PRGAAMWA Game #5: The Iron Giant vs. Night Watch
What do a nice, animated family film and a moody, Russian horror/fantasy/action film have in common? Nothing, except for publicity. If it weren’t for internet buzz, Night Watch would have had the same fate as The Iron Giant: no one, at least in the United States, would have gone to see it in the theater.
The Iron Giant didn’t get the publicity that it deserved because Brad Bird fought the studio to maintain the movie’s integrity. There are no musical numbers, talking animals or zany sidekicks. It’s just a story about a 50 foot tall robot that fell from space and a boy’s effort to protect it.
I can’t think of a single thing I don’t like about The Iron Giant. The animation is brilliant. The casting is awesome. It’s Vin Diesel’s finest acting. And it’s the only cartoon that ever made me cry. Yes, I cried when the Iron Giant muttered “Superman” and assumed the proper Superman pose as he collided with a nuclear missile. It even ended on a good note that wasn’t sickening sweet or annoying. After I cried, I smiled.
I just wish I could have seen it in the theater; in 1999, I’d had no idea that it even came out. I knew about Night Watch probably a full year before it was released in the U.S., thanks to the internet. So I caught it at the local art house theater in a poorly ventilated screening room that sat maybe fifty people. It was uncomfortable and stinky.
To enjoy Night Watch, you have to be willing to turn your head off until the end of the movie. If you take a second to think about a scene you just saw, you’ll miss the next thing; that’s how fast it goes. It’s cut like a music video with some video game footage thrown in and will send anyone with ADHD into convulsions. Walking out of the theater, I felt like I had just spent two hours running desperately to keep up with a treadmill that was set to “kill”.
Although it has vampires, it’s not a vampire movie as many critics pegged it. Night Watch is full of shape shifters, dark and light magicians and who knows what else (unless you’ve read the books, then you do know what else). There are some interesting ideas that aren’t explored and I can’t decide if that due to cool, Russian aloofness or laziness on the film maker’s part. I love the idea that a vampire has to get a license to suck blood and that magicians and shape shifters have just as much bureaucracy to deal with as we do.
Night Watch had it’s problems, but knowing that it’s the first of a trilogy helped. If it had been a stand alone movie, I wouldn’t have liked it as much. The Iron Giant is a nice package by itself (stop giggling) and it’s like ginger ale. It leaves a nice taste in your mouth (shut up). This match goes to The Iron Giant.
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Here’s how it works for the first PRGAAMWA Tournament: John and I each had thirty seconds to pull eight genre movies from our DVD shelf for a total of sixteen movies. Then we did random seeding with our match-ups: with eyes closed, we each grabbed a DVD from the pile. Whichever two we pulled are matched up in the first round of the tournament.
The scores so far. . .
Game #1: Batman Begins struggled past Mulholland Drive
Game #2: Serenity fed Clash of the Titans to the Kraken
Game #4: Ladyhawke nails it to Planet of the Apes, despite it’s army of poop flinging primates.
![Night Watch [Blu-ray]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/611oGW4sJdL._SL75_.jpg "Night Watch [Blu-ray]")
No way!
I don’t know, I think I’m going to have to go with Lisa on this one. While Night Watch was an amazingly cool movie, and was really innovative in the way it presented the subtitling, the only reason it worked for me was that I knew it was the first movie of a trilogy. If there was nothing else coming, then Night Watch was a bit of a story-telling mess. I think that judging each movie on it’s own merits (and not allowing it to bring future friends to the fight), Iron Giant wins hands down.
That said, I can’t wait for Day Watch (seen the trailer yet?).
Let’s get something straight before we start. I have not seen either of these films. Well I may have seen some of Iron Giant when I was drunk (or high on marker pens depending on the holiday) but I’m not sure that counts as I was probably crawling around the ceiling eating bugs ands reinventing cheese. So we’ll not go there now. K? K.
Right. So this opinion is solely based on the DVD box covers. Which is just AND fair because you CAN judge a book by its cover – that’s how porn works dagnammit.
So lets start with Night Watch:- Hmmmm… half a face, some silhouetted parrots in flight, grim grey landscape (possibly Hull), industrial font… I am guessing this a critique about the illegal import of tropical aviary into Northern England in the late 1960s as a protest against the Vietnam War. Could be a winner as this subject always touches me deeply – akin to the sensation supplied by a glass rod.
Iron Giant: – BIG BLOOMIN ROBOT!! HOOOOOZAH!!! AND ITS A CARTOON!! IT’S A CARTOON ABOUT A BIG BLOOMIN ROBOT!!! WINNER! WINNER! WINNER!
If you haven’t already done so, do yourself a favor and read the book Night Watch is based on. I was really pretty disappointed with the movie adaptation, it pretty much ended ⅓ of the way through the book (and the book is the first in a trilogy, so it’s not like the book was split into three parts).
Lisa and I have both read the book – I was wondering if the movie trilogy was simply the book split up into three parts, but I guess you’ve put those questions to rest. The book was pretty great, although I have to say that the final story in the book kind of lost me for a bit.
Yes! I’m glad to see I’m not the only person my age that cried at the end of “The Iron Giant”. I dug Night Watch as a stand alone movie and am really looking forward to seeing the rest of the movies in the trilogy but I love “The Iron Giant”.
The Iron Giant was one of the those movies I kinda scoffed at when John suggested we watch it because on the cover it seemed silly. The crying took me completely by surprise.
I can’t even begin to tell you how disappointed I was with Night Watch. I saw the Russian version right after it was released and found it to be a slow, convoluted mess that skirted with some interesting ideas just long enough for the viewer to realize what they were missing. A Russian friend of mine was watching it with me and he explained any subtleties the English subtitles might have missed. It didn’t do anything for the movie.
Iron Giant, on the other hand, was one of the best animated movies to come out in the past decade.
Iron Giant! Big Robot, little boy. There’s a litte of each in every man.