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patreon.com/nextpictureshow. That's

1:21

patreon.com/ nextpictureshow. It's

1:24

very difficult to keep the line between the past

1:26

and the present. Do you believe that someone out

1:28

of the past can enter

1:31

and take possession of a living being? We

1:33

may be through with the past, but the

1:35

past is not through with us. Welcome

1:41

to the Next Picture Show, a Movie of the Week

1:43

podcast devoted to a classic film and how

1:45

it's shaped our thoughts on a recent release. I'm

1:48

Tasha Robinson, here with... Scott Tobias. And

1:51

I'm Dan. I'm Tasha Robinson, here with... Scott

1:53

Tobias. Genevieve Kosky. And Keith

1:55

Epps. Oh my gosh, it's

1:57

an actual full house for the Next Picture Show.

8:00

but it's a likeable and imaginative one. So

8:02

I head off to the theater for the film's

8:05

final showing in Chicago at 9pm on a Thursday

8:07

night. When the movie starts, something seems

8:09

off. The characters seem preposterously

8:11

tall, gangly, and stylized. But

8:14

it's 1999, so it's unusual to see a

8:16

cell-animated American movie that isn't trying to emulate

8:18

Disney's house style, and I have no idea

8:20

what the movie's actually supposed to look like.

8:23

It takes me half an hour to really be

8:25

positive that this isn't how The Iron Giant is

8:27

meant to look, that the theater is running out

8:29

with the wrong lens on the projector, rendering everything

8:31

squashed and stretched. But by then, it's

8:33

too late. I'm hooked on the story, which

8:35

is moving fast enough that it's clear that by the

8:37

time I could find somebody to address the problem, I'll

8:39

have missed an important chunk of the action. It's

8:42

already evident that this unknown Brad

8:44

Bird guy is doing something unusual,

8:46

with characters as specific and idiosyncratic

8:48

as Beatnik junkyard artist Dean, smugly

8:51

patriotic schemer Kent Mansley, and

8:54

precocious hyper-lonely kid Hogarth Hughes.

8:57

Given the swift, surreptitious way this movie is

8:59

blown through town, I'm not convinced I'll ever

9:01

have another chance to see it. It feels

9:03

like a studio discard that's only hit theaters

9:05

out of grudging contractual obligation, and it

9:08

seems positive that once the final frame rolls,

9:10

this offbeat cult experience will be over and

9:12

the film will disappear permanently. Obviously,

9:14

that didn't happen. But I tell you

9:16

all this to convey how alien it felt to see The

9:18

Iron Giant in 1999. The

9:21

big animated movies of the year were Tarzan,

9:23

Toy Story 2, Fantasia 2000, and South Park,

9:27

Bigger, Longer, and Uncut. There were

9:29

only a few modes for theatrical animation releases in

9:31

1999, Pixar, Disney, studio

9:34

movies emulating Disney as closely as possible,

9:37

animated TV projects ported to the big

9:39

screen, imports from other countries,

9:41

and the occasional weird off-brand project

9:43

like Cats Don't Dance. The

9:46

Iron Giant came from Warner animation, but it

9:48

didn't feel like a big studio project, especially

9:50

because Warner Bros. had abandoned it in the

9:53

wake of the critical and box office failure

9:55

of its openly Disney-aping animated movie The Quest

9:57

for Camelot the year before. So

16:00

I treasure it for that. It's very

16:02

refreshing to watch this. I mean, and this will be

16:04

a pretty strong point of contrast

16:06

when we talk about the wild robot

16:08

next week and the way it kind

16:10

of deals with a similar story. And

16:13

it is much more modern in the way

16:15

you're talking about it being dense, incident packed.

16:17

But I mean, the Iron Giant is under

16:19

90 minutes long and

16:22

the setup is very simple. I think

16:24

we only get the number of characters

16:26

that we need. There's not any rush

16:28

to try to add additional

16:31

flavor to it or attitude or something

16:33

like that. It's just, you

16:35

know, it's really built. Nothing feels punched up. No,

16:37

I mean, it's the boy. It's

16:39

the mom, the robot, the scrap iron guy

16:42

and the government guy. I mean, it's only

16:44

about five characters in the movie that really

16:46

matter. The Iron Giant too also

16:48

matters. I brought you the giant. I said the

16:50

giant. Oh, you did. Okay, I'm

16:52

sorry. Yeah. Don't leave it on

16:54

the Iron Giant. Giant's good. Giant's the character.

