The Iron Giant: Death and Free Will
Written by Alexandra Castillo
This post contains discussions of freewill and death. And also spoilers!
“IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE!”
So exclaims a film poster for the 1999 animated film, The Iron Giant. This film was Brad Bird's directorial debut; you may recognize him as the director of The Incredibles (2004), and Ratatouille (2007). For me, The Iron Giant is my favorite of his films. I would go as far to argue The Iron Giant is one of the most beautiful stories put to film, period.
On my most recent rewatch, I cried thrice. In spite of knowing what’s to happen and that it is a happy ending, it still gets to me. How does The Iron Giant do this?
Hogarth Hughes is our point of view character. He’s a young boy living in a small Maine town in the year 1957. Paranoia over foreign forces and nuclear war looms. However, Hogarth is concerned with convincing his mother to allow him to adopt a wild squirrel as a pet. Through this act, we see he is immature. What young boy isn’t? But also, we learn he has a big heart; he would love to care for the squirrel.
That night, Hogarth is home alone while his mother works a late shift. Hogarth stays up to watch a pulpy sci-fi horror film. However, he’s interrupted when his Tv goes staticy. Upon investigating, Hogarth discovers the antenna is gone and there are tracks. Following the tracks leads Hogarth into the Giant, a massive robot who eats metal. In attempting to consume the metal from an electric substation, he electrocutes himself. Hogarth saves the Giant by shutting off the plant.
The next day, a government agent is called into town to investigate the matter. He’s Kent Mansley, and at first he doesn’t take the idea of an alleged metal man seriously. However, the Giant eats his car which sparks Mansley’s fear. This causes him to become obsessed with locating the Giant and destroying it. In wanting to act without further understanding his alleged enemy, he perfectly embodies the American anxieties during the Cold War.
At the same time, Hogarth befriends the Giant, and teaches him to understand speech.
That night, Hogarth and Mansley meet when the latter is looking for a telephone to call his boss, the General, in Washington D.C. Mansley wants him to bring in the army to combat the Giant. Hogarth manages to hide the Giant in the barn outside his house behind Mansley’s back.
Hogarth teaches the Giant about Superman. He tells the Giant that he is similar to the man of steel. Pun intended. He says “He started off just like you. Crash landed on Earth, didn’t know what he was doing. But he only uses his powers for good. Never for evil.”
Traditionally, Superman protects the innocent because he believes that having that much power gives him a moral obligation to help others. In his civilian life, he became a reporter because he felt that career choice would also allow him to help people. Like the Giant, Superman is also an immigrant from a distant world. A refugee. If Superman was real and came to America during the Cold War, he would be looked at with extreme suspicion.
The Cold War was an era of scapegoats. People were afraid that anyone could be a Russian spy, and they often overreacted to minorities and outsiders whenever they tried to rock the boat and fight for equal rights. Hogarth is hiding the Giant for a similar reason, to prevent people from wigging out.
In his design, the Giant looks like a classic 1950s sci-fi horror robot. Think Forbidden Planet (Dir. Fred M. Wilcox, 1956). Fun fact, this movie is actually referenced through a poster in Hogarth’s room. On paper, the Giant would be the perfect monster for the era. An outsider with advanced abilities of destruction. However, learning about Superman inspires the Giant to be something different.
Hogarth takes the Giant to a scrap yard to get him metal to eat. However, they discover the yard is owned by a beatnik named Dean. He is terrified by the sight of the robot. However, Hogarth convinces Dean to let the Giant stay.
In the morning, Hogarth discovers his mother is renting a room in their house out to Mansley. He is aware of Hogarth’s encounter with the Giant and spends hours trying to get information out of Hogarth. The latter uses his quick wit and slips a laxative into Mansley’s milkshake in order to see the Giant. The two of them play, sementing their friendship. Dean is there to supervise. It’s a grand old time.
Meanwhile, Mansley finds a camera in the woods left behind by Hogarth. Upon developing the prints, he discovers a shot of Hogarth with the Giant. This is all the evidence he needs to call in the military.
At the same time, Hogarth and the Giant happen upon a deer in the forest. The Giant is excited, but the mood abruptly shifts when two hunters kill the deer. Here, the Giant learns about what death is. Hogarth tells him that while all living creatures die, they also all have souls. Hogarth tells the Giant he has a soul as well, by the virtue of being able to experience emotion and thought. And souls never die.
We often forget that death is a part of all our lives. It’s inherently frightening, because we don’t know what it entails. It limits our free will by limiting the amount of decisions we can make. Yet, if souls never live forever then we will never truly die. When I initially wrote that sentence, it made me tear up. While Hogarth says it to cheer up the Giant, you get the feeling he truly believes it. Just like the Superman chat, the Giant takes this conversation to heart.
