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The Impact of ‘Iron Giant’: An Animated Film Classic
It’s been 25 years since The Iron Giant animated classic film premiered in theatres on August 6, 1999, with a stellar voiceover cast including Eli Marienthal, Vin Diesel, Jennifer Aniston, and Harry Connick Jr.
The acclaimed movie, directed by Brad Bird, is based on a novel of the same name by Ted Hughes, who bears the same name as the characters Annie and Hogarth Hughes.
Hughes penned the novel as a way of comforting his children after the suicide of their mother, Sylvia Plath.
As journalist Cameron Gorman once observed about the film on Collider.com, “This tale of grief, responsibility, and autonomy is a powerful one, no matter how old you are — and its history proves that the story was always meant to transcend age. Though the film initially failed financially, it quickly became one of Western animation’s most beloved and culturally critical classics — as well as one of its most sensitive on the topic of grief.”
Bird’s Eye Perspective
Brad Bird was in part inspired to make the movie as a memorial to his sister Susan, who died at the hands of her estranged husband by gun violence. His pitch was this: “What if a gun had a soul and didn’t want to be a gun?”
