Iron Giant: A Failure Turned Masterpiece

hello everyone i'm still slightly sick so uh you're gonna have to deal with me being a little bit nasally throughout this video deal with it quit being a [ __ ] don't complain deal with it so let's talk about iron giant a movie that has solidified itself in the realm of movies that have this deserved way better than it got you know movies like atlantis treasure planet road to eldorado and and i dare to say it is probably one of my favorite movies of all time yeah it's up there now i haven't really watched the iron giant since i was a young whipper snapper but boy did i watch the [ __ ] out of it when i was younger and even adult me being a pure unadulterated sigma male beefcake i almost cried watching it me i know how i'm so strong but today i want to go over this movie and talk about why it did so terrible in the box office and why now it's considered one of the best movies ever at least by me and a decent amount of cult following that it has and something really interesting i found about this movie is it's actually considered one of the worst marketing fiascos in mainstream movie history it's that bad because warner brothers really stalled and skimped on all of the marketing completely when it came to iron giant the film opened at number 9 on the box office which is ridiculous and this was a huge deal for warner brothers because this movie was already receiving really high marks so it's like why would you not put your money into it to push it more but apparently the reason they did this is they lost so much money with their release of quests for camelot i don't know if you guys remember quest for camelot personally i don't think the movie's that bad i thought the movie was kind of funny when i was younger who knows it might be [ __ ] now could be a potential watch later so after iron giant was released and they're like oh [ __ ] this movie's actually good we should probably promote this they ended up putting a lot of marketing money in just the vhs and like the spread of it that way and honestly it didn't really do much for the movie at all even though they pushed it a lot and it's funny because in 2002 they even had a 24 hour airing on cartoon network that's right literally 24 hours of the entire channel was just airing iron giant they did that for two whole days and apparently this 24-hour marathon happened twice they really pushed it but i mean hey it's a good ass movie they had every right to push it but it still wasn't until later that it really became a big hit and there are many reasons why this movie is so highly regarded the story follows a robot giant who falls to earth and after watching a deleted scene from the movie you realize that he was actually sent to the earth to destroy the entire planet or potentially the bump on his head was supposed to be like oh he forgot his purpose of being there and basically just a huge thing of amnesia [Music] what kind of [ __ ] mcdonald's has a message but if you guys have seen the deleted scene there are many different theories about this it could have been the fact that he just wanted to leave the army because you know he just hated killing but the selected scene i'm talking about really explores the idea of the origins of the iron giant this scene depicts the iron giant dreaming while indeed's junkyard and he has a vivid memory of him along with a bunch of other iron giants completely annihilating an alien race which looks something similar to the rumbling in attack on titan which is kind of hilarious could be a little bit of inspiration there this is a terrifying thought like imagine a huge army of these iron giants just wiping out an entire planet a freaking nuke couldn't kill one of them yeah but honestly i'm really glad that they didn't put this deleted scene in the final cut of the movie because without that scene in there it focuses more about what the movie really is about an alien robot meant for mass destruction loses his memory and hogar teaches him that killing and destruction is bad and basically the journey of the giant discovering who he is and becoming himself and in more layman's terms a gun deciding not to be a gun which is a big talking point of the movie i feel like this movie doubles as an anti-war movie and also an anti-gun movie as well you know showing the classic idea of shoot first ask questions later throughout the movie and the setting of this movie is also the age of the atomic bomb but there's a lot of war talk a lot of gun talk in this movie and it's done so freaking well but hey let's go through this movie let's reminisce and remember why this movie is such a masterpiece the movie starts out by showing the russian satellite sputnik introducing us to what kind of movie we're going to be seeing right off the bat because when the satellite was launched everyone in america was kind of you know terrified which gives us a good setup as to why a giant robot would be instantly deemed as a threat you know being in the middle of a war next we see the iron giant fall out of the sky into the ocean where a man is stuck in a storm trying to find land and one thing this movie does a fantastic job of throughout is the idea of scale when the iron giant is on screen you feel the fact that he is enormous every single time so the man ends up smashing into the iron giant freaks out falls off the boat but somehow survives the encounter and we go to the next day i remember this beginning scene was a little bit creepy as a child honestly a lot of scenes were a little bit scary as a child just by how they portrayed the giant but this movie's set in a cute little town called rockwell maine we are introduced to hogarth a curious kid who loves animals and his mother who works at a diner and who is voiced by jennifer aniston and we can already see it they both have a great relationship with each other hogarth brings in a wild squirrel to show his mom and be like hey i want a pet but his mom's like no we've already been over this remember the raccoon remember the raccoon hogarth and then we meet dean who i just want to mention my favorite character in the entire movie and i'm sure a lot of people's favorite character in the entire movie dean's just cool he oozes cool he's the type of dude that would walk up punch jukebox and smooth jazz would play but we overhear an old man in the background