A Study on Expressing Social Agenda in Hollywood Animation : Focusing on Brad Bird’s Film “The Iron Giant” (1999)

Unlike Live-action Hollywood movies Hollywood animation movies have rarely expressed social agenda because they have been produced primarily for family audiences. In 1999, a feature animation directed by Brad Bird, “The Iron Giant” was released by a big studio, Warner Brothers. The director conveyed the strong message of humanity through the friendship between a lonely boy and a robot, created as a war machine and embodied it in beautifully animated images. This film expressing serious social agenda has been considered a classic masterpiece despite its box office failure. By studying the directing intention of this classic animation that emotionally expresses heavy social agenda, I hope to contribute to the advancement of the somewhat stagnant Korean feature animation industry for its the diversification of subject-matters.