The Iron Giant - Lessons Learnt PART TWO - Storytelling (OUAN402)

PART TWO - CHARACTER AND STORYTELLING

"The Iron Giant" is my favourite film because no other piece makes me laugh and cry so consistently and keeps such a good tonal balance, nor can I think of a film that I can watch over and over again and get more out of each time. EVERYONE can learn a lesson about storytelling from this movie. It doesn't beat the audience over the head with backstory or get bogged down with overused clichés. Everything in the film is there because it tells us more about the characters or builds the relationships between characters and as such, nothing is wasted, the story is very tight and I was left really emotionally satisfied at the end.

FOR INSTANCE, this is a brief shot of a picture of a bloke hopping into a military jet, placed on Hogarth's bedside table. It is a really nice visual touch that tells us a tonne about Hogarth's character and doesn't talk down to the audience. If Hogarth had picked up the picture and then looked at the camera and said "THIS IS A PICTURE OF MY DEAD DAD WHO I OBVIOUSLY ADMIRE AND FROM WHOM I DRAW MY STRONG MORAL COMPASS" then it wouldn't have worked so well. That's how I'd have directed it, though, with the "no drooling moron left behind" attitude to film-making.

The themes in the movie are another example of amazing storytelling. They are subtly woven into the film constantly and they pay off really well at the end. The concept of being what you choose to be, rather that what the world projects onto you, is presented really touchingly without coming across as saccharine. The characters of Kent Mansley, the government official who's job it is to protect the people, and the Giant mirror each other really well as they both have to fight their programming. The Giant succeeds. It's implied throughout the movie that he is designed to destroy, and he battles with this concept for the whole film before deciding that he is "not a gun".

Meanwhile, Kent Mansley loses sight of the right thing to do, protect people. He becomes so fixated on killing the giant that he decides to bomb an entire town full of people as a means to that end. The emotional climax comes in the end, when the giant must die for doing the right thing while Mansley gets to live. It's a complex and captivating message. You are who you choose to be, but it sometimes comes coupled with great adversity.