Script To Screen: “The Iron Giant”

A dramatic scene from the wonderful 1999 animated movie The Iron Giant, screenplay by Tim McCanlies, screen story by Brad Bird, book by Ted Hughes.

Plot Summary: A boy makes friends with an innocent alien giant robot that a paranoid government agent wants to destroy.

Here is the movie version of the scene:

Many differences between the script and the movie. Here are a few:

• Much less dialogue which is so often the case. Through the shooting, editing and testing process, filmmakers will find the visuals make what seemed like necessary exposition unneeded.
• Instead of three errant rockets, only one. That’s an intriguing choice because multiple warheads creates — in theory — a more dramatic scenario, putting the Giant into more of an underdog role. However here, I suspect what went on is they wanted to focus on the emotional point of the scene — the Giant’s self-sacrifice — and making it Giant vs. one rocket allowed them to do that.
• And there’s this: “Superman.” The actualization of the Giant’s metamorphosis into something bigger than himself by embracing his connection to humanity.

Such a terrific movie. And whatever happened to this dude Brad Bird? Anybody know?

One of the single best things you can do to learn the craft of screenwriting is to read the script while watching the movie. After all a screenplay is a blueprint to make a movie and it’s that magic of what happens between printed page and final print that can inform how you approach writing scenes. That is the purpose of Script to Screen, a Go Into The Story series where we analyze a memorable movie scene and the script pages that inspired it.

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