To heck with Shrek, The Iron Giant is The Greatest Movie EVER!
This episode features special guest host, Chad “Winter” Clayton.
His home-page, The Dead of Winter, can be found in the Blogroll side widget.
A BRIEF GUIDE
TO UNDERSTANDING THE EXPRESSIONS
OF YOUR GIANT METAL FRIENDS:
Quizzical.
Concerned.
Murderous Rage.
(NOTE: You probably want to avoid encountering this last one.)
COMING SOON!
Can you stop the Signal?
The Greatest Movie EVER! Podcast 
I actually went to see Iron Giant in the theaters. I believe I was one of three people in the theater, the other two being a mother and her son. This is an almost picture perfect example of horrible advertising. All the advertisements for this featured “Rock Me Like A Hurricane” and the Iron Giant blowing shit up. It’s a shame since it’s a fantastic movie and I’m glad that they gave the director, Brad Bird another shot with The Incredibles.
The Iron Giant is indeed the Greatest Movie Ever. When I worked in a video store I would always recommend it to parents looking for a good movie. One guy said “I need a kid’s movie that won’t bore me to death while watching it.” I think this movie is one of the few examples of movies that cane make me get teary eyed because of feeling both sad and happy.
The way I heard it, the movie was in danger of not being finished because of money. So Brad Bird let them cut the ad campaign budget and use that money to finish the movie. But yeah, those trailers suuuuuucked. I remember the focus being the scenes from the end “You can fly?? YOU CAN FLYYYYY!!!” Made me want to puke. But of course now I wish I had caught it while it was in theaters.
I also went to see this in the cinema (theater) and I went with my younger brother. Now you have to bear this in mind: in Ireland, especially Dublin, if parents don’t actively take an interest in their kids and what they watch then they fall into the category of “take them to see ANYTHING”. So when I went to see this, the theater was packed with kids and adults. The adults probably from the trailers thought that this was another Disney™ “action packed” movie(i.e. as Gerald said the Giant blowing shit up). It wasn’t.
After an hour and a half, the adults were bored. The kids weren’t. And neither was I.
Gerald’s mention of Brad Bird directing The Incredibles got me thinking about how superficial and fickle the viewing public is. The Iron Giant is undoubtedly a better film than The Incredibles, but the marketability of CG animated films guaranteed it an audience that was raised on Toy Story and probably isn’t as enamored of more classically minded animation as we older folk. Compound that with the reluctance of American adults to succumb to the whiles of “cartoons” and the ho-hum advertising for The Iron Giant, and it’s no surprise the film didn’t succeed at the box office.
If nothing else, the market saturation of crappy topical humor laden CG children’s movies make films like The Iron Giant that much more precious.
I haven’t actually seen the Iron Giant, but I don’t know why. Sounds like a cool enough film. I have yet to listen to the entire podcast but winter, your voice kinda fits the subject. You’ve got the big, friendly giant voice and to my opinion your performance is definitely tolerable.
You’ve been extremely productive recently Gooberzilla. I can’t wait to hear what you have to say about Serenity.
I just don’t like it when people refer to animation as a genre. It’s a stylistic medium that can reflect any type of story. And, in the case of the Iron Giant, it’s a very good story.