16:57

He's the titular character. But

16:59

I think, yeah, all of that is refreshing. And

17:02

I think when you do something simply as

17:04

well, which I think is what you get from

17:06

really good, a lot of really good story

17:09

books, really children's tales, all

17:11

the emotions feel clarified and sharp. The

17:13

lines that in the touches that are

17:16

meant to give you a little bit

17:18

of spin or whimsy or

17:20

something, they all pop because

17:23

your eye isn't distracted by a million things

17:25

at once and your head isn't swimming with

17:27

pot details. There's just a level of focus

17:30

watching this movie that's very satisfying. It doesn't

17:32

feel like it wastes any moment at all.

17:34

How do you feel about the visual

17:36

style? I grew watching it this time

17:38

around. I think as always, I find

17:41

that the subsidiary characters

17:43

feel very Don Bluth, but

17:45

the backdrop maybe feels more

17:47

Disney, the focus

17:50

on kind of like detailed

17:52

watercolor environment. Brad

17:54

Burden, his animators, like went out to Maine

17:57

and shot just like a ton of

17:59

photographs of like like small rural main

18:01

towns, like looking for specificity,

18:04

I think was a big deal

18:06

with them. And, you

18:08

know, getting covered bridges right and

18:11

like getting tree-filled lanes right and that sort

18:13

of thing. So, but it has

18:15

a very distinctive look and it has very

18:17

distinctive character designs. Wondering what you

18:19

think about them. I just thought of

18:21

a broader animated related thing is, we

18:24

did not know how good we had it

18:26

at this stage of animation in

18:28

general, because no one I don't

18:31

think would have guessed hand-drawn animation was essentially on its

18:33

way out or certainly in the United States, right? But

18:36

like the way the hand-drawn animation is sort

18:38

of, you know, complimented by computer touches and

18:40

like just like the smoothness of it. I

18:42

mean, it's such a beautiful looking film and,

18:45

you know, without feeling like it's like, you

18:47

know, pushing the boundaries of technology, which I'm

18:49

sure it probably was in many ways, but

18:51

yeah, we just did not know, you know,

18:54

I guess you don't know when you're living

18:56

in a golden age, but like, you know,

18:58

and this wasn't necessarily golden age for other

19:00

hand-drawn animated American films, but you know, it

19:02

is a, you know, I kind of wish

19:05

this moment would have lasted a little longer

19:07

in terms of animation technology and what the

19:09

preferences were. Tasha, you mentioning Don Bluth made

19:11

something kind of like click in my mind

19:14

because like when I said it reminded me

19:16

of Disney films, like particularly in the animation,

19:19

I was thinking specifically kind of like the 70s

19:21

era of Disney, which

19:23

is when Don Bluth was with

19:26

the company. Specifically, like the

19:28

character designs here remind me a lot

19:30

of the rescuers, the human characters, which

19:33

Don Bluth worked on. And

19:36

so to like the Disney

19:38

point of comparison, again, it feels

19:40

like that very specific era of

19:42

Disney, especially in the character designs

19:44

before the kind of, before the

19:47

Disney Renaissance kind of gave us

19:49

this more like big eyed pleasing,

19:51

almost carbon copy human character. There

19:53

was like a minute there in Disney

19:56

history where the human characters could be a

19:58

little odd looking. And Don

20:00

Bluth, I think, kind of carried that forward

20:02

in his work after Disney. And

20:05

that's kind of, I see in play

20:07

here. And I know Brad

20:09

Bird also overlapped with that era too and had

20:11

a lot of respect for the Nine

20:13

Old Men. And I think a couple of them

20:16

are actually, I actually made cameos in, in

20:18

the Iron Giant. Am I correct there? I

20:20

didn't run across that. I mean,

20:22

it would certainly explain again, some of the almost

20:25

extreme specificity of some of the

20:28

faces, particularly of the older men.

