7 Deeply Unsettling Unanswered Questions In Kids' Movies
4. The Iron Giant - What Happened When The Other Robots Arrive?
The Iron Giant is a heart-warming (I'm sensing a theme here) tale of an enormous killer robot (okay, not quite so to theme) crashing to Earth, losing its memory and befriending a small boy. It is a story teaching us that we get to choose the paths our lives take: just because we have the form of a gargantuan murder machine does not necessarily mean that we have to act as such. Ultimately, the Iron Giant is forced to do battle with the army, sacrificing himself to save the hometown of the boy who rescued him, by throwing himself in front of a missile on a collision course with the settlement. But of course, that's not the end for our hero, he gradually repairs himself and lives to fight the peaceful fight another day. But the burning question here is: what about the rest of the Iron Giants? Earth got magnificently lucky on this one occasion, as the titular robot became entangled in power lines, which wiped his memory and allowed him to choose not to kill all humans, but what happens if one of them does something as unthinkable as... land successfully? Think about it, the robot is a piece of advanced machinery, it is bound to be tracked or at least equipped with some sort of homing device, which can be traced by the rest of its kind. So what's to stop the rest of the robots from going on a recovery mission to bring their comrade home? Furthermore, you'd be forgiven for thinking that an army of killer robots would be more than a little peeved at seeing one of their own had been blown to tiny bits by a human missile; they're most likely going to want revenge. What's more, the robots may even see the human race as a threat, given that one infant was capable of completely disarming and reprogramming one of them. I can see no other outcome than total human annihilation, or, at best, slavery. Either way, the future looks does not look promising for humankind, should the rest of the Iron Giants find Earth.