talking about how he saw that giant metal man when he was in the ocean and how it destroyed his ship and all that different stuff and obviously no one believes him but dean leans over and says hey i believe him showing instantly what kind of person dean is you know he stands up for the weirdos you know not only that but just meeting hogarth he helps him hide his squirrel from his mom you know until the squirrel climbs into his pants and then he drops massive dong come on come on you're holding out movie you got it you gotta angle the camera the other way so right off the bat we have the introduction of all the main characters and next we get to see a little bit more of hogarth's personality as he is home alone because his mom has to work late and just like what any other kid would do he'd stay up late watch scary movies eat junk food and then when his tv connection goes out he goes to check the antenna and finds that it is completely destroyed along with his fence so instead of being a normal child and staying inside being terrified he gets his bb gun helmet and boots and runs out into the woods to face whatever this is and something interesting i didn't catch is a quick little cut to a comic book they do this a couple times in the movie like show comic books that reference or foreshadow things and this comic book is called the red menace if you guys don't know the red menace is what people call the russians and this is portraying you know that xenophobic nature that the cold war pretty much any war had back then when war was waged in the past both countries made people generalize hatred toward everyone in that country going as far to even teach children in ways like this that russians are the equivalent of a giant evil monster you know fear-mongering everyone into believing that anyone who is russian is a bad person it's just kind of that tactic they use to rally the country behind the war and make them believe that it's for a good cause type dealio which i'm not gonna get into all that i'm not gonna go that deep but you know basically my point is everyone was afraid back then the whole garth with his balls of steel goes out to the woods and discovers the iron giant who walks up to a power plant and starts eating the metal and then gets caught in the cables and starts freaking out and hogarth instead of being completely terrified he sees a giant in pain and goes to save him and i would like to note how interesting it is the iron giant eats it shows that there's a bit of biological nature to him you know he eats he shits why haven't we seen his [ __ ] about this movie i didn't see him [ __ ] why why movie the giant wakes up and hogarth runs away to his mom who is searching for him he tries to tell his mom but apparently you know it's a boy who cried wolf situation he comes up with these stories all the time and hogar's mom's like bruh i don't got time for this [ __ ] shut up so he leaves and sees the giant's head in the distance so we skip forward to class the next day and we get a semi-ironic school video of what to do during an atomic bomb because legitimately back then this was just a normal thing you know just like we do with say like a tornado drill or a fire drill they had atomic bomb drills and it's always interesting to watch these back then because it was always they tell you to hide underneath your desk which if you know a desk ain't really going to protect you from an atomic bomb so they did a little funny spin to it with the video that they showed on this movie which i thought was funny and then we meet one of my other favorite characters in the movie kent mansley an agent set by the american government whose job it is to answer all the weird unexplained calls you know the people want to feel like the government care you know ufos bigfoot giant metal monsters etc and the reason i like his character so much is because of his entire purpose and goal throughout this movie is just to prove to everyone that his job has a purpose because he's kind of the laughingstock of the military and just the government in general no one really takes him seriously so he's literally just a man with nothing to lose which is the most dangerous thing and he could even tell that he's not used to having any action because the moment he sees a huge bite out of his car he starts freaking out and panicking but he does receive a little bit of evidence when he went out to the power plant because he found hogart's broken bb gun but it just says hog hug so he's got to piece that together later on so hogarth being dumb stupid kid he ends up deciding to bait out the iron giant so he can end up getting a picture of it and selling it but since the iron giant is smart he waits until hogarth is asleep to take the medal [Music] want a break from the ad so he starts instantly realizing the giant is not going to hurt him and he's kind of like a little kid in a way the giant has no idea who he is or even how to speak there's a bump on his head that seems to be the reasoning for all this now a lot of people believe it could be for the landing on earth that's how he received that debt in his head but me personally i have a different little theory just because you know he got hit by a nuke and he barely even took any damage i mean sure his body parts flew all around but there was no dents personally i feel like it happened before he fell to earth from some like unknown source maybe he was in a fight with something else but anyway that's just me so we have a fun scene of hogarth trying to teach the giant how to speak then we get to see how strong the giant really is the giant sees the railroad and he starts to eat the railroad because you know but hogar tells him to stop so he tries to put it back but boom train comes in hits him right in the face his body falls apart and this is where we see the iron giant use his reassembly ability i guess which is really cool but also you know terrifying i mean imagine if he wasn't nice that would suck the giant reassembles himself in hogar's barn while kent overhears of the train accident and is told about the giant metal man who ended up running the trains off the track so he goes to the nearest house to call the general and as it just so happens the nearest house is actually hogarth's and this is where we really see how much of a laughing stock ken is and how much he wants to