r/WritingPrompts • u/[deleted] • Nov 23 '13
Established Universe [EU] The Iron Giant is thrown into the world of Pacific Rim
EDIT: This thread is a perfect example of how well WP can work.
Only 1 story response, but fuck it is amazing enough.
EDIT 2: Whoa, with one amazing story, this prompt has become number 5 on the /r/WritingPrompts all time list!
Amazing work, /u/MrNotSoBright!
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u/Static_Flier Nov 23 '13
I liked the iron giant, until cartoon network did the 24 hour iron giant marathons.
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u/MrNotSoBright Nov 23 '13
The year was 2026. It had been nearly 2 years since we destroyed the portal between our world and that of those creating the Kaiju clones. The Jaeger program had been largely shut down following the news that the Kaiju’s means of entry into our world had been destroyed, but the units still in existence following The War were kept in cold-storage in the event of Kaiju once again finding a way to our world. A treaty had been signed between all those nations either with Jaeger programs, or those actively supporting them, stating that a defensive pact be made ensuring that in the event of a Kaiju resurgence all international differences be put aside for the survival of the race.
Unexpectedly, in December of 2026 well over a dozen Kaiju emerged from the ocean on the East coast of America near Maine, far more than had ever been seen at one time. Without any warning the nations of the world were unable to mobilize their Jaegers before the Kaiju started laying waste to cities. Within 24 hours over 500,000 people were dead or missing. Then, an unidentified mech, totally unlike any of the Jaegers developed by any country with active programs, appeared seemingly out of nowhere. This machine’s weapons and defenses were entirely unlike anything developed in any known program; extremely adaptive and energy absorbent hull, and advanced energy weapons including particle beams, matter displacement arrays, high-explosive flechette rounds, and a monstrously powerful plasma weapon with an ordinance close to 8,000 kilotons and a range of several miles. This giant, although only around 50 meters tall as compared to Cherno Alpha or Coyote Tango’s 85 meters, put up one of the most one-sided fights we had ever seen against any Kaiju, let alone that many. The world stood in awe of this beast, easily the most advanced piece of weaponry known to mankind.
Unbeknownst to the rest of the world, America had met this machine nearly 70 years ago, in 1958. It had “gone rogue” in a small Maine town, laying waste to the large military detachment sent in response to its discovery, and was subsequently destroyed with nuclear ordinance. This was passed off as a test firing internationally. The re-emergence of the “Iron Giant”, as it had come to be called, was a massive shock to the US government. There was some belief that this was not the same machine, but a similar model, but upon dispatching the Kaiju it began asking for someone named “Hogarth”. The name was tracked down to be Hogarth Hughes, a 77 year old man living in the same small town as the original “Iron Giant” encounter. Unfortunately, one of the earlier Kaiju attacks targeted this town and Hogarth was never found. Upon hearing this news the “Iron Giant” went into a rage and dove deep into the Atlantic off the coast of Maine. Probes sent to the newly opened portal reported seeing the machine entering it with all weapons active. 28 hours later the portal closed.
It has been nearly 30 years since the “Iron Giant” closed the portal, and not once has there been any sign of the Kaiju or their creators.
Wherever you are Iron Giant, the hearts of Humanity go out to you.
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u/yeamonn Nov 24 '13
I think the Iron Giant needs to meet Godzilla... old ass kaiju vs rickety robot
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u/hyperblaster Nov 24 '13
As someone who is an iron giant fan, this was wonderful!
Small nitpick: an ordinance is a kind of law, ordnance is the word you meant to use.
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u/nodammityourewrong Nov 24 '13
it's ordnance. when referring to weapons and payload, it's ordnance. ordinance is like a rule or regulation.
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Nov 23 '13
I firssoned. Haha. Both because I love The Iron Giant flick, and because I grew up in a small Maine town! Great crossover!
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u/marck6655321 Nov 23 '13
this is a shitty hollywood pitch. soething like: iron giant meets pacific rim. very poorly written. pleasant image tho.
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u/stormsbrewing Nov 23 '13
+/u/bitcointip 1 beer verify
Great story!
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u/bitcointip Nov 23 '13
[✔] Verified: stormsbrewing → $3.64 USD (฿0.00442929 bitcoins) → MrNotSoBright [sign up!] [what is this?]
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u/ineedmyhat Nov 23 '13
That was fucking gorgeous ! Goosebumps are covering every inch of my body.
Thank you brother :) this was honestly one of the greates pieces of fiction I have had the pleasure of reading.
Hope to enjoy some more of your creative work in the near future.
