The murder that inspired the making of 1999’s ‘The Iron Giant’
Any young millennial or fan of 1990s animation will be able to sing the praises of 1999’s The Iron Giant from the rooftops, even if the film has been almost entirely forgotten about by the wider industry. Helmed by the three-time Oscar-winning filmmaker Brad Bird, who would later bring Pixar’s Incredibles and Ratatouille to life, The Iron Giant is the director’s forgotten masterpiece that was born out of tragedy.
Having directed two early episodes of The Simpsons in the early 1990s, Bird dedicated much of the remaining decade to his feature-length debut, The Iron Giant. Based on the 1968 novel penned by the poet Ted Hughes in response to his children’s grief following the suicide of their mother, Sylvia Plath, the tale, which follows a giant robot’s friendship with a young boy, was always rooted in human catastrophe.
Indeed, this fact regarding the book’s creation acted as a great inspiration for Bird himself, who was working through the tragedy of the death of his sister, Susan, who was killed by her estranged husband.
Such became the basis for a story that has its themes locked into the anxieties of nuclear power in the 1950s, as well as the loss of humanity that comes with any violent conflict. Wishing to underpin his children’s movie with a very real moral message about how violence and war can crush innocence, Bird presented the film with the central conceit of ‘What if a gun had a soul, and didn’t want to be a gun?’.
Wishing that The Iron Giant would “make us feel like we’re all part of humanity [which] is something we need to feel”, writer Tim McCanlies further stated about the project: “At a certain point, there are deciding moments when we pick who we want to be. And that plays out for the rest of your life. I feel like I got my sense of right and wrong from books and movies. Maybe a movie can be a life preserver for some kid”.
The murder of his sister certainly inspired Bird to reassess his own life and his approach towards the 1999 film. Speaking in the 2016 documentary The Giant’s Dream: The Making of The Iron Giant, Bird explained: “My sister Susan, who I love very much and was very close to, died of gun violence…Pointlessly, she was killed by her husband. I was devastated… When you shoot somebody, you’re not just killing that person. You’re killing a part of all the people that love that person”.
As a result of Bird’s artistry and compassion, he has helped provide children worldwide with the basis for their moral beliefs, ending The Iron Giant with a credit to his beloved sister: “For Susan”.
