Breaking The Scene —The Iron Giant (Saying Grace)
Here’s a scene that’s funny, creative, and does a great job of showing off the protagonist’s most endearing traits.
Written by: Tim McCanlies
Scene Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydMwnnhLnLU
Scene Context:
Hogarth has hidden the Iron Giant in his home. His mom doesn’t know anything about this.
Scene Conflicts:
- Hogarth needs to keep the Iron Giant hidden
- The Iron Giant is clumsy, massive, and doesn’t know the danger it’s in
Scene Outline:
- Hogarth’s mom prepositions him to say grace before they eat. He begrudgingly agrees, but…
- He sees the giant’s hand, walking through the kitchen. Says, shocked, “Oh my god.”
- His mom gives him a quizzical look. Hogarth recovers and continues grace, but also continues yelling at the hand.
- The hand finally leaves and Hogarth finishes grace, his mom concerned. He quickly excuses himself to wash his hands.
- Hogarth finds the hand in the living room, flicking through different TV shows. He grabs the hand and tries to lead it out of the house.
- He sees his mom blocking the first exit. He tries a second one, but to take it would put them in direct sight of his mom. He creates a distraction and leads the hand across to the exit.
- He opens the door to Kip Mansley, the government agent searching for the Iron Giant. Hogarth immediately shuts the door, but finds that the hand is gone.
- He begrudgingly reopens the door to Kip, who asks for a parent. Hogarth’s mom comes forth and lets Kip inside, to Hogarth’s dismay.
Why It Works:
Problems Keep Falling: The scene maintains a steady string of tension by never giving Hogarth an easy out. Sure, some of the problems he encounters are solved relatively quickly, but there’s always a new problem following his solution. He gets through saying grace by the gift of his mother’s seemingly lenient attitude, but then must actively avoid his mother who, of course, perfectly blocks each exit route he has in mind. It forces him to get more creative with each solution, and this creativity is one of the many things that allows Hogarth to shine as an endearing protagonist.
Reasonable Leniency: The mother is a bit clueless in this scene, and though she gets fairly close to catching Hogarth, she never conducts a full investigation into Hogarth’s behavior. Though it’s often a bad idea to let characters ignore problems for the sake of helping the protagonist, here it’s justified by the character of the mother, who has been established as someone who works relentlessly to supply for her and Hogarth. It makes sense, then, that she might be a bit less critical of Hogarth and his exceedingly strange activities- she just wants this time to relax.
Humor in Absurdity: The premise of the film itself is perfectly set up for comedy. This is a child who has to cover up a massive robot from his mom, and then, from the government. The premise is then wonderfully exemplified in this scene, which draws it’s comedic aspect directly from the irony inherent in his idea. On top of this, the scene is made funny by the sheer absurdity of having to say grace while also commanding your robot to hide itself.
Worst Possible Scenario: What really helps make this scene so great is the inclusion of Kip Mansley. It’s always a good idea to give your protagonist the worst possible situation they can find themselves in, and it can’t get much worse for Hogarth when, at his doorstep, is the agent looking for his robot. Now he not only needs to hide the robot from his mom, but from the overly inquisitive Kip. This sets up a nice conflict which, of course, builds steadily throughout the film’s ensuing second act.
Summary:
This is a film that does an extraordinary job of maintaining humor and emotion. Scenes like this, which force the protagonist adapt to the increasingly absurd and hilarious circumstances of his situation, allow the audience to better sympathize with his dilemma. By ending this scene on the stakes-ramping introduction of Kip Mansley, the audience is promised that this is far from the last problem Hogarth is going to have to solve.
