HTF REVIEW: The Polar Express - Two Disc Widescreen Edition (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED). - Page 3

I saw the first 15 minutes while browsing in FYE yesterday. Still don't see the attraction, and had to fight the urge to claw out my own eyes.

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I saw this a few days ago in IMAX 3-D with my brother and nephew and I had a blast! Loved the 3-D, the humor, the action...not so much the songs...a great time was had by all.

On the "creepy" side, the only character that all of us had a problem with was the little girl, for some reason her facial movements and structure just creeped all of us out and we all mentioned it together at the same time after the film was over.
Didn't have a problem with the other characters except for Steven Tyler's cameo...he is creepy in real life IMO and his digital incarnation was all the more disturbing.

I must say that I have never heard the word 'creepy' applied so much to one film as this one, and I am also stupified by that as well.

The Polar Express isn't creepy, it's a wonderful film that was PURPOSFULLY pulled off in a very dream-like manner and was meant to invoke how we felt about Christmas when we were children.

The child that I used to be is still very much alive and well and this film, unlike any other in recent memory, tapped a DIRECT line to him and thus caused me to feel and remember emotions that I haven't felt or recalled in at least 27 years.

The best compliment that I can give this film is that it, along with other things that were introduced into my life this year, gave me the Christmas spirit again after not feeling it for a couple of years, a lot of it having to do with the loss of my mom 2 years ago.

The film made me realize "Hey, it's Christmas...and I feel happy again." I don't know how familiar any of you are with an animated short called The Snowman, but this film captured MUCH of the magic present in that silent short and that's a real feat.

As far as the "creepiness" of the human characters are concerned, contrary to popular opinion, the way the humans look in this is NOT represenative of the extent of CGI technology to produce life-like humans, if Zemeckis wanted to create photo-real people, IMO he could have, but he decided to give us characters that appear the way they would in a story book, only done in three dimensions, how so many don't understand that is beyond me.

Now, the film was terrific on it's own, but the one discovery that I made while watching it, and boy am I glad that I did, was Josh Grobin. This man has an incredible voice!

Out of all of the behind the scenes material on these 2 discs, the feature I treasure the most is his performance at the Greek Theater of the film's soaring theme song 'Believe'. Yep, it's safe to say that this film made me an instant fan of his music and I plan to buy not only this film's soundtrack but his other works as well.

The Polar Express is now one of my all time favorite Christmas films, i'm glad that I didn't listen to the nay-sayers, any film that can make me feel like i'm 7 years old again is, well, I can't ask for anymore than that.

So the possibility that even the people who do "understand" this still find the facial configurations & movements to be "creepy" or slightly "off-putting" isn't one that you have considered?

I must say that I find it amusing that when certain folks see an opposing viewpoint or critique of something that they love their first reaction is usually that the people who have the opposite opinion certainly must "not get it".....not simply a matter of different tastes but implied "cluelessness".

Creepy is definitely in the eye of the beholder. I find Kevin's sig photo to be much creepier than anything in Polar Express. (and yes, I know what film it's from, and no, I haven't yet seen that film).

Then you should see the film George.....ok, it doesn't have any sappy attempts at "new" x-mas songs on the back of trains sung by CGI girls with stiff facial contortions resembling someone who had too many botox injections but it does have a little gurgling baby.....a...cute...little...gurgling baby.

What i'm getting at, is most of the criticism that i've read in regards to the characters being "creepy" was that Zemeckis was going for absolute realism with them which isn't the case.

So yes, in that respect, those that are under that impression did not get it because they didn't pick up on what was being attempted, what they saw was CGI characters that were supposed to be real looking human beings and it was disrupting their enjoyment of the film because they were constantly critiquing every aspect of film characters that weren't supposed to be realistic looking in the first place.

If Zemeckis had tried to make them photo-real and he still got the eyes wrong then at that point I would have a problem, a big one, but as presented here, I don't.

