The Giant's Dream: The Making of the Iron Giant (2016) User Reviews

A wonderful doc about a wonderful movie

[wespapes-634-626094 · 9/10 · 22 May 2022]

"The Iron Giant" is perhaps one of the greatest family movies of all time. It takes a story we've seen before and makes it feel fresh with its charming characters, beautiful animation, and a heartwarming story.

This documentary details the childhood of director Brad Bird, who was fascinated with animation at a young age. After working with Disney, he left and would then go on to make Iron Giant, then coming back to Disney to make "The Incredibles".

This is a really engrossing doc, you can feel the struggles and challenges the team faced when making this movie. Crunch time, a smaller budget, bad marketing, and basically being forgotten by Warner Bros after "Quest for Camelot" bombed.

But this story is inspiring. Brad had a dream, and he made that vision come to life. It didn't set the world on fire when it came out, but it touched a generation of kids on video and is now a pop culture mainstay. Everyone whose seen it loves it and shares it with everyone in their lives.

It's been 23 years and this movie is still talked about and loved. And this documentary should be seen by more people. Share it like you would Iron Giant, it's worth the watch. My only complaint is, I wanted more. It could have been just a little bit longer. But at its current runtime, it's still fantastic.

The Dream of a Creative Genius that Soon Became a Reality

[elicopperman · 9/10 · 17 January 2020]

Following the blu-ray release of The Iron Giant: Signature Edition, a documentary was made for it entitled The Giant's Dream. In addition to detailing the history and making of the beloved movie at nearly one hour, it's also mostly told from the perspective of the film's ingenious director Brad Bird, who was ahead of his time in many ways. Bird is one of the uncommon albeit notable creatives in the field of animation that knew animation could be more than just cheap kiddy fodder and instead be viewed as an art-form, and this documentary really showcases just how much that goal of his stays true to this day.

The first quarter of the feature has Bird talking about his love of animation as a child, which soon led to him landing a dream job at Disney, only for him to get fired from being vocal about the company's weak efforts in the late 70s/early 80s. This adds a lot of context to how adamant Bird became towards the industry for not taking the art of animation as seriously as they used to, especially when the Mouse House refused to pay much attention to the newer generation of artists that wanted to progress the medium. This in turn made him all the more hellbent on making the best darn products he could make, even if they consisted of projects that never got off the ground. However, the film also goes into a surprisingly emotional territory when Bird talks about the shocking murder of his sister. The crushing reality of what his dream job turned out to be and the loss of a loved one not only sums up how the 80s were Bird's own dark period, but they also share the same themes that Brad's best work have as well: mediocrity trampling creativity and the loss of innocence from mindless violence.

Thankfully, his career did take a turn for the better in the 1990s when he honed his skills as a creative consultant on shows like Amazing Stories and The Simpsons. It also helped that the Disney renaissance had blossomed big at this point, with every other studio wanting to cash in on their success, mostly by ripping off their formula. The shear fact that Bird decided to tackle the 1968 Ted Hughes sci-fi novel The Iron Man was unconventional then, yet it was due to him wanting to do a feature differently than the Disney style and to come to terms with his own personal turmoil. By using the quote, "What if a gun had a soul, and didn't want to be a gun?" in his pitch for the film, he not only got to make a film for himself, but also his audience so that the theme could be used as the movie's heart. It's a large part as to why the movie has held up for over 20 years, because any being has the right to become what they choose to be if they set their mind to it. In a way, Brad Bird's stubbornness led him to his famed status, even if it took him having to overcome a serious obstacle on the side.

As for the added material, the documentary showcases vintage footage of the film's production, and that's where one can tell everyone behind the feature had the time of their lives during the making, from the animation crew, to the voice cast, to even the producers. Despite making the movie in a shorter amount of time than most Disney films (2.5 years instead of 5), the hard work and freedom the crew had shows that everyone knew they were creating a classic. Even when Warner Bros failed to put enough promotion in the film, thus causing it to flop, the audiences and critics adored the feature enough to help it grow from cult status into the recognized marvel that it is. In addition, where most documentaries showcase interview clips to progress the story forward, this one uses illustrations from Bird to tell his life story. What's funny is that throughout the decades that Bird tells his own non-fictional narrative, he's drawn as a little kid, which is both endearing and appropriate. Brad Bird is almost like an imaginative child; moody and aggressive but enthusiastically passionate to the umpth degree.

Of all the documentaries on animation legends that I've seen, few have been as personal and thought provoking as this. Funny enough, the film has a bitterly sweet happy ending, where famous fantasy horror film director Guillermo del Toro calls up Brad and tells him that just because most people don't recognize a movie as a classic at the moment doesn't mean it will never be in the future. With how great Bird's career became following the release of Iron Giant, that statement alone is a healthy reminder that true talent and pure quality control triumph in the end, even if it means a long road.