Line #6 Trivia/TheIronGiant


1	!Trivia tropes for ''WesternAnimation/TheIronGiant''
2	!!Trivia With Their Own Pages
3	[[index]]
4	* [[ReferencedBy/TheIronGiant Referenced by...]]
5	[[/index]]
6	----
7	* AcclaimedFlop: Critics gave the film overwhelmingly positive reviews (96% "Certified Fresh" on Rotten Tomatoes, and 85 out of 100 "universal acclaim" on Metacritic), moviegoers loved the film as well (earning an "A" grade from Cinemascore), ''and'' it won '''nine''' [[MediaNotes/AnnieAward Annie Awards]] out of '''15''' nominations (winning '''every''' category it was nominated in), including Best Animated Feature Film. Unfortunately, the movie flopped at the box office, making only $31.3 million worldwide against a production budget of $48 million ($80 million including prints and advertising), mostly due to the [[InvisibleAdvertising lack of marketing]] by Warner Bros. The studio later did a 180 and gave it a marketing blitz on home video instead, and the movie's [[VindicatedByHistory gathered a large cult following since then]]. Much of its following also comes from Creator/CartoonNetwork, which used to run the film in annual [[MarathonRunning all-day marathons]] on Thanksgiving (and occasionally airs the movie to this day).
8	* ActingForTwo:
9	** Marv Loach and Floyd Turbeaux are both played by James Gammon.
10	** In the Latin American Spanish dub, César Soto voices the Iron Giant and Shannon Rogard.
11	** The same thing happened in the Norwegian dub where Nils Ole Oftebro voiced both the Iron Giant and the general.
12	* ActorAllusion: Kent Mansley's reaction to finding half his car missing is identical to [[Film/HappyGilmore Shooter McGavin's reaction to seeing the giant Mr. Larson.]]
13	* ActorSharedBackground: Just like his character Shannon Rogard, the late John Mahoney served in the U.S. Army.
14	* AdoredByTheNetwork:
15	** After UsefulNotes/TedTurner saw the film on an in-flight movie and declared it one of the best films he'd ever seen, he started Cartoon Network's infamous 24-hour marathons during Thanksgiving weekend in the early 2000s, which helped it gain its cult following. The crew for ''WesternAnimation/TransformersPrime'' even cite this film as an influence on their show's friendship between the Autobots and the humans.
16	** Warner Bros. seems to have gone out of its way to "apologize" for screwing up the film's theatrical run by giving it a huge marketing blitz on home video, funding the new scenes for the signature edition (and allowing a no-holds-barred documentary to be included on the DVD) and re-releasing it in theaters sixteen years later, once they discovered how popular it was.
17	* ApprovalOfGod: Ted Hughes, the author of the book this movie is based on, absolutely adored the movie, despite its lack of resemblance to the book. Sadly, he suffered a fatal heart attack a year before it was completed. The film was dedicated to his memory.
18	* BeamMeUpScotty: Dean's famous "ART!" line is often extended into "IT'S ART!" or "THIS IS ART", neither of which he actually says in the film. The actual quote below comes from Dean chastising the eponymous Giant for inadvertently eating one of his scrap metal projects.
19	-->'''Dean:''' ''(talking to the Iron Giant)'' What you currently have '''[[SuddenlyShouting IN YOUR MOUTH]]''' '''''[[SuddenlyShouting IS ART]]!!!'''''
20	* CompletelyDifferentTitle:
21	** Denmark and Norway: ''The Boy and the Iron Giant''
22	** Germany: ''The Giant from Space''
23	** Hungary: ''Super Buddy''
24	* {{Deleted Scene}}s:
25	** Two which were animated for the Signature Edition: one in which the Giant has a dream flashing back to its origin as one of an army who destroyed other alien worlds and another in which Annie and Dean chat about Hogarth at the diner, developing their relationship.
26	** One scene in which Hogarth and Annie briefly talk about his deceased father after getting their car out of a mud puddle.
27	** The original opening had the Giant crashing down on a much larger sea crew as they were caught in the eye of the storm.
28	** Another scene would have shown how Hogarth's [[GradeSkipper above-average intelligence]] made him unpopular at school, explaining why [[TheFriendNobodyLikes he didn't have any friends his age]]. It also would have shown more of Cloris Leachman's performance as Hogarth's teacher. In the movie proper, this is relegated to a passing line during Hogarth's [[MotorMouth espresso-fueled monologue]] and Leachman's role was reduced to a single line ("Don't make me come over there!")
29	* DirectedByCastMember: In the Latin American Spanish dub, Creator/FranciscoColmenero was the ADR director as well as Marv Loach's voice actor.