The one comparison I could make, is that nobody seems to find the characters in Japanese anime to be strange looking with their enormous glassy eyes, tiny nose and little slit for a mouth that grows to be bigger than their entire head when they yell, because those characters fit within the established context of that particular genre/story, what's so different here?

The characters appearance in The Polar Express are consistant with the established look of the rest of the film and the created universe around them, thus I had no problem with them, in fact, if Zemeckis HAD made them 100% realistic looking inside of a world that isn't 100% realistic looking as well, that's when I would have a problem because they just wouldn't gel well. Nothing in this film is 100% realistic looking, why expect the characters that inhabit it to?

There is a definite difference of opinion about this film, some found it creepy, I didn't, and life goes on...

Kevin: As an Eraserhead/Polar Express veteran, I was ROTFLMAO at that! Well done! Its a rare thing when I actually laugh out loud when sitting, reading at my computer monitor. You made it happen!

John: Did you have ANY problem with Hanks doing so many of the voices? As I said before, it really took me out of the film.

Mike, I just sort of went with that, one could imagine that, since this was all a dream in the film, that 'Hero Boy' was applying that vaguely familiar voice to the people in his dream because it was the voice of his father.

Thanks, Mike. it's nice to know my corny jokes work every now & then.


Yes, but the fact that so many folks have had the same visceral reaction does suggest that something about the facial features of at least some of the characters, intended or not, had a negative reaction for some people who have natural recognition circuits in their heads regarding human faces....I seriously can't tell you how many people in the audience giggled or uncomfortably murmured whenever the little girl began speaking....my brother even mentioned it after the film "did you hear how everyone was creeped out by the little girl?", I swear to god, his exact words. My seven year old nephew agreed "yeah, the little black girl looked creepy....weird.".

Point is you may not have a problem with it, and that is fine, but quite a few people did have a noticeable "gut" or "knee-jerk" reaction to this regardless of whether it was intended or not or whether they knew it or not. Flatly saying "no, it is not creepy" does not make that opinion a fact for everyone....you know? That's all I'm saying.

Yes, far more scary and bizarre. You want a freakshow? Watch some Japansese cartoons.

Hey guys!

I saw this at my girlfriend's aunt's house last week. (She rented it for the kids) so we watched it on (shudder!) a 25" screen in Fullscreen format.
I enjoyed it quite a bit, (that cringe-worthy tune that sounded like a "South Park" song sendup on the back of the train notwithstanding) but there were moments when I was a bit spooked. Not neccesarily because of the animaion but because there was a vibe (well done IMHO) that all might be just a bit sinister. Like when the kids were Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show) Reminded me a bit of a spooky movie where the heroes see behind the scenes and maybe all is not well. A bit Twilight Zoney. And the elves were freaky.
I look foward to seeing it here on the 92" settup in WS.

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It's funny, I read lots of reviews last year and many said how they thought it was creepy and I told myself that I would take that under advisment and watch for what they were describing, I wanted to see the film, but I was also expecting to look at it and go "Yeah, I can see what they mean now."

This didn't happen, and I just accepted what I saw.

And why are the songs sappy? They're Christmas songs, all Christmas songs are like that if you really think about it, but I would never call them sappy, merely sentimental and there's nothing wrong with that, especially in a world chock full of hateful rap and hip-hop that rhyme about drugs, guns and death.

It's not just rap that does that.

I know, but mostly it is now a'days, but that's a whole other kettle of fish.

Ah, but the extreme stylized choices made in Japanamation are far more evident then the realism of the characters in PE, the fact that they motion captured many of the performances shows the level of reality they were going for.

And I quote Zemeckis himself:


And I quote Ken Ralston (both via the Polar Express web site) FX superviser:


So it seems they were going for at least a good deal of human reality not only with the body movements but also with the facial movement of the characters while staying in the visual style of the books.....for some the two didn't mesh well it seems.

For me the two didn't mesh well with the little girl, the other characters didn't bother me at all, just her for some reason.


