15 Fun Facts About THE IRON GIANT

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Director Brad Bird's The Iron Giant is my favorite animated movie of all time. It's a shame that it didn't do well at the box office. That's Warner Bros.' fault though, because they didn't market the damn thing. Oh well, it didn't stop it from being a classic and gaining a large loyal audience over the years. 

I decided to dig into it for my next Fun Facts list and see if there was anything I didn't know about the movie. Turns out there was a lot! So here are 15 Fun Facts for The Iron Giant, that you may or may not already know about. 

• The Iron Giant only said a total of 53 words. That does not include the yelling and groans.
• There is a moving star in the scene where the Iron Giant looks over the hill at Rockwell on the right hand side. That is meant to be Sputnik.
• The two trainmen that Kent interviews after the train derail, "Frank" and "Ollie", are actually caricatures of Disney classic animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston. They also lend their voices to these characters. According to Animation writer Earl Kress, “Frank and Ollie are also life-long train enthusiasts and have extensive scale model railroads in their backyards like Walt Disney used to have." They also appeared in The Incredibles.

• Peter Cullen, Sean Connery, Frank Welker, and James Earl Jones were considered for the voice of The Iron Giant, but it ultimately went to Vin Diesel.
• This was the first traditionally-animated feature film to have a major character that was fully computer-generated: the Giant. In order to better blend the computer-generated Giant into the traditionally-animated film, animation technicians developed a program that gave the Giant's lines a slight "wobble", so that it would match the natural line imperfections found in hand-drawn animation.
• When Hogarth first shows the Giant his Superman comics, the theme music from the 1941 Max Fleischer Superman cartoons is heard in the background.
• The movie was originally supposed to be a musical, and it was developed as a stage musical by Pete Townshend (The Who) and Des McAnuff. They used songs from Townshend's concept album "The Iron Man”. Thankfully they didn’t turn this into a musical; the movie is perfect the way it is and I can’t imagine it being a musical. Townshend was a producer on the film.
• When the Iron Giant's hand is standing in front of the TV seemingly watching it, there was a Maypo commercial. It was originally supposed to be the opening to Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, but the filmmakers couldn't secure the rights.

The Iron Giant movie clips: http://j.mp/1J9fEyF BUY THE MOVIE: http://j.mp/Mgr2h5 Don't miss the HOTTEST NEW TRAILERS: http://bit.ly/1u2y6pr CLIP DESCRIPTION: Hogarth (Eli Marienthal) is placed in a difficult situation when the Giant's severed hand snoops around the kitchen.

• The newspaper headline that Dean McCoppin is reading, "Disaster Seen as Catastrophe Looms" is similar to the headline that Jim Dear is reading in Disney's Lady and the Tramp (1955) and also that Jiminy Cricket is reading in Fun & Fancy Free.
• As Hogarth arms himself to hunt down the "invaders from Mars," a Bugs Bunny figure can be seen inside his toy chest.
• In the scene where Kent is using the Hughes' phone, there is a funny-looking oven mitt hanging on the wall. That is said to be a stylized version of the "family dog" which was a animated short that Bird directed for Steven Spielberg's TV series Amazing Stories. Looks like a cow to me, but I’ll let you decide. 

HOG HUG?! The Iron Giant (1999) Starring the Animating Talent of Richard Bazley, Bob Davies, Stephan Franck, Tony Fucile, Gregory S.E. Manwaring, Steve Markowski, Mike Nguyen, Wendy Perdue, Chris Suave, Dean Wellins, as well as Lauren Faust.

• There's a dartboard in Dean's home that has the same colors and pattern as The Who's mod 'target' logo, a tribute to the band even though they didn't come together until seven years after the movie is set. 
• There’s a point in the movie when Hogarth goes to check the antenna on the roof of his house after the TV starts to have fuzzy issues. He finds that the antenna has been bitten off. This is apparently a deliberate reference to the "Metal-Munching Mice" in a Rocky and Bullwinkle story.
• Dean's newspaper in the diner scene had an ad for a "Battery Operated Moon Explorer," which was a replica of the tin toy robots box front of the era. There's a point where the film cuts away from that image, and when we come back to it the ad is mysteriously replaced by another ad for a lounge chair .
• Brad Bird personally animated the scene that featured Hogarth ranting to Dean about his problems in a super fast-paced manner after he drinks an espresso.

Here's the original trailer:

original trailer for the movie

Thanks to IMDB for the info!