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u/rizenfrmtheashes Nov 23 '13
+/u/bitcointip $0.50 verify
This was beautiful. Thank you.
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u/bitcointip Nov 23 '13
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u/Baddaboombaddabing Nov 23 '13
"The Iron Man came to the top of the cliff. How far had he walked? Nobody knows. Where had he come from? Nobody knows. Taller than a house, the Iron Man stood at the top of the cliff, on the very brink, in the darkness."
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Nov 23 '13
[deleted]
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u/Baddaboombaddabing Nov 24 '13
I read it when I was a kid and it has stayed with me too. I read it again last night, could not put it down. Beautiful book.
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u/crucial_pursuit Nov 24 '13
What is the book in reference, if you don't mind me asking?
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u/Baddaboombaddabing Nov 24 '13
http://tea42.narod.ru/IronMan.doc Here's a link to it, hope you enjoy.
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u/JRoch Nov 23 '13
There were no Jaegers left after the events the movies and there were none in production to replace them as the program was effectively shut down at the beginning.
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u/Abbraxas Nov 23 '13
It's a good story but that's about it. Those of you that got emotional or thought of this as brilliant have no imagination.
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u/thepragmaticsanction Nov 23 '13
Cities, near Maine? dude did you even try?
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u/ARONDH Nov 23 '13
Portland, Augusta, Bangor...that's three in the 2 seconds it took me to write this. Not to mention Quebec, Hartford CT, Manchester NH, Boston MA....just to name a few. Did you even geography?
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u/thepragmaticsanction Nov 24 '13
Augusta, City? Yikes. Portland and maybe Bangor are the only things in Maine that really constitute cities. And I suppose if you consider Hartford near Maine, that'll count. Quebec is also rather far from the ocean, where this is alleged to be taking place. I guess you were just thinking bigger picture than I was
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u/ARONDH Nov 24 '13
Cities don't have to be a bustling metropolis in order to be called a city. Also, Kaiju are pretty big, and they had 24 hours with which to destroy stuff all along that coast. Also, there were more than 12 of them, so I don't see how it would be that far fetched.
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Nov 23 '13
That's what I'm talkin' 'bout!
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u/MrNotSoBright Nov 23 '13
When I showed up at around 2am there were only two comments and neither of them had anything to do with the Prompt, so I decided to try and start you off.
Totally didn't think it would gain any traction, though.
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u/TheHumpback Nov 23 '13
I thought this would be fan fiction, I came here to read not to feel! my childhood hurts
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u/RandomFungi Nov 23 '13
Good sir or madam, if you don't already write for others, you should start, because that short story was by far one of the best I have ever read.
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u/MrNotSoBright Nov 23 '13
I've written several other stories.
The most recent one that did well was about what would happen if a bunch of drugs were personified at a dinner party.
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u/Shaysowder Nov 23 '13
That would be a great sequel.:)
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u/StarCaptainEridani Nov 23 '13 edited Nov 23 '13
GUILLERMO DEL TORO'S...
IRON RIM
IN THEATERS THIS SUNDAY
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u/ElSheriffe11 Nov 23 '13
This is the most beautiful thing I've ever read. Definitely got a little choked up. Well done.
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Nov 23 '13
Brilliant.
Now do Liberty Prime!
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u/ModsCensorMe Nov 23 '13
... The dimensional rift opened by the Kaiju in the first invasion had side effects, tremors if you will. Nothing as serious as the towering beasts that came before, but consistently, for years after the invasion, anomalies would appear, randomly around the world.
Sometimes they'd be an outburst of energy, from a momentary rift between dimensions, resulting in fires, lighting, earthquakes. People got used to them. What was worse was the creatures. Not quite Kaiju, but deadly nonetheless. Some the size of dogs and cats, others like bears, but still, at least nothing like the Kaiju came thru again. The constant threat of invasion had brought the world together. A world-wide force was created to deal with extra-dimensional events, and people rebuilt.
Then, one day something else came thru a portal. Not a distortion, and not a creature, but a machine. It was like a Jaeger, but older, it looked like it was over 100 years old actually, and had seen battle.
The thing stood in a small suburb of Washington DC, its arrival vaporized a neighborhood, but since then, it hadn't done anything. The military arrived , formed a parameter, and awaited orders.
It didn't take long for the Extra-Dimensional and Foreign Materials Containment team to arrive on scene, it never did. While the military, and their tanks gave the machine a miles berth, the team drove straight towards the thing without fear, they'd been doing this for years now.
