Before I submit this new entry, I would like to thank those of you who have stuck around with me despite my erratic posting between long periods of time.
It is much appreciated.
Life gets in the way a lot of the time. I just have to manage my time a lot better to get out these entries.
So thank you for your patience.
Alright. Here we go.
For a number of years I have suspected that the Fleischer Studios SUPERMAN serials, SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW, THE DAY THE WORLD STOOD STILL, IRON GIANT, and BIG HERO 6 were set in the same universe. But at different times in that universe’s history.
Please hear me out for a moment.
I submit that the technology used to create Iron Giant goes as far back as SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW and the Fleischer Studios’ Superman serial, “The Mechanical Monsters”.
In “The Mechanical Monsters” serial, Superman is battling giant robots programmed to rob banks and jewelry stores and bring them back to their “inventor”.
There is a reason why I put quotation marks around the word inventor.
It’s because I think that the main villain of that serial was a robotics operator, and not the inventor of the robots used in that serial.
However, he might have been an expelled former member of an ultra secret group of scientists known as “Unit 11” founded by Dr. Totenkopf during the First World War who were hellbent on saving humanity from itself.
Even if that meant building space arks to take the best and brightest away from Earth to preserve human civilization on other worlds, leaving everyone else on Earth to suffer and die (SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW).
Or perhaps they were the ones who created a highly advanced space ship and a giant “alien” robot to scare the world governments into engaging in peace talks (THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL).
Or possibly they were responsible for building a platoon of giant robots to be “alien invaders” to coerce humanity into uniting to defend the planet (IRON GIANT).
I don’t for a moment believe that THE DAY THE WORLD STOOD STILL was an alien flick. More than likely it was a film about a representative of that super secret scientific organization dictating their terms using highly advanced technology constructed from parts made in remote locations across the world. Perhaps as remote and as weird as the Bermuda Triangle.
Moreover, seeing as how Dr. Totenkopf was a genius in the field of biology, genetics, and robotics, primarily when it came to raypunk era androids like his female assassin, played by Bai Ling, it wouldn’t surprise me if Totenkopf escaped death, so to speak, and reemerged as the mysterious Klaatu from THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL.
We are left to believe that after the events of THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL that everything was kumbaya around the world.
It wasn’t.
Six years later, Sputnik happened. And around the same time, the events of IRON GIANT take place. The machine later dubbed Iron Giant was, in fact, an updated, much larger, and highly weaponized model of the giant robots seen in “The Mechanical Monsters” and SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW.
The difference being that the scientists were aware that regular people would perceive such advanced technology as extraterrestrial in nature, and banked on it as they launched a second incident similar to the one in 1951.
But something went wrong.
The launch and trajectory of the machine went haywire and wound up in a small town in the United States where a certain little boy and his mother lived. That little boy was Hogarth Hughes, the second cousin to one Howard Hughes. That’s right. That aviation pioneer.
Well we all know how IRON GIANT ended. What we don’t know is what became of Hogarth.
Well, Hogarth grew up and went west to become a robotics engineer, and amateur ham radio operator. He got married and had two daughters. Many years later, one of his daughters married a young Japanese man with the last name of Hamada, and the rest you can figure out for yourself.
I suspect that the older brother to young Hiro Hamada from BIG HERO 6, named Tadashi Hamada, as well as Professor Robert Callaghan, Dean of Advanced Robotics at the San Fransokyo Institute of Technology, were involved in the arson that claimed to have killed Tadashi.
I find a lot wrong with the tragic result of this incident.
The question to ask above all is: where are the burnt remains of Tadashi Hamada? There were no remains recovered for the audience to see. Only a memorial service in the rain.
Therefore, I am left to believe that Tadashi survived the fire on campus that tragic evening, and is in hiding. Probably, as a member of the 21st century incarnation of “Unit 11”.
When Tadashi Hamada will resurface, is anyone’s guess.