20:31

Like, there's one in particular that I'm

20:33

thinking of, the train conductor that explains,

20:35

you know, you're not going to believe me,

20:38

but it was an Iron Man. Like, that

20:40

looks like a caricature of an actual specific

20:42

person, much more than it looks like just

20:44

sort of a random design. Well, here you

20:46

go. Ollie Johnson and Frank Thomas voiced the trains

20:49

engineers briefly seen near the start of the film.

20:51

Johnson and Thomas, who were animators and members of

20:53

Disney's Nine Old Men, were cited by Bird

20:56

as inspirations for his career, which he honored

20:58

by incorporating their voices, likenesses and first names

21:00

into the film. Well, there you go. Fun.

21:02

Yeah, I didn't. That's an interesting piece

21:04

of trivia that I did not know. It's kind

21:06

of fun, I guess, to think about the continuity

21:09

of just like how many people have cited the

21:11

Iron Giant as a huge inspiration, as the movie

21:13

that got them into animation, or is it the

21:15

movie that taught them what animation could be, or

21:18

as like a narrative or

21:20

visual inspiration? And to go

21:22

back to that movie and then just see, you

21:25

know, Brad Bird himself looking back, you

21:27

know, a few more generations to

21:29

his inspirations is kind of fun. Like

21:32

I love that kind of like chain of continuity thing.

21:35

Especially at this sort of like inflection

21:37

point for animation, you know,

21:40

to have that sense of history and

21:42

nostalgia built into like both the

21:44

story and the visuals is just

21:46

a really neat thing. That

21:49

said, I want to know why everybody here has terrible,

21:51

terrible teeth. That's

21:55

what made me think of the rescuers. Like,

21:58

specifically. No, no.

22:02

What are the human characters and

22:04

the rescuers? Yeah,

22:06

there are a lot of snaggle teeth and that

22:09

would be another think about it. What's the state

22:11

of dental care in the late fifties?

22:13

You know, I mean, these kids aren't. We

22:15

may have been domain. Right. Yeah.

22:19

I mean, Hoke Earth with his, his kind

22:21

of like his uneven front teeth, one of

22:24

which appears to be chipped. He's kind of

22:26

got buck teeth that are crowded up against

22:28

each other. Just reminds me of, you

22:31

know, some something that I see a lot in

22:33

the interviews with modern animators. You

22:35

know, the computer animation

22:37

kind of algorithms really

22:40

want to create people that are

22:42

smooth and symmetrical. And

22:44

animators have found that that can be a

22:46

little uncanny valley and you've always got to

22:48

throw in something that's irregular

22:50

or asymmetrical

22:53

or unmatched in some way. Or

22:56

people's eyes just kind of like

22:58

slide off the characters and find

23:00

them too, too slick, basically. But

23:03

I find myself like a little overly

23:05

focused on Hoke Earth's front teeth. But

23:08

even more than that, I'm thinking of like the ship's

23:10

captain at the beginning who has just,

23:12

I don't know, a snaggle teeth of

23:14

all sorts of different, different lengths and

23:16

shapes and sizes. And they're all kind

23:18

of a uniform, like yellow green. There are

23:21

a lot of kind of startling mouths in

23:23

this movie. I

23:26

like it for Hoke Earth. On this rewatch, I was

23:28

reminded just how much I like Hoke Earth

23:30

as a character. I mean, I think all

23:32

the characters in this movie are just like

23:34

really well rendered. And as

23:36

Scott mentioned, like there aren't that

23:38

many of them, you know, and

23:40

just I think Hoke Earth feels

23:42

what he feels both precocious,

23:44

but actually like a real kid,

23:47

you know, in like his sense

23:49

of play and his sort of

23:51

like obnoxiousness. And kind

23:53

of his weird teeth are a part of it. Like,

23:55

I mean, kids, you know, when their adult teeth are

23:57

coming in, it can get a little gnarly, you know?

24:00

until their face and jaw

24:02

settles to the size it's

24:04

going to be. So

24:07

it all is kind

24:09

of part of the package of

24:12

Hogarth as this very specific yet

24:15

recognizable kid character that

24:18

I really enjoy. Yeah, I

24:20

really wanted to dig into

24:22

the authenticity of Hogarth as

24:24

a kid. There's

24:26

kind of a lot of mildly

24:29

bratty behavior in this movie

24:32

where he acts

24:34

slick and thinks he's sly, but he's just

24:36

very transparent in the way of a child.