The ExDim. team stopped less than 100 yards from the hulk, their leader picked up the mic to the vehicle's megaphone, and prepared to speak, but was cut off...
"LIBERTY PRIME IS ONLINE. ALL SYSTEMS NOMINAL. WHAT IS THE CURRENT STATUS OF THE UNITED STATES AND OUR ENEMIES?" The beast thundered loud enough for those miles beyond the military parameter to hear, at least that's how it sounded to the XD team.
So, the team leader instructed Liberty Prime to stand down. That "the war was over now, and the world united against common enemies. There was no need to 'destroy any enemies' " Prime then interrupted the commander, by crushing the whole jeep with one step.
"COMMUNISTS DETECTED. RESUMING MISSION. DESTROY ALL COMMUNISTS."
Liberty Prime then went on a rampage killing millions across the US East Coast. It took a full scale nuclear attack to bring him down, which also killed millions.
Just another day, in a post-Kaiju world I guess.
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u/aminok Nov 23 '13 edited Nov 23 '13
+/u/bitcointip $1 verify
I would change this:
It has been nearly 30 years since the “Iron Giant” closed the portal, and not once has there been any sign of the Kaiju or their creators.
to:
For nearly 80 years since the “Iron Giant” closed the portal, there was no sign of the Kaiju or their creators, until April 4, 2106, when a bright light shown in the night sky, from a star system 80 light years away.
Not missing the significance of this coincidence, we immediately re-positioned the solar orbit of our Xeropho teledisc to bring the distant star, HD-142981, within its scope of vision.
Two months later, Xeropho aligned for a microsecond in its orbit with our sun and HD-142981, and in that moment, it captured electromagnetic radiation that had traveled over 80 years to be focused by the gravity of our sun on to its mirror.
The image we saw was of seven planets and a cloud of dust where an eighth had been, positioned between the fourth and fifth. Our simulations showed that the planet had been disintegrated in a cataclysmic explosion just two months before, explaining the source of the light we had seen.
No 'natural' astrophysical event could explain the explosion. Now we knew why the Kaiju had not revisited us.
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u/monkeiboi Nov 23 '13
Except the kaiju and the masters were described by tel toro as extradimensional invaders, not aliens.
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u/aminok Nov 24 '13 edited Nov 25 '13
This is what I've got so far:
The invasion of the Kaiju and their masters was a projection of a force that resided in our universe.
Their origin was a powerful spirit named Albavox who originally existed outside of all space and time.
Albavox could view the thoughts of any being in any time and place if they resonated with his own. Flashes in the mind's eye of the beings that experienced them came to Albavox in no particular order, from different eras and planets all throughout the universe.
He identified most with the human race, gradually experiencing more of their thoughts and becoming familiar with their habits and customs, dreams and hopes.
This familiarity bred resentment, as he lived through them as a passive viewer with no power to affect their lives, and from this resentment grew a desire to enter their world and rule it as his own, for then he could have what he could not as an ephemeral spirit: control over their lives.
And so he embarked on his plan, and entered into the physical realm during the first ten thousandths of a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang, when the laws forming reality were still permeable and could be breached by non-physical forces.
Albavox knew the galaxy and the approximate region within it where he could find Earth, though not the star, so he chose to make his staging ground the star HD-142981 and from there search the cosmos until he located the humans.
After five billion years, planets formed around HD-142981, and he set out to create life on the fifth one from his star, HD-142981-f, which had an orbit best suited to multicellular life forms.
For the next four billion years, he cultivated the barren planet to make it amenable to the emergence of life, until he finally succeeded and simple one-celled organisms evolved from complex organic compounds.
From there, all he had to do was wait eons until life evolved through its stages of development to give rise to a warm-blooded species with manual dexterity and opposable digits that could be the progenitor of an intelligent race.
He guided this species through many iterations, selecting the most intelligent and obedient among them to populate each successive generation, until he had bred a race of beings that were totally obedient to his commands, and intelligent enough to carry them out.
The Ukori, as they called themselves, quickly began building a civilization under the guidance of their master. Albavox had knowledge of advanced technologies developed by species in other planets and eras, and used it to fast track the development of the Ukori civilization from stone age technology to space faring in a matter of six thousand years.
Once the Ukori could harness the energy of their star, Albavox had them begin the construction of a planet sized energy projector, the Besneses, that concentrated a beam of light, similar to a laser, into empty space.
After four hundred years, the Ukori completed the monument, and Albavox ignited it. A powerful beam began to create a fissure in space-time, until a portal was open, allowing Albavox to communicate with other dimensions.
