Studio: Warner Bros. Feature Animation
Distributor: Warner Bros.
Short Synopsis
In 1957, just after the launch of Sputnik, a giant metal robot falls from space into the sea off Rockwell, Maine. Hogarth Hughes, a boy who lives with his widowed mother, a waitress, finds it tangled in the power lines of an electrical substation, eating metal, and saves it. The Giant, damaged and with no memory, becomes Hogarth's friend; Hogarth teaches it words and hides it at the scrapyard of a beatnik artist, Dean, who reluctantly helps. Hogarth also teaches it that guns kill and that it can choose who it wants to be, showing it Superman comics. A paranoid government agent, Kent Mansley, is convinced the Giant is a Soviet weapon and tracks it down. When the army attacks, the Giant's hidden defensive systems take over and it fights back with terrifying weapons, until Hogarth reminds it that it doesn't have to be a gun. Mansley, in a panic, orders a nuclear missile launched at the Giant, which will also destroy the town. The Giant flies up to meet the missile and destroys it, sacrificing itself, saying "Superman". Later, Hogarth receives a single bolt, and in Iceland the pieces of the Giant begin to reassemble.
Why It Matters
- The Giant's choice, "I am not a gun", and its flight into the missile give the film one of the most moving climaxes in animation, and Brad Bird's staging, combining hand-drawn characters with a computer-animated Giant, captures the paranoia of Cold War America with humour and real emotion.
- Warner Bros. marketed it poorly and it was a box-office failure, but it became one of the most admired animated films of the 1990s through video and television, and launched Brad Bird's career; he went on to direct The Incredibles and Ratatouille at Pixar.
Notes and Trivia
- Vin Diesel voices the Giant, almost entirely in single words.
- It is loosely based on Ted Hughes's 1968 children's book The Iron Man.
- See also: Toy Story (1995), Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993).