24:38

He has a kind of immediate sense of

24:41

entitlement when he meets the

24:43

Iron Giant that's just like, my own robot,

24:45

I see this, therefore I own it. He

24:49

lies to his mom, he causes

24:51

chaos in her workplace, he

24:55

eats Twinkies filled with whipped cream when

24:57

he's been told to go to bed and not

24:59

watch scary movies. He runs around in the woods

25:01

in the middle of the night when he's been

25:03

told not to. And

25:06

he has obviously a very good

25:08

heart, he's a sweet kid. You find

25:10

out, one of the details about this

25:12

movie that always just rolls off

25:14

my back and I forget about is

25:17

the whole detail about he

25:19

was a straight A student and

25:21

his mother felt that he wasn't being challenged enough

25:23

so they promoted him a grade and

25:25

now he's dealing with bullies bigger than he

25:27

is who pick on him because

25:29

they think he's a smarty pants. All of

25:32

that is a whole bunch of information that

25:34

doesn't really come into play in the movie

25:36

in a meaningful payoff kind of way in

25:38

the way modern animated movies seem to only

25:40

throw details like that on the board if

25:44

there's going to be a very specific narrative

25:46

payoff. But in this case, there's

25:48

just a little micro arc where you find out that

25:50

he's a fish out of water, like a kid with

25:53

no friends. And then he gets

25:55

one friend and it really matters to him. And then

25:57

he gets an adult friend and that seems to be

25:59

great for him too. And then by the end

26:01

of the movie, he has kid friends and

26:03

it's almost as warming as, you know,

26:06

the big iron giant climax scene. So

26:09

I don't know, I find Hogarth a

26:11

fun character, but I also think he's

26:14

kind of an obnoxious torp. And

26:17

I kind of admire Brad Bird's like daring

26:19

in characterizing him that

26:22

way because, you know, the

26:24

unlikable kid character is something

26:27

we just see very, very rarely in this

26:29

kind of movie. Unlikeable is

26:31

going too far. It is

26:33

exactly. I can't call Hogarth unlike

26:36

a precocious. He's a precocious

26:38

imp. He's a scamp. I would get very mad

26:40

if someone brought his squirrel into my place of

26:42

place of work though. No, that's right. That's right.

26:44

That's not that is not. He's also like he's

26:46

a handful. Yeah. But he's

26:49

also just like courageous and headstrong. Like, I mean,

26:51

like barreling out into the woods at night, you

26:53

know, is definitely not something

26:55

I would have done as a 10 year

26:57

old kid. You know, like I kind of,

26:59

I guess, admire his rambunctiousness

27:01

a little bit too, you know,

27:04

while acknowledging that it would certainly

27:06

be exasperating to deal with as

27:08

his mother, you know, and I

27:10

mean, I think voice performances across

27:13

the board are great. I

27:15

think we're going to like give everyone their props. But you

27:17

know, Jennifer Aniston as

27:20

Annie is, you know, just a really you

27:23

can hear the love she has

27:25

for Hogarth even as she is

27:27

like exasperated and tired, you

27:30

know, by exhausted by him.

