The production team have taken the bold decision to use traditional two-dimensional hand-drawn techniques for the human figures. Also in keeping with the spirit of the times, the giant finds rest in the frozen north, home of the creatures in Fifties fantasies The Thing From Another World and The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms.Īpart from being funny and heartwarming, The Iron Giant is visually pleasing and playful. The most likeable adult, apart from Hogarth's mom, is a laidback beatnik sculptor who assists the lad and the giant. In this liberal take on the Fifties - which is indeed how many of us saw it at the time - the villain of the piece is a devious Federal agent in a trenchcoat and fedora. Then Rockwell is invaded by cold-war warriors from Washington and the military cordon off the area, threatening a nuclear attack on the Iron Man if all else fails. The paranoia and nuclear angst of the Fifties are amusingly recreated through an instructional film called Atomic Holocaust that the kids are shown at school, and a black-and-white horror flick modelled on The Blob that Hogarth watches on TV.

As in Hughes's story, the boy becomes the protector of the giant and his teacher, but the ultimate enemy now comes from within, a product of the Cold War. Hogarth is the only child of a single mom working at the town's diner and his friendship with the mysterious giant, whom he saves from being fried while attempting to consume an electric power station, resembles that between the boy and the alien in ET. The setting is the small town of Rockwell, Maine, named in honour of the folksy Norman Rockwell, America's most popular painter, and the nine-year-old hero is called Hogarth Hughes in honour of the late poet laureate. The film's writer-director Brad Bird (best known hitherto for his work on The Simpsons) and his collaborators have moved the story to the US and an earlier, more dangerous stage of the Cold War, namely the autumn of 1957, when the first Sputnik was sent into orbit.

The iron man film ted hughes