In an interview just before the release of his animated feature, The Iron Giant, in 1999, director Brad Bird said of the film’s story, “I would probably put it somewhere between playing around with the formula and throwing it out. I think, in many ways, playing around with it is throwing it out. We are not re-inventing storytelling. There are many antecedents to this film – The Day the Earth Stood Still, King Kong, Frankenstein, E.T., even Terminator 2.”

Although it had its roots in several other films, many considered The Iron Giant something new and daring during the animation renaissance of the 1990s. When it opened on August 6, 1999, Roger Ebert wrote, “…The Iron Giant is happy to be a ‘real movie’ in everything but live action. There are no cute little animals and not a single musical number: It’s a story, plain and simple.”

Ebert added, “It works as a lot of animation does, to make you forget from time to time that these are moving drawings because the story and characters are so compelling.”

Twenty-five years later, many believe all of this is still true about The Iron Giant. A box-office disappointment on its initial release, the film has developed a devoted following and respect in the two and a half decades since its debut.

Based on the story, The Iron Man, by the late poet laureate Ted Hughes, The Iron Giant takes place in the fictional town of Rockwell, Maine, in the late 1950s, during the Cold War era. A young boy named Hogarth Hughes (voiced by Eli Marienthal) discovers a 50-foot-tall robot (Vin Diesel) in the forest. Hogarth lures him home and hides the Giant in his barn. The young boy tries to keep the Iron Giant a secret from his mom, Annie (Jennifer Aniston) but confides in a local beatnik named Dean (Harry Connick Jr.).

A nosy government agent named Kent Mansby (Christopher McDonald) arrives in town, and soon the locals grow suspicious and paranoid. Hogarth tries to hide the robot as the situation escalates. The Iron Giant finds himself in a position to save the town’s residents.

Bird first came aboard as director of The Iron Giant during an “open house” at Warner Bros., where concepts for future films were displayed, and he first saw some early artwork. “It struck me and stayed with me,” said Bird in 1999. “It was the image of a big iron man and a little boy. I saw a lot of projects that same day; everything that was in development was on display. There were probably 40 or 50 projects in development. But [The Iron Giant] really cut through all of it, and I found myself thinking about it later.”

“He took it and did his own treatment of it,” noted The Iron Giant’s producer, Allison Abbate, in a 1999 interview. “He basically updated it and fleshed it out more. The story is very poetic and very ethereal. It’s a beautiful story, but Brad put more detail into it. The nice thing about it is that we have completely captured the spirit and the heart of the book.”

That heart became the connection between the film’s two main characters. “The relationship between the two is that Hogarth is the parent, and the Giant is the child,” said Bird. The Iron Giant also contains a touching message, as expressed by Hogarth in the film: “You are who you choose to be.”

Bird chose to be a filmmaker at a young age. In fact, as a teenager, he made his own animated film, which caught the attention of the Disney Studio. Bird was eventually brought to Disney, where he mentored under several of Walt’s “Nine Old Men.”

Bird paid tribute to his “Disney roots” in The Iron Giant by giving Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston cameos in the film, as two train engineers interviewed by Kent after they come in contact with the Giant. The two characters were not only caricatures of Frank and Ollie, but the legendary animators also provided their voices.

After Disney, Bird went on to work for Steven Spielberg, directing an animated episode of the Amazing Stories anthology TV show entitled “Family Dog” (which eventually became a series). In 1989, Bird joined The Simpsons and, after being a part of the iconic series for several years, left to pursue other projects, eventually leading him to The Iron Giant.

In 2000, Bird joined Pixar and directed some of the studio’s most popular films, 2004’s The Incredibles (which featured another cameo by Frank and Ollie), Ratatouille (2007), and The Incredibles 2 (2018).

Bird also made the leap to live-action directing with Mission Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011) and Disney’s Tomorrowland (2015).

Just before his first feature, The Iron Giant was released twenty-five years ago this summer, Bird shared advice that’s led to so much success in his career.

“I don’t know how many times I heard, ‘You haven’t got a prayer,’” he said. “To anyone who’s out there reading this and has something different that they’re going to do – just grit your teeth and get what you want on to the screen.”