27:33

But there is one voice performance, I think,

27:35

that rises above all else here, which we

27:37

will get to in a moment. But before

27:39

we leave Hogarth, like I do want to

27:42

give it up for Eli, Marion Thal, who

27:45

voices him like just the way that

27:47

Hogarth yells like, hey, hey,

27:51

the robot, like I can hear it so clearly

27:53

in my head. And it's so that like

27:55

it's so fitting for like a kid of

27:58

that age who is like kind

28:00

of you say entitled Tasha, maybe just

28:02

like expecting a certain amount of attention

28:04

or feedback in that moment. Like he's a

28:06

kid dying for attention. You know, he's

28:08

alone most of the time. He, you

28:10

know, he wants to focus on him

28:12

in this moment. And I just like

28:14

that all comes through so clearly and just

28:16

that hey, Anderson

28:19

is really good. I looked it up. She's done any

28:21

other animated films. The only other one she's done is

28:23

storks, which I barely,

28:26

I think everyone has a voice in that she's done

28:28

some television too, but like, yeah, she's, she's, I mean,

28:30

you get the feeling like maybe, you know, being on

28:32

friends had a lot of reason, had a lot of

28:35

something to do with how she got, got the role,

28:37

but she's, she really rises to it for sure. As

28:39

far as Hogarth's voice goes, the scene that

28:41

always stands out for me is the one

28:44

where he, he jumps into the lake and

28:46

he's clearly freezing. His teeth are shattering so

28:48

hard. He can barely get words out, but he's trying

28:50

to get Dean and the robot to jump

28:52

in after him. And he's saying, Oh, it's,

28:54

it's fine. It's really refreshing in this

28:57

like chattery, like shivery

29:00

voice. And again, he's

29:02

kind of being obnoxious in a very believable

29:04

kid way, you know, that, that watch me

29:06

dive. Yeah. Look at me. Look at me.

29:09

Look at me. Look at me. But also

29:11

that, that quality of, you know, that, that

29:13

the classic maybe goes back as, as long

29:15

as there have been lakes and kids, you

29:17

jump into the overly cold water and then

29:19

you try to convince everybody that it's, it's

29:22

perfectly fine and enjoyable to the

29:24

point where he's like calling Dean and the

29:26

robot names for not joining him, even as

29:29

it's like just so visibly, nakedly obvious

29:31

that he's freezing his butt off. I

29:33

just find that whole sequence delightful

29:36

both from a characterization perspective and

29:38

from a vocal perspective, but also

29:41

one of my favorite shots in

29:43

the entire movie is Dean

29:45

clamped to his chair, slowly

29:47

settling down on the road through the, the huge

29:49

wave caused by the giant jumping into the lake.

29:53

Oh, I love that. Just like as a piece

29:55

of animation. I mean, like obviously water

29:59

animation is always. I

42:00

disagree with you, Keith. Maybe that's the moment where he reveals

42:02

himself as a villain. Maybe. So

42:04

I wanted to talk about, there's a longer

42:07

cut of this movie, just by a couple

42:09

of minutes, that has a couple

42:12

more scenes in it. It's called the

42:14

signature edition. And one

42:16

of them is just a pretty

42:18

short exchange between Annie, Hogarth's mother,

42:20

and Dean in the diner,

42:22

where you first start to see maybe the

42:25

spark of romance. But the other one is

42:28

a little over a minute long, and it

42:30

comes right after the Souls scene, which I

42:32

also want to talk about. Although that one

42:34

may be a good one to hold for

42:36

connections with Wild Robot. Where the

42:38

giant falls asleep in dreams of

42:41

his own past, and

42:43

his dreams are electrically transmitted onto a

42:45

TV that Dean has fallen asleep from,

42:47

and Dean kind of like wakes up

42:51

to the giant's nightmare on the screen. And

42:54

it's a very short thing, but it gives

42:56

us a hint of where he came from and what

42:58

he was designed for, like what

43:00

his old world looked like and what

43:02

happened to it. And it's very stylized,

43:04

it's very visually dramatic. You can find

43:06

it on YouTube and watch it quite

43:08

easily. But it's really the

43:10

only hint we get of about the giant's

43:13

past. And it makes me curious, what

43:15

you make of that scene? Like, did the

43:17

movie lose anything with that? Is it

43:19

useful to know more about the giant's past?

43:22

Did you want to know more about the

43:24

giant's past? So that scene's also incorporated into

43:26

what's the longer version called? Signature

43:29

Edition, which I did not watch this time.

