Finally, I will get off my butt and talk about a holiday movie. This one is interesting in terms of its age. I’m starting to see that its reaching that apex of becoming a holiday classic and also having its critics. Don’t worry I’ll go easy on it. Any time I go to either Target or Wal-Mart, I see the DVDs on sale alongside the older holiday movies. And of course, I’ll talk about its divisive computer animation.
1. The Children’s Book Adaptation Dilemma
Something I’ve noticed whenever a short children’s story is adapted to film, is that the source material is usually short. So, the problem is how do you stretch out a story that’s approximately 30 pages long to a feature length movie? Simple, expand on the elements of the characters so that it at least follows the essence of the book.
Well, that’s the not the case for this movie. This is the first instance with any movie that I saw at a young age where the main characters don’t have an actual name. While it’s not a detriment in of itself, I think it’s one of the flaws for the movie. And to the book’s credit, the character’s didn’t have any names as well, so there’s that. In terms of story, a young boy is invited to board The Polar Express to see Santa Claus in the North Pole.
There’s some level of depth for the boy. It’s explained visually that he doesn’t believe in Santa. He has in his collection articles and magazines of mall Santas being exposed as fakes. So, he joins to see if St. Nick is indeed real. What’s interesting is that the boy is that two actors portrayed the kid. Josh Hutcherson, you might know him from The Hunger Games trilogy, did the motion capture. And Daryl Sabara, who was in Spy Kids, voiced the kid.
One thing I want to mention is that Hutcherson was in another movie that was adapted from the author’s work. He’s in the movie Zathura, a severely underrated movie and I personally think is better than Jumanji. The latter whose author also worked on this movie’s source material.
Anyways, since the whole story is about as simple as you can get. There are moments where there’s tension. Such as the train speeding too fast and one of the characters forgetting her ticket. During these moments, it feels like something that is attempting to show off the animation. While appreciative and to me just interesting with how many hours it must’ve been working on it. I feel that it gives a movie too much padding and tension.
Like duh, the moments feel like a theme park. With the camera zooming by and seeing the level of attention in the animated details. It didn’t bother me when I was younger when I found it engaging. Nowadays, I kind of just wanted to be like get to the point. At the same time, it gives the movie more since the kids can be bland.
2. The Uncanny Valley
Aside from Tom Hanks stealing the show by portraying three characters in the whole movie, the main point of contention of the movie is just the animation. To put it into context, this is Robert Zemeckis’ second film dealing with animation. His first Who Framed Roger Rabbit changed animation and special effects. This one is no exception, but the way it went about it is off putting.
This style of computer animation is called motion capture. How they do it is that the actors wear a suit that has sensors that a computer detects. They then act and their entire movement is recorded to be animated. Back then, the closest equivalent is a style called rotoscoping. Which is a film or a piece of film that is drawn to have a distinct style.
With that, the animation can be beautiful at times. Especially the shot of the train stopping in front of the boy’s house. The kids and pretty much anything looking human just looks odd. It’s what’s dubbed the uncanny valley. Anything that looks life-like but the dead giveaway is the eyes. The kids have it worse. There’s a moment where the girl is scooting closer to the boy, but the way she looks appears older than what they’re going for. Don’t even get me started on the elves.
This is the first film where Zemeckis started his short-lived animation studio Image Movers. He dabbled some more with this style of animation with his adaptations of Beowulf and A Christmas Carol. Progressively they got better, but the baggage of motion capture also followed. It would be years later when the Nickelodeon film Rango, with its motion capture but having animal characters winning the Academy Award for best animated feature.
3. Legacy
As I mentioned earlier, this film is starting to begin its classics phase whenever the holidays roll around and the numerous copies appear on the shelves. Surprisingly, there’s been moments with Amtrak and other countries equivalents where they had trips centered around the whole story. The U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom’s train stations all had at one-point trips that commemorated the story. As of now, I don’t believe that they do it anymore but I could be wrong.
4. Overall
This film’s enjoyable and for a while the animation didn’t creep me out. Though it lacks any sort of character depth, or just caring in the grand scheme, it’s fun for just this holiday season.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.