prove himself when he calls the general and the general just does not take him seriously in the slightest but on his way out annie mentions hogar's name and then he leaves and that's where he pieces together the hog hug hogarth hughes and this is where we start seeing the big rivalry between kent and hogarth kent is definitely aware that hogarth knows something but hogarth obviously is not going to tell him because he realizes that you know the countries is going to shoot first and ask questions later so hogarth goes out to the barn and hangs out with the iron giant and mentions his superman comic book and now superman is very very similar to the iron giant you know a crash landed on earth he didn't really know what he was doing but he always uses his powers for good and the iron giant really took a liking to this and he honestly wanted to be like superman and then there's another quick cut comic book scene right here you see hogar set the superman comic book atop another comic book named atama referencing atomic bombs while at the same time showing the iron giant's true nature of being a robot of massive destruction or just a gun and also foreshadowing the internal dilemma that we're going to be facing later on with the giant so after we get a little montage of hogarth running around with the giant and him teaching him stuff and stuff like that they run into a problem the giant needs food so we can poop i want to see the giants poop so we run into our old pal dean from the diner who coincidentally runs a scrap yard so dean lets hogarth in and we find out that dean makes art out of the scrap metal that he gets and also he's kind of a very cool person we then get the scene of hogarth getting cracked out on espresso but eventually dean hears something in the junkyard and then meets the giant and obviously freaks out a little bit and i just want to say i don't know if i mentioned this but the sound design in this movie is so freaking good just the way the giant says dean name is dean we like dean it's just satisfying but dean very very gradually warms up to the idea of the giant robot eating his junk eventually after 37 minutes of begging he even agrees to let him stay in his junkyard free food and he will blend in with the other metal so you know it kind of works out really well so hogarth comes home and surprise surprise there's ken he ended up renting a room that apparently his mom has been trying to rent out for extra money for a while we get a little montage of kent chasing around hogarth asking him a billion questions and while at the same time dean trying to deal with the iron giant at his junkyard but the way hogarth was able to finally get kent off of his trail was actually breaking up a little bit of a chocolate bar on top of his ice cream which was actually just laxatives so after kent starts losing his patience with hogarth starts yelling at him in the middle of the diner explaining to him that he needs to tell him where the giant is because it's national security he's greeted with poopoo time so hogarth escapes but kent goes around searching for more evidence and hogarth indeed we're just out hanging with the giant you know getting to know him better teaching them more stuff and eventually kent finds hogarth's camera which is very bad because on that camera was a picture of hogarth with the giant and this is very bad because this means the general might actually believe him and then we get the next scene which is an extremely important scene while at the same time being an extremely sad scene this is where hogarth teaches the iron giant morality he sees a deer in the woods and the deer runs away and then he hears a gunshot so the giant witnesses death for the first time which honestly confuses him i mean the giant has no idea what's going on and honestly a giant like him he probably doesn't understand death and not only is he taught what death is he's also taught what a gun is and we even see the giant's instincts kick in when he looks at the gun and his eyes start you know turning into that little red scary atomo type stuff so with the giant upset hogarth explains to him that you know it's bad to kill people but it's not bad to die and also the idea that souls don't die and he makes a giant feel better by saying even the giant has a soul because he could think he could talk and he's also a good person and this is where the deleted dream scene would come in but personally again i think the movie just works a little bit better without it but i could completely see why it would be put in right here it's like the perfect moment and just saying i highly recommend going to watch the full deleted scene yourselves on youtube it actually is really interesting to watch but anyway moving on to ken he starts getting more and more unhinged who would have thought to the point where he literally says he's gonna take hogarth away from his mother and he says well yeah we could do that you know we're the government we could do whatever the hell we want so eventually hogarth caves in and tells them where the iron giant is and that is extremely bad because that means kent has enough information to tell the general to get some troops down here to kill off the iron giant i mean obviously they don't realize what they're dealing with but you know and then we get the stare down scene of kent and hogarth where kent stays up to make sure hogarth does not go to save his little iron giant but hogarth pretty slick was actually able to sneak out under his nose without him realizing and went to warren dean in the iron giant so the army heads out to the junkyard to find the giant the iron giant piece of art completely fooling the entire armory to believe that it was just a piece of junk and not a real monster and not only that but we get a little bit of annie and dean love interest happening where she was complimenting his work i'm down with that and we see ken getting yelled at by the general which is um it's delicious i love it it's satisfying and as things were looking up and perfect we get the worst thing possible to happen as hogarth starts shooting a fake gun at the iron giant the iron giant's instincts instantly kick in and he shoots a death laser out of his eyeballs and this is bad because this was by instinct and not by his own conscious decision dean sees this and tells the giant that he needs to