43:31

I'd seen the scene before, and I watched

43:33

again before this episode. I think it's a

43:35

really striking piece of animation, but I think

43:38

we can already cut, I mean, if there's

43:40

a conclusion to draw from it, it's that

43:42

he is at some point designed to be

43:44

a weapon or to be a being of

43:46

war. I

43:49

think we kind of already get that already by

43:52

the whole way he reacts to guns and

43:54

how he kind of goes into Berserker mode

43:56

at that point. So I

43:58

don't think it necessarily tells us anything. didn't

44:00

know already, but I do kind of like

44:02

it as a scene. Yeah, I watched the

44:04

signature edition this time, which I don't think

44:07

I had seen before. If I

44:09

did, I'd forgotten it, but I was like, I don't recall

44:11

this, like seeing this scene in

44:13

the movie before or at this

44:15

point. And I was, I don't

44:18

want to say taken aback by it, but it definitely

44:20

like struck me for just sort

44:23

of the quick tonal shift moment

44:25

of it. I mean, obviously it's a nightmare,

44:27

but there's kind of

44:29

so much leading up to that is like the,

44:32

I mean, the soul scene, of

44:34

course, is very emotional in its own way,

44:36

but there's a lot of just like play

44:39

between Hogarth and the robot leading up to

44:41

that. It's a lot of their friendship development

44:44

that is leading up to there. And

44:47

it's just such a, again,

44:50

it's a nightmarish vision, you know, and

44:52

I think it does add a little

44:54

bit to the robot's characterization. And I

44:57

feel like it makes I am not

44:59

a gun hit a little harder. And

45:02

also sort of the implication

45:05

of world destruction at,

45:08

you know, that he was perhaps involved

45:10

with, I think also maybe

45:13

seeds the big final

45:15

Superman moment in a way that

45:18

is nice. So, I

45:20

mean, I think obviously the movie works perfectly

45:23

without it, but I did appreciate on

45:25

this viewing sort of the little

45:28

bit of like shading that it

45:30

adds both to the character and

45:32

to the feel of the movie

45:34

at that point in its story.

45:36

Well, there's a lot more that we can

45:38

talk about with the Iron Giant. I do

45:40

eventually want to get to the souls scene

45:42

and to some of the things that the

45:44

giant says, like we haven't really talked much

45:46

about his design or how he's characterized. But

45:49

again, I think all of those are things

45:51

maybe better brought up in connections with Wild

45:53

Robot because all of

45:55

these things I think are influencing what Wild

45:58

Robot is doing so much. So

46:00

we can hold all of that, but I

46:02

think we would regret leaving this conversation without

46:04

talking about the Superman moment. Okay, good. God,

46:07

I was like, she's not wrapping up without Superman, is she? So

46:11

here's my question. I have theories and I could hold

46:13

forth on this all day, but I'm going to shut

46:15

up and see what other people have to say. Why

46:17

does that moment hit as hard as it does? Why

46:21

can I still not to this

46:23

day watch that scene without tearing

46:25

up? Why is it what we all

46:27

remember? But in this

46:29

moment and the way it's designed makes

46:31

it hit as hard as it does.

46:34

Assuming that you share that response, I guess you

46:36

could also just come back and say, wait, what?

46:39

No, I think it's perfectly set up by

46:42

just sort of explaining who Superman is. The

46:44

whole speech about the whole self-determination thing we've

46:46

been talking about is like the ultimate moment

46:48

of that is like not he's the desire

46:50

and tries to finding who he is. And

46:53

at the same moment, sacrificing

46:55

that thing that sort of soul

46:57

he's earned, I guess, by deciding

47:00

to be not a gun. Yeah,

47:02

it's a great moment. It's such a great

47:04

moment. Well, A, I'm actually tearing up just

47:07

talking about him right now. But

47:10

I actually, I think there's a little

47:12

bit of like a feedback loop at

47:15

this point with that line, because

47:17

I started like full on crying,

47:19

not even tearing up, but full

47:21

on crying at that early

47:23

scene where Hogarth is showing him the Superman

47:25

comic. It's like, oh, he said the word.

47:27

It's like a trigger word for this movie

47:29

now, you know, just because I know what's

47:31

coming. But like, there's so

47:34

like many little pieces of it that I

47:36

think you could pick apart for why it

47:38

hits as hard as it does. I think

47:40

the line setting it up, like him remembering

47:42

Hogarth saying you are what you choose to

47:44

be, like that definitely kind of what's

47:47

the sports metaphor, Scott, where like it

47:49

tosses it up so that Superman

47:52

can dunk, you know, or Aliope. Yeah.

47:59

Yeah. is the alley-oop.

