against teams over .500, but the White Sox, playing in the American League, faced more 80-win teams in battling for the pennant; the Reds only faced one. On the other hand, Cincinnati proved so dominant in the NL that some teams stopped playing the 154-game schedule altogether, accounting for the league standings.

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The White Sox had a vaunted rotation, but the Reds were statistically the far superior pitching team on paper, finishing with the better staff ERA, ERA+, WHIP, and WAR. The Sox, for their part, were statistically better than the Reds offensively, finishing with a far better team slash line, scoring more runs, and amassing more total bases. Also, they had World Series experience.

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Ultimately, we can't know what would’ve happened in a legitimate contest; the critical thing to note is how easily truth gets distorted by perception and how the better story can get lost in our desire to create the most palatable, dramatic narrative.

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Cut to The Iron Giant, Warner Bros.’ 1999 animated superhero buddy film. After the disastrous marketing campaign and box office return for the studio’s previous venture, Quest for Camelot, they were reluctant to back another animated picture. Why? Who knows? It could be the impending release of Wild Wild West, which sought to capitalize on established IP and Will Smith’s newfound box office superstardom. It could have been a lack of faith in a traditionally animated movie during their rival Disney’s Renaissance, especially since Quest lost Warner Bros. $40 million.

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The narrative in the subsequent 25 years has been as follows: Warner Bros. didn’t realize what they had. The Iron Giant, drawing raves during test screenings and having received interest from fast food titan Burger King, was a box office dynamo waiting to explode, and its cult classic status is indicative of a megahit the inept studio executives let slip through their fingers.

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However, nothing indicates that The Iron Giant would’ve impacted audiences. Test screening narratives are always fun to bat around retrospectively - from Kevin Costner’s penis getting left on For Love of the Game's cutting room floor to audiences storming out of Goodfellas for its excessive violence - but initial screenings don’t necessarily reflect a film’sprospects and are better for retroactive narratives. After all, Goodfellas was critically acclaimed upon release, made nearly double its budget, and is widely considered Martin Scorsese’s best film.

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The '90s were the decade of Disney, whose animated productions earned $3 billion at the global box office and 9 Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture for Beauty and the Beast, the first time an animated movie got nominated for the industry’s top honor. In 1995, Pixar blazed onto the scene with Toy Story, permanently altering the animated landscape. The 11 highest-grossing animated movies of the decade came from one of those two studios: the likelihood that a Warner Bros. production, which Quest showed could not be trusted and got marketed poorly even with the studio’s full backing, one that had no connection to an existing IP and got released in the notorious “dump month” of August, is slim.

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Truthfully, despite the accepted narrative, The Iron Giant was always likely to bomb at the box office, and our claims, otherwise unsupported by facts like contemporary industry and audience trends, detract from the movie’s magic.

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See, humans hate being wrong. As such, we don’t like admitting we’re wrong, acknowledging there’s even the remotest possibility we were wrong, or even copping to wrongs on our deathbed when there’s zero consequence to coming clean. So, we like to displace blame onto others so they can be wrong.

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“Oh no, I knew The Iron Giant was amazing at the time, but those pesky studio heads screwed the pooch.”

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Sure, this is true for some, but we have mouths, and word-of-mouth, while not the preferred method of putting butts in seats, has helped seemingly doomed movies before. Titanic was a notoriously troubled production that everyone predicted would sink Paramount and 20th Century Fox. Yet, positive word-of-mouth helped it shatter every box office record in the known universe.

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Would The Iron Giant have made $1.843 billion at the box office? No, but it wasn’t just the studio heads that were wrong: we (minus the test audiences, to be fair) were too, and spending the last 25 years compensating for that to exalt a brilliant movie is a fantastic story, one that parallels the beauty of the film itself.

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It’s 1957 in Rockville, a small coastal town in Maine. The Soviets have launched Sputnik, the world’s first satellite, commencing the Space Race. One night, 9-year-old Hogarth Hughes investigates a mysterious crash near his home and finds a 50-ft. tall Iron Giant. Initially alarmed, Hogarth quickly realizes that a bump on the Giant’s head has reverted him to a childlike state, and the two bond as Hogarth shows the Giant his new home while a government agent is hot on the duo’s trail.

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Ordinarily, this is when a critic launches into a soliloquy, cracking open their handy thesaurus to meet the word limit by dissecting themes, analyzing shots, etc. Thankfully, The Iron Giant is a simple movie done excellently. Akin to a classic, beloved dish executed to nostalgic perfection, it requires little fanfare to explain its greatness, one of those movies that almost renders words unnecessary.

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Is the bond between Hogarth and the friendly metal giant profoundly moving? Perhaps not when compared to the connection between Woody and Andy from Toy Story or Boo and Sully from Monsters Inc., but the Giant’s impeccable design, able to convey visceral emotion with subtle visual expression, expertly relays its charming innocence and the growing bond with a child who needs a friend.

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Is the primary narrative where an alien (not confirmed, but the most likely scenario) comes to Earth and befriends a fatherless boy while getting tracked down by the government original? No, it’s the animated E.T. But within its refusal to feign being something that it’s not, embracing its familiarity and finding angles within it, it becomes something entirely its own. After all, classics are classics for a reason, and there are few easier ways to impart the importance of compassion, understanding, and embracing differences than a literal extraterrestrial creature on our planet. The Giant’s expertly animated countenance allows younger viewers to relate to it foundationally, where feeling and action are more important than words. If ever there was a film to teach a child that talk is cheap and the road to heaven gets paved with good deeds, this one is it.

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Is the animation breathtaking? If placed against its groundbreaking or long-established contemporaries, no, but taken for what it is, there’s undeniable magic. Not only is the autumn color palette manipulated beautifully, creating a distinct aesthetic that effectively characterizes the town of Rockville and each specific setting within it, but the minor details are also vivid. Who isn’t wondering, 25 years on, what that ice cream in the diner tastes like? Who isn’t just as drawn to the Giant in that infamous car scene as the vehicle itself? Who isn’t salivating at the thought of a Cosmo burger just from that blue billboard? Who isn’t still awed by each mechanism of the Giant’s extensive arsenal?

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One could wax poetic about all the ways that The Iron Giant soars as an animated classic, but it’s straightforward: it’s a fun movie with loveable characters, astonishing visuals, a moving story, and a fantastic ending. We see a lot of movies that experiment with visual gimmicks or auditory tricks to feign quality or meaning they don't possess, and sure, animated movies are usually for kids and don’t venture down the path of films like The Zone of Interest, but that doesn’t detract from how a beloved film found its legacy in mastering the simple things. Perhaps it doesn’t quite pop in the same way as animated flicks of its day, like the first two Toy Story movies. Maybe its central themes don’t resonate as much as Finding Nemo's. Arguably, its central bond isn’t as tangible as the one in Monsters Inc.

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Alas, as the saying goes, comparison is the thief of joy, and there’s too much joy in The Iron Giant to nitpick the particulars. Oddly enough, much of that joy stems from the story behind it. Yes, the studio didn’t market it well (or at all), but if comparison is the thief of joy, then accountability is its delivery man. Difficult as it may be, the more we are honest with ourselves, the more introspective we are, the more fulfilled our lives become.

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We were wrong. It wasn’t just the studios, but us too, and we shouldn’t do to The Iron Giant what we’ve spent 105 years doing to the 1919 White Sox.

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We could’ve spread the word. We could’ve gotten the ball rolling, but we didn’t because we also didn’t understand the gem we had before us. But once we did, we committed ourselves to giving The Iron Giant its due, and have managed to do what we failed to do 25 years ago: make a bonafide classic a beloved film for all.