The Iron Giant story
Set during the Cold War in 1957, the film centers on a young boy named Hogarth Hughes, who discovers and befriends a gigantic metallic robot who fell from outer space. With the help of a beatnik artist named Dean McCoppin, Hogarth attempts to prevent the U.S. military and Kent Mansley, a paranoid federal agent, from finding and destroying the Giant. It is based on the 1968 novel "The Iron Man" by Ted Hughes (which was published in the United States as "The Iron Giant") and was scripted by Tim McCanlies from a story treatment by Bird.
18 total · 7 major · 11 minor
| Theme | Level | Motivation |
|---|---|---|
| friendship | major | The socially isolated, nine-year-old boy Hogarth befriended the titular 50-foot tall metallic robot that'd fallen to Earth from outer space. |
| giant monster | major | The gentle giant robot from outer space was taken to be a threat by the military and they launched a full-scale attack on it. The townspeople commonly referred to the giant robot as a monster. |
| human vs. monster | major | The military mistook the gentle giant robot from outer space as a threat and attacked it. In so doing, they activated the giant robot's defense system, turning it into a war machine, after which it went into full rampage mode. |
| humanoid robot | major | A main novelty of the film is the titular 50-foot tall, humanoid patterned robot that crashed from outer space off the coast of Maine. |
| life in post-war America | major | The film offers a view of what life might have been like for people living in a small American town in the 1950s at a time when Cold War tensions were running high. |
| mother and son | major | Central to the story are the nine-year-old boy Hogarth and his widowed mother, Annie. |
| the Cold War | major | The film is set during the Cold War shortly after the Soviet Union shocked the world by launching the Sputnik 1 satellite into orbit. It explores how people coped with the tensions that existed between the Soviet Union and the United States from the point of view of both small town people and the U.S. military. |
| grief | minor | The giant robot was evidently saddened by the sight of a deer that'd been shot dead by hunters. |
| human self-sacrifice | minor | The giant robot seemingly blew itself to smithereens by colliding with an incoming nuclear missile to save the town of Rockwell, its population, and the military forces nearby. However, the various pieces started reassembling themselves at the film's ultimate conclusion, implying that the giant robot was alive and well. |
| hunting | minor | Two men were out hunting deer in the forest. |