When will the battle for CGI supremacy be over? Will it be once the animated characters don’t look animated at all, or maybe when the characters look almost human, but just not quite right? If the answer is the latter then I must say The Polar Express has achieved its goal as Warner Bros. has employed the use of Imageworks’ brand new motion-capture CGI process to bring the world of The Polar Express to life, or not-quite-life in this case.
Called Performance Capture, this new brand method of computer animation requires not only animators but actors and physical props and sets, which are all digitally scanned, or in the actors’ case, motion captured, into the computer for animators to do with as they wish.
Beyond the props and small set pieces other assets were done on a more traditional note as locations such as the forest and the elf village at the North Pole were created using good old imagination and a mouse click.
To capture the movement of the actors, the cast was asked to wear motion-capture suits, which were equipped with approximately 60 electronic markers, enabling digital cameras to capture their movements, very similar to techniques used to bring the Hulk and Gollum to life.
Where the Performance Capture technique really comes into play is once 150 markers were attached to the actors’ faces and they were asked to deliver their lines. This technique was used to capture the emotion of the actor as the lines were delivered, but is all it really ended up doing was creating a few creepy looking children, with not a whole lot of emotion built into them at all. There is just something about the way their mouths move that really weirded me out.
The Polar Express is based on the classic Christmas story written by Chris Van Allsburg following a boy who has almost lost all belief in Santa Claus as several clues are pointing to the jolly ol’ soul not truly existing. Meanwhile, as he lay in his bed on Christmas Eve his room begins to shake and before you know it a train is parked just outside his house, but this is no ordinary train, it’s the Polar Express, a train designed to take him to the North Pole.
As the train twists and turns its way north our young man meets several odd characters including one of the most annoying characters ever given a place in a movie, as listening to him talk is much like water torture… drip… drip… drip.
On the contrary, to the odd looking characters everything else in The Polar Express is amazing from the brilliant landscapes to a wild ride across an icy lake, but not even that can make up for a lifeless film that really aims much more at dazzling the eye, than entertaining the audience.
As far as being a film that young children will enjoy, The Polar Express will most likely hit its mark, but beyond that there isn’t much to take away from this movie. While it isn’t completely devoid of entertainment value, and I am sure that anyone that sees it in IMAX 3-D is going to get their money’s worth, I don’t see it destined to become a holiday classic. It seems like the only reason for getting on this train is to see what is at the end of the track, what is in between really didn’t matter.