In case I didn't make it clear, I liked the film very much, I just found that....etc. etc. etc.


P.S. The sappy thing is just a personal opinion...I do know that when the song began me & my brother shared a look that said "try as they might they can't beat the classics of christmas". That's all.

I got tired of people calling the animation style "creepy" last year, even if it is.

I think the Anime comparison is quite apt, as no matter how hard I try I can't get into that stuff for that very reason.

The real attraction with this film is the excellent IMAX 3-D version; I can't imagine seeing the film in just two dimensions on a TV screen.

It might be a bit sappy, but it a pretty good adaptation of a children's book, and shouldn't be expected to be more. It's not like it is that awful song about the Christmas shoes or something!

Kevin,
even though Zemeckis said that he wanted more realistic human characters, which he achieved in terms of body language and movement IMO, he must have known that 100% realistic looking people wouldn't fit in this fantastical world he created, thus even though the technology was there to do it, I doubt they were shooting for absolute photo-real people.

And who's to say that they didn't achieve photo-real with them at first but scaled them back and modified them a bit in final rendering to fit the story.

Either way you slice it, realistic looking people would have stuck out like a sore thumb in this film, so if it was either an accident or by design, the end result we ended up with fits nicely into the context, I wouldn't change a thing.

In regards to this film, the terms "creepy" "freaky" etc. probably have to do with the so called "uncanny valley."

Read this guy's thoughts on the issue and be sure to read the article he links to about the uncanny valley.

Interesting stuff!

JKS

You know it's funny, whenever I think of modern attempts at new classic christmas songs I always go back to Scrooged as one that didn't work for me but some love it.....on the other hand I really like most of the songs from the Albert Finney film Scrooge, particularly Christmas Children & December The Twenty Fifth, while others hate the songs in that...(shrugs shoulders).


I like Life
Like likes Me
Me & Life fairly fully agree...


BTW, very interesting article Jeremy.

I have certain reactions to things of this nature depending on the context I suppose, for example I absolutely despise digitally enhanced talking babies, the distant innocent look of the toddlers faces paired with the highly animated mouth is definitely what I define as "creepy".....others find this effect charming. I guess if I were to offer a really close example of what the PE creepy girl factor feels like to me, the Burger King commercials might come fairly close....but PE girl is not nearly as disturbed looking.

Ha ha ha...I can think of quite a few adjectives to describe the baby in Eraserhead. However, "cute" is not at the top of the list.

I am loving this discussion.



Since when can't you capture "human performances" (whatever they are) through animation without resorting to the technique used in PE? I submit the acting performaces in Toy Story 1 & 2 (both featuring PE's own Mr. Hanks) as proof that you can have a stylized artistic technique that is not an attempt to create "human" characters and yet achieve "human performances".

AND, who says you need 'em, anyway? I would have liked a greater effort to capture the Van Alsberg style than the unusual techniques used in this film to achieve that "human" quality. If we have to swallow that Tom Hanks voice is coming out of every other character's mouth because it is the kid's dream and all adults sound like Tom Hanks to him...why can't the kid dream of "real people in real situations" in an animated style. We can't have it both ways here.

Like Kevin, I feel the need to keep reminding people that I liked the film. The story touched me. I just think it could have been better realized.

No one said that the appearance of the characters was 100% realistic....however the facial movements, the exact facial movements, are (as close as the technology allows anyway) and it seems that when the stylised partially realistic oil renderings were matched with the exact facial movements of the actors....something translated through the "animation" which registered in certain peoples minds (subconsciously or not) and became off putting. The same thing can happen with rotoscopeing, you know when you are watching a roto animation and it seems slightly "off" from the rest of the stylised animation.
Same thing here but at a more instinctive level....that's my theory anyway.


In regards to the DVD....oh, yeah..the DVD...I imagine it is quite fantastic looking but I agree that the 3D version will be hard to beat, such an interesting experience in it's own right.