The Book That Became The Iron Giant

Sometimes connecting the dots between creative industries leads to some intriguing discoveries. For example, did you know that the 1999 Warner Bros. cult classic animated film The Iron Giant, directed by Brad Bird, was actually loosely based on a 1968 children’s novel written by British author and editor Ted Hughes, the poet Sylvia Plath’s widower? “Loosely” is a key word here.

Ted Hughes’s The Iron Man is a lighthearted science fiction novel that’s palatable for children while still offering enough mature themes to appeal to adult readers. In the book, a machine-like entity made entirely out of iron appears out of thin air. He has no explained origin, no creation story, and he has the ability to reassemble himself when his body falls apart. He hungers for metal food and must learn to peacefully coexist with the human race. When he does, he steps up to defend it when a major threat appears from outer space.

Ted Hughes and Brad Bird both seemed to like the idea of taking the concept of Mary Shelley’s scientifically engineered, misunderstood monster and expanding upon it. However, as scholar T.S. Miller explains in his 2009 article for Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, The Iron Man and The Iron Giant have significant differences that reflect the creators’ visions for storytelling.

Miller describes The Iron Giant as “a sort of dramatic ‘reanimation’ of the 1968 children’s novel by Ted Hughes. Indeed,” he continues, “the adaptation borrows little from the book other than its title and its central characters.”

Perhaps the most significant difference between the book and the film is the character placed at the narrative’s center:  the great iron being or his young human companion, Hogarth. In Ted Hughes’s original book, the character of Hogarth is a minor, secondary figure who redirects the Giant’s ravenous appetite for metal away from a town’s essential farm equipment and towards the local scrap heap. He and the Iron Man share a tender friendship that is a stepping stone to the Iron Man’s slow welcoming into the community. The Iron Man and his redemption arc remain, at all times, the central focus of the story’s plot, while Hogarth as a character is minimally developed.

However, in Brad Bird’s film adaptation, Hogarth is promoted to a full, three-dimensional protagonist with his own arc into maturity and responsibility. Seemingly friendless, raised by a single mother who works at all hours, and possessing a streetwise strand of independence, Bird’s Hogarth takes on the role of nurturer to the Iron Giant, who is as alone in the world as he is. Hogarth teaches the Giant right from wrong, demonstrates how to connect with nature, and, as Miller comments further in his article, fills in the emotional gap left behind by the Giant’s never-explored prologue.

“In the beginning, Hogarth does not know the giant, and the giant does not know himself,” writes Miller. “Even so, his dramatic act of autopoiesis serves as an early sign that, with the proper direction from a ‘parent’ and educator like Hogarth, the Iron Giant is capable of achieving a destiny independent from both the mistakes and the possibly less than-noble intentions of the creator who abandoned him across interstellar space.”

Whether or not the Iron Man/Giant needs a mentor to make his story meaningful is a matter of opinion. Ted Hughes seemed to take the stance that a sense of morality develops naturally through experiences and interactions with other creatures. Brad Bird maintains that it is developed through the hand-held guidance that only a sympathetic, more experienced person can provide. Same story, two vastly different takes.

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