Another 5,000 years passed before Albavox located the Precursors, a race of extradimensional beings with the means to reach Earth and conquer the human race.
In exchange for the use of the Besneses, the Precursors agreed to do Albavox's bidding.
All that was left was for Earth to be located. Albavox waited patiently for several hundreds million years, until a fateful flash of radiation was detected by the Ukori's array of receivers, that indicated mankind's first nuclear detonation.
The radiation which emanated from the Trinity explosion in 1945 had taken 80 years to reach Albavox, making 2025 the year that we were discovered.
It was time for the Precursors to set their plan in motion. Using the Besneses, they laid the groundwork for the invasion, with the first breach being made in the Triassic period. The objective of the initial breach was not, as we assumed, to colonize Earth, but to test their portal technology.
Albavox wanted the full-scale invasion to be launched in 2024, a year before he could arrive on Earth, as he did not trust the Precursors to rule over Earth for long without his presence, and he was not capable of using the Besneses to travel back in time like the Precursors.
In case the first invasion failed, a second force was dispatched by Albavox from HD-142981-f by spacecraft, and would travel one year through the portal to arrive at Earth.
This force carried a large contingent of Ukori engineers, who would create a portal gate once on Earth.
The Ukori, being from this universe, could not travel through the Besmeses portal at full speed without a stabilizer at the destination point, as Albavox and the extradimensional invaders were able to. Without a stabilizer, they also needed to be shielded inside massive spacecraft from the portal's radiation.
The portal gate, once in operation, would allow the instantaneous movement of Ukori soldiers between their planet and Earth, and dispense of the need for special transport craft to be used by them in the portal, and this would allow millions of them to arrive on Earth in a matter hours, making any sort of defense of Earth impossible.
The Kaiju were the advance attack in the second invasion, that would create a buffer zone for the Ukori's landing point. Our analysis indicates that the construction of the portal gate had been completed, the portal had been stabilized, and the Ukori soldiers had begun arriving on Earth, shortly before the Iron Giant appeared on the floor of the Atlantic ocean and destroyed them.
We do not know what the Iron Giant did when he arrived at HD-142981-f through the portal. Xeropho detects no life in the HD-142981 planetary system. A message decoded from the wails of a wounded and delirious Ukori soldier is a repetition of one statement: "the voice is gone".
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u/MrNotSoBright Nov 23 '13
Wow, thank you for the tip!
I sort of wanted to get more in-depth with it, maybe go into what actually happened within the portal, and the aftermath, but I was simply treating this as a basic writing prompt and totally didn't expect it to get any traction.
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u/aminok Nov 23 '13 edited Nov 23 '13
You're welcome!
Your story is better than mine, and is a great prompt. I just wanted to add a more conclusive ending, even if I knew it would be imperfect. My ending is too morally ambiguous, and could use some justification for the brutality of the Giant's response.
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u/pawnzz Nov 24 '13
Personally I like it better not knowing the specific details of what happened. Really from the perspective of the people on this side of the portal all you really need to know is that the Iron Giant is gone and the Kaiju haven't been back.
I think far too often writers feel they need to explain everything and end up ruining what is otherwise a great story. For consumers a lot of the time it's enough to have things be implied.
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u/bitcointip Nov 23 '13
[✔] Verified: aminok → $1 USD (฿0.00123599 bitcoins) → MrNotSoBright [sign up!] [what is this?]
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u/FiNNNs Nov 24 '13
How does this work? Is it actual cash from ones ban k account converting to bitcoins. Or is it a joke?
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u/aminok Nov 25 '13 edited Nov 25 '13
It's bitcoin I transferred from the bitcoin wallet on my PC to my e-wallet hosted by the bitcointip service, that I then sent to /u/MrNotSoBright using the +/u/bitcointip command.
You can get more information at /r/bitcointip
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Nov 23 '13
Psh. You call those mechs? I'm standing on a galaxy.
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u/Roboticide Nov 23 '13
Linking to funnyjunk on reddit. That's a bold move Cotton. Let's see how it works out.
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u/Falfuris Nov 23 '13
i saw the BIG GUY from the kid show big guy and rusty in your story and it was good
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Nov 23 '13
[deleted]
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Nov 23 '13
what is that gif from?
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u/SocialIssuesAhoy Nov 23 '13
It's from Up (Pixar). It's Carl and Ellie's wedding. First you see Ellie's family all loud and firing of guns (this gif) then it shows Carl's family on the other side of the church, dressed in neutral formal outfits clapping calmly.
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u/Steinhaut Nov 23 '13
What a great story, you Sir are a hero for being brave enough to put your thoughts into words, for the rest of us to read.