30	* DuelingMovies: With Disney's entry for its [[Franchise/DisneyAnimatedCanon canon]] that year, ''WesternAnimation/{{Tarzan}}'', though [[DavidVersusGoliath it was hardly a duel]]: the Disney film had a year's worth of hype, not to mention notoriety out the wazoo, which this scrappy little film made by a tentative subsidiary of Warner Bros. and only saw a few weeks of advertisement couldn't compete with. Arguably ''The Iron Giant'' won out in the long run, though, as while ''Tarzan'' is widely regarded as a fantastic last hurrah of the Disney Renaissance, ''Giant'' is often now called one of the greatest animated features ''ever''.[[note]]At the film's wrap party, Brad Bird bragged about how their film finished all its animation three months before the ''Tarzan'' animators and jokingly called them "pussies."[[/note]]
31	* DVDCommentary: By director/co-writer Brad Bird, animation department head Tony Fucile, story department head Jeffrey Lynch and storyboard artist/lead character animator Steve Markowski.
32	* EnforcedMethodActing:
33	** Director Creator/BradBird made Eli Marienthal (the voice of Hogarth) run laps around the studio in order to sound realistically out-of-breath for one scene (he did this again later with Spencer Fox, the voice of Dash, in ''WesternAnimation/TheIncredibles1'').
34	** For the "rocket" car scene, Bird held Marienthal and shook him in order to get the voice right.
35	* HostilityOnTheSet: During production, director Brad Bird and producer Allison Abbate frequently clashed over the film's direction. In the documentary ''The Giant's Dream'', Bird, Abbate, and other staff members recalled that pressure from Creator/WarnerBros executives to get the film done on time and on budget combined with Bird's lofty ambitions led to friction between the two, and the resulting arguments were loud enough for the rest of the crew to overhear and be unnerved by, especially artistic coordinator Scott F. Johnston, whose office was situated right next to Abbate's.
36	* InMemoriam:
37	** A dedication of Ted Hughes, author of the original novel, appears in the ending credits.
38	** There's also one of Susan Bird, Brad Bird's sister who was murdered at gun point and influenced Brad's staunch opinions on gun control.
39	** The film is also dedicated to Allison Sgrol, a clean-up and in-between artist on the film who died in 1998.
40	* InvisibleAdvertising: And how!
41	** Warner Bros.' ambitions to get into feature animation were dampened after ''WesternAnimation/QuestForCamelot'' bombed and were reluctant to spend money on advertising, constantly pussyfooting around Brad Bird's perpetual request for a release date, even when production was nearing its deadline. It eventually got to the point that a crew member had to leak a workprint of the film to several journalists just to get word-of-mouth going. Warner Bros. eventually settled on a release date after several extremely positive test screenings, but only gave the film a few weeks to advertise as a result (compare to Disney's ''WesternAnimation/{{Tarzan}}'', which was being advertised a year in advance).
42	** What little advertising that eventually saw the light of day was either vague or [[TrailersAlwaysLie inaccurate]]. One of its only two posters was in the style of a '50s BMovie-style with the tagline "It came from outer space!" while the trailers played it up as a TotallyRadical movie about "The newest face of heavy metal," complete with cheesy thrash metal music. Brad Bird went to a multiplex in LA opening weekend and had a panic attack when he saw no posters or even a lobby card, only a disheveled cardboard cutout outside its one theater and a ''hand written note'' scotch-tapped to the times, respectively. The screening itself only had an audience of about a dozen.
43	** Warner Bros. made up for it by going all-out with the home video release once it did well critically.
44	* NetworkToTheRescue: Warner Bros. is aware they screwed up big time with the film's theatrical release and that the film's AcclaimedFlop status is their fault. To their credit, they've given the film better treatment in the years since to make up for it, even paying to have a few scenes (Annie and Dean in the Diner, and the Giant's nightmare) that only existed as audio and some pencil sketches fully animated and re-inserted back into the film.
45	* PlayingAgainstType: Creator/VinDiesel as the voice of a GentleGiant is a far cry from his usual roles.
46	* PosthumousCredit: Ted Hughes succumbed to a heart attack one year before the film's release.
47	* RealitySubtext: After being hired to direct the film, Brad Bird read the original Ted Hughes novel and was surprised to discover that Hughes had written it as a way to cope with his wife's suicide. Bird, in turn, decided that he would change the story for the film to an anti-gun allegory as a way of coping with his sister's murder at gunpoint a decade prior, making the titular Giant "a gun with a soul who didn't want to be a gun."
