Ever wondered where Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn got the gumption to voice-cast Vin Diesel as a space-beast whose body contains surprise weapons, an unexpectedly potent soul, and a propensity to make the ultimate sacrifice to save his friends?
Then look no further than Diesel's emotional titular performance in The Iron Giant - an animated spectacular that, if it didn't set the template for tender tree Groot, we'll eat our machine-gunning raccoon. And, with helmer Brad Bird's science-fiction epic Tomorrowland firing into cinemas on May 22, there's no better time to search it out.
But, frankly, you shouldn't need an excuse. The Iron Giant is the greatest Pixar movie the studio never made, a vivid combination of genuinely funny comedy, wonderfully observed characters, and rich attention to detail. Oh, and it's got so much heart it'd make a Terminator cry.
Released in 1999 by Warner Brothers, it's rarely mentioned in the same breath as the other masterpieces of that year (Magnolia, The Matrix, Fight Club, American Beauty, Three Kings...) but it deserves to stand silver shoulder to shoulder with the best of them.
The plot is essentially ET meets T2 - a young boy named Hogarth Hughes (named in tribute to poet Ted Hughes on whose work - The Iron Man - the film is loosely based) finds a giant robot from space, and decides to help it hide from an obsessed government agent who's determined to track it down and destroy it; with the boy and 'bot forming a firm friendship in the process. It's a relatively familiar pitch, but it's the way it's delivered that makes the film so magical.
That magic can be traced directly to Brad Bird. The director's biggest credit before Iron Giant was The Simpsons, and you can see that pedigree here. But not the modern-era of Fox's long-running animated series, we're talking early Simpsons, the Simpsons that used animation as a mirror to reflect the struggles of working-class families, angled to capture the perspective of underachieving kids. But, you know, with jokes, and fun.
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The '50s setting of Giant, with its space-race mania and red menace paranoia, is ripe for parody - but Bird keeps it relatively straight. The costumes, production, and character design have beautiful period detail - with even static backgrounds used in a variety of different ways, whether it's to provide subtle foreshadowing (keep an eye on the pin-up girls beatnik Dean has on his wall, and how they reflect who he eventually ends up with) or to just generally enrich characters.
And what rich characters they are. You connect with Hogarth and his single mum (voiced by an arguably never better Jennifer Aniston) on a pretty deep level before Hogarth's even had a chance to first meet his metal mate. Actually, speaking of that meeting scene, it's a microcosm of a lot of what's fantastic about the film, reflecting Bird's Simpsons' training in the process.
We join Hogarth alone in the house, after his mum is forced to work late in her waitress job, something that clearly occurs often. She's ordered him to be in bed early, but instead he's staying up late to watch a b-movie on TV (this is the closest the film comes to parody, but it's so wonderful - the film's about killer brains, and it's almost certainly homaging classic horror flick Fiend Without a Face - we're happy to forgive it) but when the TV signal is affected by a mysterious force, Hogarth - scared, but determined - grabs his torch to investigate, before following tracks into the woods...
We'll leave the description there, but already, in a relatively short scene, Bird has told us everything we need to know about the world we're in, and the character we're following. Hogarth is lonely, but independent. He doesn't follow rules, he's got a vivid imagination, and he's fascinated by the science-fiction creatures that were a huge part of '50s pop culture.
The scene delivers emotion, tension and - importantly - laughs (the actors in the b-movie are stilted, the dialogue's terrible and if the characters were yellow instead of black and white it'd be the sort of thing Bart Simpson would channel-hop before Itchy & Scratchy).
So, The Iron Giant contains elements of Bird's past, but also his future. It has the emotional depth/grown-up appeal of the best from the studio he'd go on to join, Pixar, as well as one of the nastiest undercover agents ever portrayed on film (seriously, there's a terrifying interrogation scene that makes Bird's excellent Mission: Impossible movie Ghost Protocol look like a kid-flick).
But, perhaps most significantly for the immediate future, it's a science-fiction flick that's beautifully shot and infused with wonder - as well as being packed (especially during the fairly shocking third act) with danger, terror and intense incidents. All of which bodes very well for Tomorrowland.
It bombed at the box office, but found new life on its home entertainment release (which makes it all the more surprising that it hasn't hit Blu-ray yet). If you haven't seen it, you're in for a huge treat. It's a film about the politics of fear, the madness of war, and the importance of friendship. These are all big themes, themes that only become more relevant as the years pass. Like Vin Diesel once said, we are Groot. But we're also The Iron Giant.
Freelancer writer
Sam is an entertainment writer with NCTJ accreditation and a twenty-year career as a film journalist.
Starting out as a staff writer at Total Film, moving up to Deputy Online Editor, Sam was responsible for Total Film’s YouTube channel, where he revolutionised the magazine’s approach to video junkets, creating influential formats that spread to other outlets.
He’s interviewed a wide range of film icons, including directors such as David Lynch, Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, Sofia Coppola, Ridley Scott, Michael Bay and Sam Raimi, as well as actors such as Meryl Streep, Nic Cage, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Anne Hathaway, Margot Robbie, Natalie Portman, Kermit the Frog, all of the Avengers and many more.
Sam has also interviewed several comic creators, including Stan Lee, Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, and he has a zombie cameo in The Walking Dead comic.
In 2014, Sam went freelance, working directly for film studios including Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox and Disney, as well as covering red carpet events for film marketing company PMA Productions.
Sam is the co-host, producer and editor of the Arrow Video podcast, which has seen year-on-year growth since its creation in 2017, gaining over half a million listens in that time.
His byline has appeared in outlets such as Yahoo, MTV, Dazed, Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, Elle, and Good Housekeeping among others.
In 2012, Sam made it to the final of the Leicester Square Theatre New Comedian of the Year competition, and went on to become a filmmaker himself, directing three features that have all played major festivals, and secured distribution – starring in two of them.
Jim Carrey once mistook Sam for Johnny Cash, and John Carpenter told him to ‘Keep up the good work.’ He promises to try his best.