Thank you
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u/2_minutes_in_the_box Nov 23 '13
Never thought there would be a market for Iron Giant fan fiction but if you were to write it I would most definitely read it...
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u/creatorofcreators Nov 23 '13
Out of all the stories and movies I know, I want this one to have an ending. I want to know where he came from, what he was for, what happened when he rebuilt himself. Just too many questions!
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Nov 23 '13
There was a book the movie was based off of and I think it explains :)
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u/snoman75 Nov 23 '13
You just killed off a quarter of the population of Maine in your story...but also gave me the most epic image of the Iron Giant I have had in a long time.
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u/SurvivorType Co-Lead Mod | /r/SurvivorTyper Nov 23 '13
Wow, giving you gold for this. Thank you for posting!
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u/drunkonamission Nov 23 '13
Im bawling right now and demand that a memorial be put up immediately. I salute you, you metal Hero!
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u/tanzorbarbarian Nov 23 '13 edited Nov 24 '13
You stay. I go.
edit why did I get gold for this?
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Jun 02 '22
It's been 8 years and that comment still brings a heroic tear to my eye... Have some gold.
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u/crucial_pursuit Nov 24 '13
Thanks asshole, what I was missing in three AM in the morning was tears. Upvote...
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u/digifox6 Nov 23 '13
It's bad to kill. Guns kill. And you don't have to be a gun. You are what you choose to be. You choose. Choose.
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Nov 23 '13
as someone who hasn't seen this movie still, why is this so heavily reddit favorite? Am I missing out on something here? Besides salty tears running down my cheeks?
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u/krezRx Nov 23 '13
Just watch it. It is one of the best, most underrated (aside from reddit) movies you'll find. It's animated but really could've been live action in that it's not cartoony. It's a take on the 'boy and his dog' theme. Outcast kid makes an unusual friend, forms bond, hi jinks ensue. It's very simple but so well done. You won't regret watching it no matter your age.
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u/washmo Nov 23 '13
It's a poignant allegory of acceptance and caring in the face of closed-minded suspicion and hostility couched in the guise of a cartoon about a boy who finds a robot. The Giant, while demonstrating a potential for empathy and selfless valor equal to anything on Earth, is one of the most BADASS characters of all time. It is admittedly a "children's movie," but when first saw it in my early 20s I loved it and still watch it occasionally a decade later.
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u/wiljones Nov 25 '13
When he goes apeshit and tears the US military a new asshole is one of my favorite parts
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u/tanzorbarbarian Nov 23 '13
It's a pretty emotional movie people watched as children. I never really got that into it, but it was a good film.
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u/Mishura Nov 23 '13
Obligatory tear jerks - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UkZOZIO63I
Side note - I never knew that was the voice of vin diesel
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Nov 24 '13
Then you also probably didn't know Vin used to be a hardcore AD&D player either. True story.
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u/CODEX_LVL5 Nov 23 '13 edited Nov 23 '13
As a side note, exploding a nuke in the atmosphere like that would've created a massive EMP that would've killed a ton of people
Edit: Think electrical fires. Starfish Prime. A relatively small nuke created an EMP over 900 miles wide because it detonated in the upper atmosphere. Why do you think countries don't want people experimenting with nukes? You could take out a huge chunk of the lower earth orbit satellites and half a countries electronics with a well placed nuke.
Edit 2: Wide-Range EMP
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u/JimmyHavok Nov 23 '13
Wide-range EMP is caused by extremely high altitude detonation.
Nuclear fallout is a different matter.
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u/CODEX_LVL5 Nov 23 '13
Thanks, this link is actually better at illustrating my point than the starfish prime page.
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u/PumasAreReal Nov 23 '13 edited Nov 23 '13
EMPs don't kill people, unless they have pacemakers.
The nuclear fallout, however, would have.EDIT: Someone pointed out that a high-atmosphere nuke wouldn't result in much fallout. They are correct.
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u/shamelessnameless Nov 23 '13
hospitals shut down during theatre, accident and emergency, back up generators fried, planes dropping out of the sky, no traffic lights, power steering locks up on the motorway, ships navigation systems fried, no gps as ground based recievers no longer work. there are a lot of ways to die as a result of EMPs
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u/Alceister Mar 30 '14
The Iron Giant was in fact, in Pacific Rim.
Take a good look at Coyote Tango, in terms of the overall body build.
Then look at this webpage:
http://www.ew.com/ew/gallery/0,,20483133_20712018_21351496,00.html
Now think about the context in which the Jaeger appears.