Hogarth is a good influence on the Giant. While he is mischievous, he also has a big heart. Through his kindness and playful nature, he teaches the Giant, who initially knows nothing about the world, to behave with goodness and bravery. We will see the culmination of this at the end of the film.
Afterwards, Mansley interrogates Hogarth and gets the location of the Giant out of him. Hogarth has to wait for him to fall asleep to warn Dean. They have the Giant pretend to be an art sculpture to fool the military. The general threatens to fire Mansley, and they all leave.
To celebrate their victory, Hogarth and the Giant play pretend. But blasting the Giant with a toy gun activates a defensive mechanism in his programming. He attacks, nearly killing Hogarth by accident. Dean shouts at the Giant to leave, but he immediately discovers that the gun activated the response.
Out of guilt, the Giant runs away and near the city. He sees that two children are about to fall off a building, so he acts quickly and saves them. The Giant is acting like Superman. The military catches wind of this and goes into the city. They arrive at the same time as Dean and Hogarth.
This is when the Giant declares,
“I am not a gun.”
When he saw the deer with Hogarth, the latter explained that guns are weapons that kill. The Giant, here, is declaring he is not someone who kills or does damage. He is declaring he is a hero, like Superman. In this assertion of his identity, the Giant rejects violence and uses his powers for aggression.
In a deleted scene featured in the Signature Edition release, we get to see the Giant’s old life through a dream he experiences. We learn he was a part of an army of robots like him who used their abilities to destroy other planets. However, the Giant is rejecting this identity. He is not going to be like a classic 1950’s sci-fi horror robot. He’s not going to be a Cold War enemy. No. He will be like Superman.
However, when the military attacks him, Hogarth is knocked unconscious. The Giant believes that his friend has been killed; this triggers his destructive programming to override his judgment. The Giant fights back, and the military becomes desperate to defeat him. This is when Hogarth returns. The Giant’s programming is still in effect, and he gets ready to attack his friend. Hogarth manages to get through to him by telling him, “You don’t have to be a gun. You are who you choose to be.”
This snaps the Giant out of his state. Even though he was created with the intention of destruction, the Giant rebels against his programming. The Giant realizes he can be who he wants and not what people like Mansley expect him to be. Throughout his time with Hogarth, he came to value life. So here, he decides that protecting life will be his purpose.
Mansley, acting out of fear, orders a nearby nuclear powered submarine to launch a nuke onto the Giant and destroy it. As the Giant is in the city, it will kill everyone there.
Mansley’s act seems irrational and stupid, and that’s because it is. Again, he is embodying Cold War era fear mongering. While the Giant was designed to be a weapon and chooses to be a hero, Mansley is a government agent who is supposed to serve the people. However, he acts based on his own fears and anxieties. He believes the Giant should be destroyed on the principle that he wasn’t built by the U.S. He also attempts to drive away from impending nuclear destruction, proclaiming “Screw our country! I wanna live!” So in the end, it wasn’t about protecting the country; it was about himself. The Giant crashes his car to prevent him from driving off.
Realizing what he can do to save the town, the Giant chooses to sacrifice himself by colliding with the missile before it crashes into the town. He shares a final goodbye with Hogarth, and he flies up towards the missile. His arms are forward like Superman. In these moments, Hogarth’s words “You are who you choose to be,” echo in his head. The missile collides with him in an explosion. His final word before the act is “Superman,” and he says it with a smile.
Although the ending of the film reveals the Giant survived the explosion, crash landed in Iceland, and is slowly rebuilding himself, this scene still makes me emotional. The way the music swells. The way he accepts what he perceives will be his demise. Everything comes together to create such a beautiful and heartbreaking moment.
It’s the perfect culmination of the Giant’s journey. Everything Hogarth teaches him led up to this. Learning about Superman, souls, and choosing to be who you want. This is the Giant exercising free will. You wouldn’t expect a robot with destructive programming to have any, but our Giant does. We watch him grow, beyond fearing death, because he believes he has a soul and souls never die. We watch him choose to be a hero. He is not the weapon his programming dictates. He is not the danger people like Mansley believe him to be. No. He is like Superman. Most importantly, we watch the Giant choose. The final decision was his alone.
That was The Iron Giant. What are your thoughts on the film? Did you watch it as a child? Did it make you cry too? What do you think of the beautiful autumn backgrounds? How do you feel that the combination of traditionally animated characters and the CGI animated Giant holds up?
Don’t wig out; this is where this blogpost ends! Thanks for reading folks!