of a Special Edition Blu-ray of the film. The film was ultimately released on Blu-ray on September 6, 2016, and included both the theatrical and 2015 Signature Edition cuts, as well as a documentary entitled The Giant's Dream that covered the making of the film. This version also received a DVD release months earlier on February 6 with The Giant's Dream documentary removed. This film became available on HBO Max on November 1, 2020. Reception Critical response The Iron Giant received critical acclaim from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 96% approval rating based on 142 reviews, with an average rating of 8.20/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "The endearing Iron Giant tackles ambitious topics and complex human relationships with a steady hand and beautifully animated direction from Brad Bird." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 85 out of 100 based on 29 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale. The Reel Source forecasting service calculated that "96–97%" of audiences that attended recommended the film. Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times called it "straight-arrow and subversive, [and] made with simplicity as well as sophistication," writing, "it feels like a classic even though it's just out of the box." Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 3.5 out of 4 stars, and compared it, both in story and animation, to the works of Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki, summarizing the film as "not just a cute romp but an involving story that has something to say." The New Yorker reviewer Michael Sragow dubbed it a "modern fairy tale," writing, "The movie provides a master class in the use of scale and perspective—and in its power to open up a viewer’s heart and mind." Time Richard Schickel deemed it "a smart live-and-let-live parable, full of glancing, acute observations on all kinds of big subjects—life, death, the military-industrial complex." Lawrence Van Gelder, writing for The New York Times, deemed it a "smooth, skilled example of animated filmmaking." Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal felt it "beautiful, oh so beautiful, as a work of coherent art," noting, "be assured that the film is, before anything else, deliciously funny and deeply affecting." Both Hollywood trade publications were positive: David Hunter of The Hollywood Reporter predicted it to be a