Ani­ma­tion as an art form essen­tial­ly got under­way with the advent of cel­lu­loid film in 1888. Sev­er­al dif­fer­ent ani­ma­tion tech­niques were devel­oped over the ensu­ing decades includ­ing stop-motion with objects, pup­pets, clay or cut-out fig­ures, and hand-drawn or paint­ed ani­ma­tion, the lat­ter becom­ing the dom­i­nant tech­nique of the 20th cen­tu­ry. Today of course, tra­di­tion­al ani­ma­tion has been com­plete­ly usurped by com­put­er ani­ma­tion, with the trend begin­ning with 1990’s The Res­cuers Down Under, the first film to be made with a com­put­er and no cam­era. Today’s blog sub­ject, direc­tor Brad Bird’s 1999 debut film The Iron Giant, was a hybrid of tra­di­tion­al and dig­i­tal and was a fit­ting­ly fin de siè­cle mark­er of that tran­si­tion to full-on dig­i­tal-only in the ear­ly 2000s.

The film was loose­ly based on the 1968 sci­ence fic­tion nov­el The Iron Man by future Poet Lau­re­ate Ted Hugh­es, with screen­play by Tim McCan­lies and Brad Bird. The film stars the voic­es of Jen­nifer Anis­ton, Har­ry Con­nick Jr, and Christo­pher McDon­ald, with Vin Diesel pro­vid­ing the deep metal­lic grunts of the Iron Giant him­self. Set in 1957, slap bang in the mid­dle of the peri­od of Cold War para­noia in the US, the film revolves around a young boy named Hog­a­rth Hugh­es, who dis­cov­ers and befriends a giant alien robot who has crash-land­ed from space and recent­ly arrived in the for­est near Hogarth’s house in Rock­well, Maine.

When rumours of the dis­cov­ery reach the ears of fed­er­al agent Kent Mans­ley (McDon­ald), a train of events is set in play which will even­tu­al­ly bring the might of the US Army to bear on this mis­un­der­stood alien threat. Hog­a­rth, mean­while, hav­ing learnt that the giant is in fact per­fect­ly friend­ly and means no harm, teams up with beat­nik artist Dean McCop­pin (Con­nick Jr), to thwart the author­i­ties’ attempts to find and destroy the giant, whilst simul­ta­ne­ous­ly try­ing to pro­tect his moth­er (Anis­ton) from the truth of his night­ly escapades.

The ani­ma­tion in the film is exquis­ite­ly done and the voice actors con­spire with the cel­lu­loid images to cre­ate a deeply char­ac­ter­ful film. The bud­ding rela­tion­ship between the boy and the Iron Giant are at times high­ly mov­ing, whilst the machi­na­tions of the sneaky Mans­ley pro­duce as suit­able a vil­lain as any live action dra­ma could evoke. The film was nom­i­nat­ed for sev­er­al awards and since its home video releas­es and TV syn­di­ca­tion has acquired some­thing of a cult fol­low­ing, being wide­ly regard­ed as a mod­ern ani­mat­ed clas­sic. Not bad for a direc­to­r­i­al debut (Bird would lat­er be respon­si­ble for fam­i­ly favourites The Incred­i­bles [2004] and Rata­touille [2007]).

Watch The Iron Giant trail­er here: