Tor.com has done the impossible: It’s found someone who hasn’t seen The Iron Giant. But while I had never watched the movie, I was well aware of the emotional real estate it had carved into the hearts of most of my peers. I also knew that when I finally did watch it, I was going to have to walk away from the experience somehow changed: Feels, or it didn’t happen.
Despite jumping straight from picture books to reading Entertainment Weekly and becoming a pop culture writer, I have weird holes in my movie education. Sometimes it was bad timing, where I was too young when a movie came out (The Usual Suspects) to catch it. In the case of The Iron Giant, however, I should have been their target audience: I was 11 when it came to theaters, and as big a fan of animated movies as your average kid. Then again, a lot of people didn’t appreciate the movie at the time; it gained a cult following once it was released on home video, but I must’ve been too busy replaying Anastasia over and over to ever rent The Iron Giant from Blockbuster. It was also years before I would actually be interested in robots—Star Wars droids notwithstanding—and to be honest, the story just didn’t grab me.
But now I’m a 27-year-old writer who is endlessly fascinated by robots, so it was about motherfucking time that I was reduced to a puddle of emotions like so many before me. I was ready to meet the Iron Giant.
The thing is, while watching the movie, I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that it was all so familiar. Not the sweet little moments—like Hogarth befriending the Giant as well as cool beatnik junkyard mechanic Dean—but the overall story arc seemed to be heading in only one direction, not unlike a… missile. (I’m sorry, I had to.) Had I spoiled myself by reading the plot on Wikipedia years ago? Or did Brad Bird’s quiet little film so influence the movie landscape that subsequent movies took on its themes and even recreated certain visuals?
My tendency to watch movies at odd points in my life means that often I experience iconic moments or catchphrases or visuals in later films, once they’ve been filtered through a more recent release paying homage. (I wrote a whole column about this, Reverse Pop Culture Primer, a couple of years ago.) And so, when we got to the climax, where the Giant embraces the missile that the U.S. Army has trained on him and carries it up away from the townspeople, instead I saw Iron Man saving New York City from the paranoid U.S. government who brought a nuke to a superhero/alien fight:
But for all the dysfunction of the Avengers, Tony Stark is still a hero, so his sacrifice—which he was even able to come back from—didn’t resonate exactly the same. For that, we would need a bad guy…
So then I saw villain Wreck-It Ralph accepting his villainous identity and diving downward to punch his giant fist through Diet Cola Mountain and create a beacon to destroy the Cy-Bugs and save the inhabitants of Sugar Rush:

OH GOD THE TEARS ARE STARTING
Yet even as the shot of the Giant taking the nuke into the stars wasn’t exactly new, the feels still wrecked me:
Crying at movies and television shows has become so performative, especially now that such experiences are rose-tinted with nostalgia, or happening in real-time and/or with a group observing your reactions. When I settled in to watch The Iron Giant with my coworkers and friends, I didn’t feel that I was allowed to get away without crying: partly because of the dear spot this movie had burrowed into all of their hearts, and partly because I’m notorious for sniffling at most anything. If this didn’t move me, was I a worse monster than the Iron Giant?
I felt that I had to nudge myself a little bit to squeeze out those first few tears; the red wine we paired with our pizza certainly helped get me appropriately misty-eyed. I thought that might be the best I muster up, but the “Superman” sequence wrenched all of the correct heartstrings, the way it has for everyone else who’s seen this movie. Actually, the dam broke a few minutes before, when the Giant believes that he’s accidentally killed Hogarth. When he prods Hogarth’s limp body—a callback to the earlier scene where he was confused over a deer’s death—and then jumped back in horror, I let out an involuntary sob.
So, my actual reactions were genuine, but I felt pressured to respond. I found myself in a similar situation a few months ago, when I finally finished Breaking Bad. Perhaps it was because I was binge-watching two seasons in mere weeks and was oversaturated with the show, or maybe it was that I felt the only acceptable response was abject misery… but at the end of “Ozymandias,” I lost my shit. This reaction was mostly genuine as well, due to the fact that for the fifteen minutes prior to the moment that truly ruins Walter White’s world, I was keeping up a running commentary of “nononono fuuuuck c’mon you can still turn back just—goddammit Walt!”, etc. Then it was just wrenching sobs that were so bad my boyfriend had to come over to the couch to make sure I was actually all right.
There can be a small measure of shame associated with being a “late bloomer” when it comes to certain cultural touchstones: You feel that no one will watch it with you because they’ve already had that experience, and watching it alone is more about getting it out of the way than actually wanting to see it. I was lucky that my friends are all about introducing old movies to new people, with more astonishment than judgment attached, because I would probably never have watched The Iron Giant on my own.
