droosan wrote: ↑October 17th, 2015, 8:20 pmI scoured YouTube and other parts of the internet to see if I could find the 1999 TV commercial for The Iron Giant, but could not. So, I will describe what I remember from memory:
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Sabrejets chase the Giant as Scorpions' Rock You Like a Hurricane begins to blare.
At strategic points in the song where the lyrics go "Here I am / ROCK you like ..", the Giant holds up a boulder and says "ROCK?" .. then cuts to Hogarth holding up a stone saying "ROCK!", also in synch with the lyrics.
As an electric guitar solo crescendoes, cut to the Giant looking down on the Annabelle as it crashes into him during the hurricane. End of 30-second commercial.
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1999 ME:
Iron Giant
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Re: Iron Giant
"Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift--that is why it's called the present."
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Re: Iron Giant
.. so, a bit different than I'd remembered here 9(!) years ago .. but that's definitely the TV commercial I was attempting to describe. 
This aired on Cartoon Network and other Turner channels while IG was in theaters.
Having already seen the film (I got extremely lucky and saw it at a couple of 'sneak preview' events around L.A., in the months before its release date) .. I was aghast at such a 'wrong-headed' marketing approach for what I knew was a very special movie; one that would undoubtedly become (and now certainly is) a true 'classic'.
I can't imagine what Brad Bird must've thought of it.
This aired on Cartoon Network and other Turner channels while IG was in theaters.
Having already seen the film (I got extremely lucky and saw it at a couple of 'sneak preview' events around L.A., in the months before its release date) .. I was aghast at such a 'wrong-headed' marketing approach for what I knew was a very special movie; one that would undoubtedly become (and now certainly is) a true 'classic'.
I can't imagine what Brad Bird must've thought of it.
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Re: Iron Giant
When I ran this as part of our WB100 series last year, I stumbled over this commercial when picking which trailer to play in my coming attractions slot, and my jaw hit my desk!
They just didn’t know how to sell the movie. Then again, they had very little interest in selling this film, or taking any advice or learning how to sell it, or any of their animated features, really. If it isn’t Bugs or Lego, WB has never had a clue. I’m just still absolutely astonished that The Iron Giant ever got made: certainly it only got greenlit because it was a very, dry different project back when they gave it the go-ahead.
Bird did his own trailer, which is much more in keeping but still, honestly, not the way to sell it to *wider* audiences of the time, and then of course we got Warners' own preview that gave everything away…
They just didn’t know how to sell the movie. Then again, they had very little interest in selling this film, or taking any advice or learning how to sell it, or any of their animated features, really. If it isn’t Bugs or Lego, WB has never had a clue. I’m just still absolutely astonished that The Iron Giant ever got made: certainly it only got greenlit because it was a very, dry different project back when they gave it the go-ahead.
Bird did his own trailer, which is much more in keeping but still, honestly, not the way to sell it to *wider* audiences of the time, and then of course we got Warners' own preview that gave everything away…