48	* ThrowItIn: The witness calling Agent Mansley "[[AccidentalMisnaming Mr. Manly]]" was actually a mistake by the actor, but they kept it in because it added to the gag of Mansley being a NoRespectGuy.
49	* TroubledProduction: As described in the documentary, ''A Giant's Dream,'' and on Website/ThisVeryWiki: an extremely short turnaround time, a crew consisting mostly of first-time feature film artists, and an apathetic studio who waited too long to decide whether or not to advertise it.
50	* VindicatedByCable: Creator/CartoonNetwork adored this movie and even ran it on loop for holiday marathons (especially on Thanksgiving), which played a big role in the film being discovered after its dismal theatrical run.
51	* WhatCouldHaveBeen:
52	** An animator at Sullivan Bluth Studios tried to pitch an animated version of Ted Hughes' story to Creator/DonBluth in the early-90s; he passed on it because he felt that there wasn't enough story in it to sustain a feature film.
53	** In early storyboards, the deer died while the Giant tried to pet it, [[DoesNotKnowHisOwnStrength and actually squished it instead]]. The writers revised this to hunters shooting the deer, after deeming it implausible that Hogarth's mantra, "It's bad to kill, but it's not bad to die," could relieve the Giant of guilt caused by killing.
54	** The first choice to voice the giant was Creator/PeterCullen. That's right, [[Franchise/{{Transformers}} Optimus Prime]] would have been the voice of the Iron Giant. Vin Diesel got the role instead due to Brad Bird's amazement with his soft-spoken, but still powerful, performance in the short ''Multi-Facial''. Cullen would later do voiceovers for the movie's home video promos.
55	** Other early casting choices included Creator/ArnoldSchwarzenegger as Kent Mansley, whom Brad Bird passed up in favor of less well-known actors.
56	** The movie was originally conceived as an AnimatedAdaptation of [[Music/TheWho Pete Townshend]]'s RockOpera based on the original book, but Brad Bird didn't want to put out yet another AnimatedMusical in a market already so saturated with them. Especially when [[WesternAnimation/QuestForCamelot the last animated musical the studio made]] was a flop that caused the [[AcclaimedFlop underrated status of this film]] by the [[InvisibleAdvertising nearly non-existing marketing]].
57	** The film was going to have a more cartoony style as seen in the very early concept art for both [[http://www.ultimateirongiant.com/prodart/515.jpg The Giant]] and [[http://www.ultimateirongiant.com/prodart/521.jpg Hogarth]] (The Giant's design here is similar to the Adamson cover of first edition book).
58	** Animator Teddy Newton jokingly pitched a sequence of the film that would've had Mansley taking Hogarth to a seedy stripper's club. Years later, at the suggestion of animator Bert Klein, Newton retooled the idea into the short film ''WesternAnimation/BoysNightOut''.
59	** Creator/JodiBenson, Creator/SarahMichelleGellar, Creator/JulianneMoore and Creator/MegRyan were all considered to voice Annie.
60	** Creator/JohnTravolta, Creator/SylvesterStallone, Creator/HughJackman, Creator/MatthewBroderick, Creator/SteveMartin, Creator/JohnCusack, and Creator/VinceVaughn were considered to voice Dean.
61	* WordOfGod: When asked about making a sequel Brad Bird [[https://twitter.com/BradBirdA113/status/1022012008466706432 said]]:
62	-->"Two simple answers:
63	-->1) On its original release, the film was a financial flop.
64	-->2) There’s no need. The first one tells the story I set out to tell. Some stories actually end with THE END."
65	* WordOfStPaul: Christopher [=McDonald=] jokingly claimed that Kent's desperate attempts to gain respect from his government superiors by capturing the giant are all in the hope that he'll be able to eventually run for congress.
66	* WriteWhatYouKnow: During the scene where Hogarth is watching a sci-fi horror movie, you see him filling a Twinkie with whipped cream before eating it. This was something Brad Bird had done when he was a kid, calling it a “Turbo Twinkie”.
67	* WritingByTheSeatOfYourPants: The film was made in the span of 2-and-a-half years, half the production time of the typical animated feature. Thankfully, Brad Bird's television background, as well as his sheer tenacity, helped the film get finished ahead of schedule. It was the first animated feature to crudely animate its storyboards (using a primitive version of Adobe [=AfterEffects=]) to give a clearer idea of how shots would look in their final form, a practice used to this day.
68	* WrittenForMyKids: Ted Hughes wrote the story to comfort his children following the suicide of his wife Creator/SylviaPlath in 1963.

Context Trivia / TheIronGiant