48:01

So that makes it work. And

48:03

then I alluded to it

48:05

earlier, but Vin Diesel, man, like, like this

48:07

is his his Lifetime Pass

48:09

movie for me, because I think like

48:12

the the voice is a huge, huge

48:14

part of it, you know, like it's

48:17

so perfectly chosen for

48:19

this. And like, yes, we all remember

48:22

that one word, but the robot has

48:24

a lot more lines than than just

48:26

this one, you know, and that there's

48:28

so this like, soulfulness

48:30

to it all that kind of

48:33

grows as the as

48:35

the movie progresses. And it just

48:37

culminates in the utterance of that

48:39

last utterance of Superman, like, there's

48:41

just like a peacefulness to it

48:43

that I think just makes it

48:46

hit and the look on the robot's

48:48

face. Like, it's also just a very

48:51

smart piece of animation, you know, but

48:53

just so the combination of all those

48:55

things that the line

48:57

setting it up, the visual, the voice,

48:59

it's just it's it's perfect. It's perfect.

49:01

And here I am crying

49:03

just thinking about it. I don't

49:06

want to take anything away from from I don't

49:08

mean this as glibly, because

49:10

I think you can be quite good,

49:12

but it's it's been Diesel's performance, right?

49:14

I mean, this is yeah, this is

49:16

it. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a

49:18

call me guilty kind of guy by myself.

49:22

People don't remember that film as well as I

49:25

do. It almost played more powerful

49:27

for me now than it did then

49:29

because I mean, since then, we've

49:31

obviously seen quite a few more superhero

49:34

movies since 1999. Then at that

49:37

time, and I think it's almost

49:39

there's something so primal and a

49:41

reminder of exactly what the significance

49:43

of a character like that would

49:45

be of the actions that

49:47

Iron Giant takes at that at that moment,

49:49

that type of heroes. I'm like, there's something

49:51

so pure about it. It's a kind of

49:53

a reminder of how, you know, something like

49:55

the Superman myth can have that

49:58

kind of a grip on you. emotionally

50:00

because now you feel, I think,

50:05

if anything, a little bit of a distance from it. Yeah,

50:08

for me, I think it just kinda comes

50:10

down to the beatific expression on his face

50:12

and the way he closes his eyes as

50:14

he goes towards death and smiles.

50:17

Like there's something, as you say, primal

50:19

about that, but there's also, I don't

50:22

know, like you know what's going on internally.

