What is the work?
The Iron Giant is a 1999 science fiction animated film based on a short story by Ted Hughes. The film is kind of similar to E.T. in some regards. Here, we have a film set during the Cold War where a large object crash lands to Rockwell sometime after the launching of Sputnik I.
Who is the candidate? What has he done?
So 9-year-old Hogarth Hughes discovers the Iron Giant and befriends him, one of their pastimes were reading comic books to the giant chronicling the adventures of Superman. There are also instances in the film where Hogarth is forced to teach the giant about mortality such as when the giant finds a deer that was shot by some hunters.
We have the film's main antagonist Kent Mansley, a government agent, who is initially convinced that the giant was a weapon created by the Soviet Union and tries to acquire proof of the giant's existence. This would end up in him bummingly ordering a submarine to launch a missile to strike Rockwell (not realizing that he'd also die as well). Knowing what he had to do, the giant bids farewell to Hogarth telling him that he was leaving and that Hogarth mustn't follow him. The giant then launches himself into the air remembering how Hogarth told him that he could be whatever he wanted to be to which he says "Superman" and closes his eyes.
A year later, the Iron Giant is regarded as a hero with the general of the army, Rogard, mailing a bolt to Hogarth as it was the only salvageable piece of the giant they could find. But it ends on a happy note with the giant being revealed to be reassembling itself.
Corrupting factors? Goodness Zone?
The film speculates that the Giant was initially created as a weapon presumably by an extraterrestrial race, but that's really only inferred from the director's cut of the film. Whatever the case, the giant appears to have a bump in its head, thus the inference there is he got amnesia from crash landing on Earth. Now, that would be a strike against the giant because it would suggest that the giant didn't make the natural change with behavior...except Hogarth teaches him this by using Superman as an example. Even when it uses its weapons, the Iron Giant primarily does so out of self-defense. At the end of the day...it chose to sacrifice itself to save the town of Rockwell despite the town's disliking of it as well as saving two boys. The town itself would go onto making a statue of the Iron Giant as a dedication to its heroic sacrifice. It learned that it didn't have to be a weapon of mass destruction. It ultimately chose to be the town's savior instead. Again, another plausible strike against the giant is the fact that it was quick to take revenge on the soldiers when it thought they killed his best friend, but even then...it bounces back from what it was doing, realizing the error of its ways. Or it eating railroad tracks...it feeds on metal, but it wasn't doing so out of malice.
Goodness zone-wise...he acts like a curious child and is primarily a gentle giant.
Admiration standard
Sacrifices itself to save a town that ostracized it.