The General Story:
a young boy, starting to grow sceptical about the existence of Santa Clause, is
paid a visit on Christmas Eve. Out the front of his house, a steam train pulls
up, and a conductor calls out to him to board. The boy asks where the train is
headed, to which the conductor replies, “Why, to the North Pole of course.
This…. is the Polar Express”. Overwhelmed and under a spell, the boy gets on
board, and meets several other children also chosen to make the trip. The train
will take the children on a fascinating journey through snow, up steep
mountains, across frozen lakes, where wild reindeer and ghost-hobos that sit on
top of the train, continue to make the boy a believer again. When he finally
arrives at the North Pole, he discovers seeing is believing.
What influenced the
movie: the film is loosely based on a children’s book from 1985, but in terms of the breakthrough in
animation of its type, that came down to the responsible hands of director
Robert Zemeckis. No stranger to experimenting with animation having directed
the brilliant “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”,
Zemeckis has always been a filmmaker to play with the fine line between
fantasy and reality; taking seemingly normal situations and making them abnormal
through the use of clever imagery. The Polar Express took this up a few levels,
being the first film to use motion capture imagery; created by placing sensory
dots all over real actors faces and body’s, then duplicate their movements in
the guide of a computer-generated character. Tom Hanks, being one of the few
actors in Hollywood to get any movie he wants made, volunteered himself to be
the first test subject, and a new dawn in animation and acting was born.
How the movie
influenced the 00's: As CGI in movies got better and better with each
passing year, the question of whether real actors would be needed or not came
into debate. Naturally, this was the first reaction of many performers, and
movie goers, upon the release of the ground-breaking Polar Express, but that
was short-lived. We still liked to see “real” people in movies apparently.
However timid and tame the special effects in this movie might look now, it was
revolutionary for 2004, and Zemeckis would return to this format two more times
himself with “Beowulf” and “A Christmas Carol” hinting at further developments
in the world of motion capture imagery. But it was James Cameron who borrowed
this idea and made it even better when he directed “Avatar” in 2009. Surely,
The Polar Express paved the way for that.
What makes it stand
out as a film of the 00's: The Polar Express was released at the peak of
Tom Hanks powers, and also a few years after 9/11, when the world was still
making sense of the world as it was now; dark and unpredictable. This film
acted as an escape for anyone wanting to celebrate Christmas early, or just
watch it once year in late December as their annual tradition. It’s a film that
plays with the motives of modern-day movies; push the envelope visually, help audiences
escape reality and allow you to reconnect with your inner child.
Impact of the movie
still felt today: The Polar Express certainly isn’t regarded as a timeless
classic, but in terms of the pantheon of Christmas movies, it has earned its
place alongside family favourites like “Home Alone” and “Elf” as one that audiences
of every age can watch and enjoy. Motion Capture Imagery has continued to
evolve since 2004, with Avatar breaking new ground and bringing back 3D (momentarily)
and the standard of special effects today appearing seamless and almost perfect
amongst real people and real locations. It’s hard to tell what’s real and
what’s fake in the movies anymore, and this is all thanks to the efforts of
movies that come along once in a while
to do something different and show us what’s possible. And in terms of making computer
animated characters look like humans, that is now just normal, but back in
2004, it was a whole new frontier.
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