leave and the giant realizing that he almost killed hogarth he starts panicking and running away but dean ends up noticing that the actual reason for him attacking was the fact that he was doing it in self-defense not because he was trying to kill hogarth and as the giant was walking away he overhears two kids fall off a building and hanging on for dear life so he runs into the middle of rockwell the town in order to save the kids which shows everyone in the town that the giant's actually harmless and he's not going to hurt anyone but the same cannot be said for kent obviously and the army when he sees a giant standing in the middle of the town and they all turn around to go and attack him so hogarth ends up catching up to the iron giant in the middle of the town and the giant says that he's not a gun and he's not going to harm anyone going against his nature literally as a gun so the army doing their classic shoot first ask questions later tactic just starts opening fire in the middle of the small town and attacks the giant so the giant holding hogarth starts freaking out not wanting hogarth to get hurt so he takes him and he runs away and this is where we see kent becoming extremely unhinged so dean tells kent that the giant only reacts defensively and if you don't attack him he will not attack you and also that he has hogarth and instead of telling the general those things he says that he killed the kid and that we need to destroy it kent is literally just the worst person so they move to code red which entails the air force and the navy basically a full onslaught attack of the giant oh yeah also the giant can fly which when i was a kid this scene was pretty goddamn cool for me i'm not gonna lie you know calling back to when the giant was saying he wanted to be like superman turns out he could end up flying just like him pretty cool but he ends up getting shot out of the air and crash lands and this is where [ __ ] hits the fan the giant sees hogarth and he looks completely lifeless and then he gets sad and then completely enraged when they start shooting at him so the dent in his head disappears and then he becomes what he originally was made to be a gigantic gun and i just want to say his like robot death beam it's cool as hell i'm just gonna say it's cool it's like one of the coolest designs of a death robot i've seen not only that but the sound effects and everything it's so it's so cool i love it [Music] but anyway with the robot being completely unstoppable kent of course comes up with the dumb idea to drop a nuke on the town okay okay well he says we're gonna lure it away from the town then drop the nuke but i mean it doesn't really matter like you're how you gotta get pretty far for the nuke to not destroy the town and right when the giant was about to completely annihilate every warship that was in the ocean hogarth stops him god damn it this movie had some good ass cool sound effects cool stuff guts cool [Music] and as we see the iron giant come to its senses you could even tell he's like panicked and freaking out you know not realizing what he just did and then we get kent basically just ruining everything once again dean is reasoning with the general telling him the actual truth that he's not going to hurt anybody unless he gets attacked and also that hogarth is still alive and then the general sees that hogarth is still alive and that the giant is not attacking anyone so he's like ken you're stupid what are you talking about and right when he's about to tell him to not shoot the missile kent out of spite after the iron giant gives him a little sny look he grabs a radio and tells him to shoot the missile and guess what the robot is right in the middle of town and the missile is coming to the robot so kent basically killed everyone this scene hits so hard every freaking time like just seeing your death go up into the sky and hearing that alarm go off as everyone realizes their fate and then you see the iron giant do a call back to the beginning of the movie where hogar told him i go you stay and the iron giant told him i go you stay because he's gonna go up to the bomb and destroy himself to save everyone oh it's ah so hogarth explains to the iron giant that when that bomb comes down everyone in the town is going to die which prompts the giant to fly up into the sky to sacrifice himself with his last words being superman where he's fulfilling his idea that he wanted to be like superman goddammit this movie's so good so everyone in the town survives obviously kent is going to get fired and probably sent to prison but they made an iron giant memorial for the town because he literally saved everyone there and then the end of the movie is the best part the general sent hogarth a piece of the iron giant because it's the only piece they recovered which was the exact same screw from earlier on in the movie and then at the end of the movie he sees that the screw is actually going towards the window saying he wants the window open showing that the iron giant is doing his reassembly thing again so the iron giant survives and that's how the movie ends this movie's so so freaking good so thank you so much everyone for watching this video uh my voice is starting to go a little bit at the end of this video i'm sorry about that but man this movie is so freaking good it touches on so many important topics just morality human nature anti-war anti-gun like all these different things and it's just fits so well in a nice package if you haven't seen this movie i highly recommend going to watch it uh if you have seen this movie go watch it again okay it's that good of a movie so if you like this video please make sure to subscribe and like the video and stuff uh hopefully my voice will do a little bit better next video see you next time

Channel: BionicPIG

Views: 365,869

Keywords: Bionicpig, Iron Giant, the iron giant, iron giant, the iron giant full movie, the iron giant clip, the iron giant part 1, the iron giant movie, the iron giant review, giant, iron, iron giant review, the iron giant trailer, iron giant video essay, the iron giant signature edition, iron giant 2, the iron giant (award-winning work), iron giant vs, iron giant 1999, the iron giant vs, iron giant movie, eww the iron giant, hulk vs iron giant

Id: YT9PGNSTrYI

Length: 22min 39sec (1359 seconds)

Published: Tue May 17 2022