But once I did, it enhanced my appreciation of another Iron Man making a snap-decision to put his armored but still frail body between nuclear destruction and millions of lives; and of a video-game villain who embraces his imperfect programming and realizes that you only have to be a hero to one person to matter.
Natalie Zutter is totally going to be crying at Star Wars: The Force Awakens with the rest of the Tor.com crew. You can read more of her work on Twitter and elsewhere.
#1 – I wept openly and loudly when I watched this movie for the first time, and agree 100% with your assessment.
#2 – The inclusion of the Superman gif in this article has ensured that my coworkers will wonder why my nose is running so badly for the rest of the day. <snif>
The closest parallel in modern cinema I can think of, is Baymax
I haven’t seen it either, but then again I guess maybe I’m a lesson in the impossible.
BTW, I haven’t seen Age of Ultron either, so thanks for that spoiler.
I have never seen The Iron Giant either. I’m also notoriously weepy during movies so I’m sure it will make me cry.
@3: She talks about the end of the first Avengers, not Age of Ultron.
Reminds me to get it on DVD or Bluray. I’ve worn out two vhs copies.
I have never seen so many grown men and women walking out of a theater wiping tears from their eyes. Seriously, at no other kid’s movie, love story, tearjerker, whatever did I see so many red-eyed adults.
My son was about 5 when it came out and he got so upset when the giant went into weapon mode that I thought we’d have to leave the theater (he literally sobbed “He’s not a gun!”), so you’d think I would be emotionally distracted enough trying to calm him, but the “Superman” scene just wrecked me.
It wasn’t just the movie and story itself, it was the fact that it dredged up every thing I loved as a kid and made me remember what it was like and I didn’t realize I’d forgotten. The same thing happens when I re-read “Boy’s Life” by Robert McCammon – I have to be in the mood to sob multiple times.
You probably missed seeing The Iron Giant (or it’s later turn in the rental store) because it got almost NO marketing at the time. I was a teenager who totally absorbed every animated thing I could get my hands on and I almost missed it completely. The only reason I found out about it was a trip to Wal*Mart where there was a single sign about it coming out. My equally animation obsessed friends had never seen any advertising for it either! We thought it would be terrible…like Disney’s awful sequel attempts…because no one was promoting it. There weren’t even any toys! As I recall, just a single large Iron Giant toy and a mini Iron Giant that go included w/ the initial VHS release. There’s definitely a reason IG didn’t get it’s due until people had time to rent it and spread the word. By comparison, you couldn’t escape the onslaught of Anastasia or Prince of Egypt’s (THREE CDs) marketing and merch!
@5: I’m talking about the picture. I don’t remember thst from the first one.
The gif above is from the end of the first Avengers when they are fighting and losing to the Chitauri.
Like Frankenstein’s Monster saying “Bogus” right before he impales Dracula the “The Monster Squad.
Still never seen it, going to the re-release. I have a heart of stone. I am prepared to watch without crying.
@9, That picture is from the first Avengers. If you look, you can see the hole over New York City in the background.
Another movie you can compare it to, plot-wise, is “E.T.” With corresponding waterworks.
I’ve, er, never seen The Iron Giant.
@5,10,13 – I think crzydroid is talking about the “Right in the feels” gif near the end. That doesn’t look like the Battle of New York to me.
@16
Both the carrying a warhead and the right-in-the-feels happen about five minutes apart in the Battle of New York.
If for no other reason, look at the big yellow taxi to the left.
Wow, I just don’t remember that. I remember him saving some people in the bank or something, and then going out for shawarma at the end.
Everyone who loves speculative fiction should see Iron Giant. Period.
Ah the Iron Giant. I’d never heard of it when my partner picked it up for the kids to watch. My son got scared by the giant being stuck in the powerlines before he meets Hogarth so i sat and watched the rest with him. I was caught completely by surprise, I wasn’t prepared for the sudden choking up when he said ‘Superman’ at the end there.
In the theater, I sat through the credits pretty well-composed, got up to leave, and got about halfway out before I practically fell into the nearest seat and sobbed uncontrollably for about ten or fifteen minutes. I absolutely shatter every I time I watch this movie, which is why I haven’t watched it in almost a decade. It is one of my most beloved films of all time, and I just can’t watch it anymore because of how hard and how deeply it hits me.
Where’s the like button for such an awesome article?
I was completely out of tears after watching the Iron Giant, when I saw it in theaters at the age of 12