50:25

Like movies aren't always the most

50:27

internal medium, but in that

50:29

moment, you know exactly like where his head

50:32

space is. And it's not on the missile

50:34

in front of him. It's, he's

50:36

focusing on his own soul. You know, he's

50:38

focusing on what he's learned from Hogarth

50:40

and his confidence that he's

50:43

going to go on, which I don't

50:45

think it's a confidence that he's literally

50:47

going to physically survive this encounter. I

50:50

think that he's learned pretty recently that

50:52

there's a part of you that doesn't die. And

50:56

he knows that that important

50:58

part will go on. And

51:00

so, you know, dying to protect

51:02

the people that he's come to care about,

51:05

like it's just, it's such a compact,

51:08

simple way of communicating all of that with

51:10

just a couple of words. I think it's

51:12

really well done. But I think

51:14

one of the layup elements for me is

51:17

the little sequence where he turns to Hogarth

51:19

and says, you know, you stay,

51:21

I go, no following. I think the first

51:24

time I saw that, I thought, well, that's

51:26

cheating. He didn't even know English when Hogarth

51:28

said all of that to him. But watching

51:31

the movie again, I think it's really evident

51:33

that communication took him a while, but like

51:35

from the very start, he understood a lot

51:37

more than we expected. Like

51:40

the fact that he recognized that Hogarth risked

51:43

danger to save him and that the

51:46

gigantic external off switch that all power

51:48

plants have was key to that. Like

51:54

the fact that, you

51:56

know, before he seems to have many words that

51:59

he could actually vocal. He

52:01

was very clearly taking in things

52:05

that Hogarth said to him and

52:07

responding to them and carrying them

52:09

out. And I

52:11

think maybe just the understanding

52:13

that even back then before he

52:15

could really talk, he

52:17

was already learning from Hogarth. He

52:19

was already taking things in and

52:21

processing them is actually more touching

52:24

than I realized the first time I saw this

52:26

movie. I don't know. It's just it's

52:29

pretty perfect. It's pretty smoothly done

52:31

from a narrative perspective, from a

52:33

scripting perspective and from a performance

52:35

perspective. Is there anything any of

52:37

you don't like about this movie? But

52:39

like this is like a pretty perfect

52:41

movie for me. Yeah, it's it's one

52:44

of I mean, we've

52:46

probably done movies, I think, are

52:48

better movies, but but there's this does not give

52:50

you a lot to cook, but not not a

52:52

lot better. As far as like achieving what it

52:55

sets out to do. Yeah, no, this is this

52:57

is a wonderful movie. I'm really I've loved it

52:59

since it was first in theaters. I think I

53:01

saw it twice when it was in theaters and

53:04

was bummed that more people didn't. But

53:06

I've been happy to see it get

53:08

a second life. I mean, I was

53:11

able to see it with my daughter at the

53:13

music box when it kind of got a little revival right before

53:15

it came out on Blu-ray, I believe. And

53:18

yeah, no, it's it's it's it's lived on. It's it's one

53:20

of those movies like maybe you didn't find its audience the

53:22

first time around. But I think that audience just keeps growing

53:24

and growing. And also

53:26

he wonderfully turns up

53:28

and ready player one is is a is

53:30

a bad ass, bad ass weapon. Just like

53:33

just like he is in this movie, right?

53:38

I am 100 percent fine with that

53:40

because to me that appearance is

53:42

just kind of commentary on how

53:44

fandom kind of ruins everything. No,

53:46

I get it. Picks

53:48

things up and mischaracterizes stuff. It 1000

53:50

percent makes sense to me that somebody

53:52

that grew up with this movie and

53:54

loved it, like, for all

53:56

the reasons Brad Bird intended, would also

53:58

just be like, oh, That's

56:00

just it. This does not seem like an easy or

56:02

quick movie to discuss. I'm

56:05

looking forward to how Adam and Josh parse through

56:07

it because I found them very useful

56:10

in the past in

56:12

honing in on a few

56:15

sharp, smart topics, like ways

56:17

of discussing big, sprawling

56:19

movies. Anatomy of a

56:21

Fall comes to mind in terms of, I

56:24

think, a much better movie than Megalopolis. Definitely

56:26

a much more kind of brings

56:28

across what it's actually trying to do

56:31

movie, but I'm looking forward to their take

56:33

on it. They're good at what they do. As

56:35

for feedback, here's one from our listener Pete

56:37

about our last pairing, focusing in on how

56:39

the savages treats caregivers and the elderly. This

56:42

was a long one. We edited it somewhat for length

56:44

to get to more of the ideas that Pete's laying

56:47

out, but it's still on the long slide. Genevieve, could

56:49

you read this one for us? Sure. I

56:51

was struck by how differently I reacted to Tasha's view

56:53

of the opening scene with David Zias' Eduardo,

56:56

the home healthcare professional handling Lenny, a man

56:58

not yet being treated for dementia. Tasha

57:01

felt that the scene showed a small character getting

57:03

some real shading to them, and I agree

57:05

with that, but where she saw a healthcare

57:07

worker trying to do their job while retaining

57:09

some respect and preserving professional boundaries, I

57:11

saw elder abuse that made me keep a careful eye

57:13

on Lenny throughout the movie. The unflushed

57:16

poop in the toilet is obviously the last

57:18

straw for Eduardo, their relationship clearly strained to

57:20

the point that they are both ready to

57:22

argue over, well, bullshit. But Eduardo's solution is

57:24

to take a grown man's food from him and

57:26

put it in the fridge, saying he can't get

57:28

his weed checks back until he flushes the toilet.

57:31

However much of a pain in the ass Lenny

57:33

is, and no matter how well Eduardo takes care

57:35

of Lenny's girlfriend, Lenny doesn't deserve to

57:37

be disrespected so brazenly. I

57:40

didn't think it was tactful gamesmanship at all,

57:42

it was just plain cruel in the most

57:44

everyday believable way. I hope Eduardo

57:46

reflected on his actions while scrubbing shit off the

57:48

wall, but the reality is he likely left out

57:50

details and a call to his manager, and held

57:52

firm in his assertion that he is not a

57:54

housekeeper, the shit staying there in the old couple's

57:56

house stinking it up until one of the girlfriend's

57:59

kids cleaned it up.