IDD301
Original Stories (The Iron Giant)
The Iron Giant is well liked by many due to the emotions it gives its viewers, nothing else. The Iron Giant is a feel good story that most people can somewhat relate to at some point in their lives. We all have been children, we all have not been believed when we told the truth. Sometimes we love the most random unaffectionate things. This is why so many people like The Iron Giant because we are drawn into the story ourselves, and our emotions are easily played with. However, The Iron Giant is no different from most other mainstream animations and in no way is it better.
The Iron Giant’s story is strikingly similar to E.T. (1982),The Iron Giant comes from Warner Brothers Studios. Warner Brothers Studios is a very successful film studio, but a very unsuccessful animation film studio having previously released two failing mainstream animations.
Warner Brothers has remained mired in the lackluster morass that nearly killed animation during the '80s. The distributor's big effort of several years ago, The Quest for Camelot, remains one of the most depressing animated underachievers of the decade. And this year's The King and I was an absolute embarrassment - a new nadir in animated miscalculation. (Tobias)
The Iron Giant’s story is strikingly similar to E.T. (1982),
The Iron Giant is basically E.T. in reverse: same starry-eyed story of a boy befriending an alien, only here, it’s the boy’s simple wisdom that makes an impression on the alien, not the other way around. And while there’s no single image in The Iron Giant to match the iconic shot of children cycling in silhouette under the moonlight, there isn’t much difference between that flight and a young boy cradled into the palm of a 100-foot-tall robot, catching a bird’s-eye view of a seaside town in New England. (Tobias)
People love these stories because it is like their childhood experiences with their dog. You know, the old story of a boy finding a stray dog, making it his best friend and begging his parents to allow him to keep it.
Avatar is another film with a very similar storyline along with Fern Gully. How to Train Your Dragon is also no different from The Iron Giant. In fact, I think it is better, because although there are many fictional novels that are similar to this film, there are not as many dragon films as there are robot films. The mystical dragon worlds are a much better escape than robots made of everyday junk in the woods. Short-Circuit (1986) and Short-Circuit 2 are two other films with the same story as The Iron Giant (1999),
Struck by lightning, an endearing little robot known only as "Number 5" escapes from an experimental electronics firm. Technician Newton Crosby (Steven Gluttenberg) and his indecipherable East Indian assistant, Ben Jabituya (Fisher Stevens), set out to locate Number 5 before the military can go through with its plans to destroy the robot. Number 5 takes refuge with loopy Stephanie Speck (Ally Sheedy), who is convinced that the mechanical man is an extraterrestrial. Hoping to teach the "alien" all about Earth, she fills Number 5's memory banks with reams of pop culture -- and then the real fun begins. (Erickson)
This sounds like it could be almost any of the films I have mentioned, especially Iron Giant. That is the synopsis for one of the Short Circuit films, who thought their idea was good enough to make another.
Bicentenial Man (1999) also has a very similar story following a robot who is thrown into a human world and learns over time how to live with humans while avoiding being destroyed by most of them. A similar story also comes from the Prehysteria! Franchise of three films from 1993-1995. (Sutton) Batteries Not Included (1987), according to Robert Hartill, is yet another with a similar story.
I could go on with more, but I think my point is made. Although, I am not saying the story is a bad story, I am saying it is a great story due to its emotional power over most people, but it is an extremely overused concept. Sure, after tens of thousands of years of storytelling, if you generalize enough, no story is original, but with such a long history of storytelling, we can retell ancient stories and even adapt them any way we want. Homer’s The Iliad is a good example of this, being made into/adapted into a few good films such as Helen of Troy, and one of my favorite films, Troy. Ancient Greek stories always get me excited and entertain me, along with taking me to a great escape world. Jason and the Argonauts is also a good example of the ancient story of the Quest of the Golden Fleece. An Adaptation example is Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief; this is not the greatest film of all time but I did find it funny and entertaining. An example of this that we have viewed in class is Spirited Away. I do not know much about Japanese mythology, so I am not too sure exactly how much of this is based completely on Japanese mythology and how much was created by Hayao Miyazaki.
Spirited Away is filled with Japanese mythological and folk symbols that stand for things and foreshadow events. Even if you do not understand what they stand for, it is novel and interesting to see, then you can look them up after the movie. Some of the symbols include the stone marker that the family car crashed into at the beginning. This cinematography of focusing on this odd stone let the audience know that it means something even if you have never heard of it. According to an Independent London newspaper, that stone is the god of the highways. The bathhouse was staffed with “not-of-this-world” Japanese clay-toys such as the “frogs and sullen girls who are the spirit of slugs.” The white radish man is the god of home, and also is shaped to look a bit like a sumo wrestler, according to the article. The Otori is the bird spirits splashing in the baths. From folklore, Miyazaki borrowed horned rampagers in shaggy seaweed coats, namahage demons from the coast of the Sea of Japan along with a “haunting troupe of immortals” hiding behind abstract masks worn for their dances at their shrine. The older human girl character, Rin, is the kitsune or fox messenger of the heavens. “She's a white fox, the luck-bringing vulpine who guards the shrines of the god of the fields.” The giant rotten spirit who spewed garbage all over the bathhouse represents the Great River God which “after spewing out garbage reveals his true mask with its Noh bristled eyebrows of benignity.” The hero of this character is often the dragon that the boy turns into which is called the soul of the built-over stream. According to the London article, there are no true bad guys in Japanese culture, since everything with bad qualities, is also benevolent in other ways, yet Miyazaki made adaptations with adversaries in Spirited Away.
Miyazaki created the soot critters in this film which are called susuwatari in Japan, which means mobile soot. These soot critters slave for the spider soul brewing the medicinal water/tea according to the article. The London article claimed that there was a somewhat novel kami called No Face which “hides behind a mask of pathos. It could be a Buddhist hungry ghost, anguished with unappeasable want, but Miyazaki calls it a lonely heart, even a stalker, who swallows the desires of others consuming others in the process). Because Miyazaki believes in the virtue of makoto - a sincere heart - he grants it redemption, busy with crafts in the good witch's cottage. Bliss.” (Rule)
The greedy owner of the resort, Yu Baba, and her twin sister who is the witch of the forest which Chihiro reaches at the end by commuter train, which is contemporary magic, according to the article, drew on Japanese shamans with a human head and a bird body, and even more on bird-women of Siberian legend. The article describes Yu Baba's suite which is decorated in Meiji style which is adopted from the West after the opening-up of Japan in 1853 after being isolated.
The adaptation of ancient foreign stories is what can be found original today, and for a long time. Spirited Away is an animated film that will be remembered and adored for a long time, unlike Iron Giant, an adaptation of the recent domestic story The Iron Man, which is also currently a hot series of films starring Robert Downey, Jr.
Works Cited
Erickson, Hal. "Short Circuit." IMDb. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Nov 2010.
Hartill, Robert. "Batteries Not Included." IMDb. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Nov 2010.
Rule, Vera. "The London Eye: The Gods Must be Hazy." Independent 14 Sep. 2003, Print
Sutton, Ed. "Prehysteria!." IMDb. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Nov 2010.
Tobias, Scott. "The Iron Giant." IMDb. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Nov 2010.
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