The Polar Express

[Thrindle]

I recall the illustrates being just a little too hardcore for mini-Thrindle.

[Stefen]

Oh shit, I thought where the wild things are was the polar express.

[El Duderino]

no, you're thinking of the sequel, "The Polar Express 2: Derailed!"

[MacGuffin]

Third Trailer here.

[MacGuffin]

Zemeckis Defends POLAR EXPRESS
While a media obsessed with the business of show business tallies up the ominous totals for Robert Zemeckis’ new holiday offering, the filmmaker prefers to focus on the script.

The Wall Street Journal, Premiere Magazine, the Los Angeles Times and countless entertaiment magazines have all simultaneously addressed what they perceive to be the main issues for this holiday season's other animated offering. Namely, that The Polar Express - a CGI-animated movie arriving in theaters at a time when audiences are suspicious of movies with too much CGI - cost $170 million to produce. That it's costing at least another $100 million for prints and promotion. And that it’s an animated holiday movie coming to theaters less than a week after Pixar's latest, The Incredibles, opens on November 5th.

“Ultimately, at the end of the day, what those newspaper and magazine articles seem to leave out is [the] screenplay,” argues Robert Zemeckis, who wrote, produced and directed The Polar Express based on the popular Chris Van Allsburg novel of the same name. “They talk about it like it’s some manufactured hardware product rather than [a film]. I think that everybody’s who’s involved with the movie, from the studio to the creative team and everybody in the marketing of the movie, obviously they didn’t say ‘Make the movie’ until they read the screenplay.”

“We did everything really, really responsibly,” continues the filmmaker, speaking at a New York City press conference on behalf of Warner Bros.’ Nov. 10 release. “We did a test of our system that was a minute and a half long. Everyone at the studio looked at it and said, ‘Man, this really works.’”

Zemeckis adds that one of the hidden benefits of doing a performance capture movie is that you can decide after spending only 20 percent of the budget whether or not it’s worth making the remaining 80. “When you make a live-action movie, you send the director and a bunch of actors off and they spend 80 percent of the money and come back and you ask, ‘OK, do we have a movie here or not?’” he explains. “So this was very controllable and very responsible. What we did was realize the script we said we [would]. So there were no problems.”

The Polar Express tells the tale of Hero Boy (Tom Hanks), who’s at that stage in life where he’s losing his belief in the existence of Santa Claus. On Christmas Eve, however, a giant steam engine pulls up in front of his house, and its conductor (Hanks again), invites him on board for a ride to the North Pole. Hero Boy initially begs off, but then relents, joining several other children who, like Hero Boy, need to regain their holiday spirit.

From there, it’s a high speed, music- and adventure-filled ride to the North Pole, followed by more exploits in Santa’s realm and a life-altering encounter with the big, bearded guy himself. Hanks also voices Santa, not to mention Hero Boy’s Father and a Hobo who hangs out atop the train.

In order to pull off some of the cinematic magic, Zemeckis filmed his voice cast - Hanks, Nona Gaye, Peter Scolari, Eddie Deezen and the late Michael Jeter – much like Peter Jackson filmed Andy Serkis for the Lord of the Rings trilogy, putting them in blue suits and covering them with sensors, then sticking them in front of blue screens and shooting them in the motion-capture process. Live performances in hand, Zemeckis and his team of animators then digitally erased the actors and created the characters, some of which resemble those who played them; the Conductor, for example, is clearly in Hanks’ image.

Zemeckis notes that not too much ground needed to be broken for The Polar Express. Rather, it was more a matter of tweaking the existing technology and pushing it to its extremes. “Well, we had to perfect the system and we had to figure out what the limitations of it were, which aren’t very many,” he says. “And I guess the thing we had to do was figure out how you take a traditional 2D movie and imagine, like in a lavish set, like the North Pole, for example, and then grid it down into 10 x 10 chunks of volume and make the movie in 10 x 10 pieces at a time.”

“But once we had that laid out, that really went like clockwork,” he continues. “We figured out a system that, if we were doing a scene in this ballroom for example, what we would do is have the crew come in, measure everything and break it up into 10 x 10 squares. And if I had an actor who had to walk from this end to that end, you’d just do it in these increments. But now, in the current performance capture movie that’s being done, the volume is 20 x 30. So it’s getting bigger and bigger.”

Zemeckis knows better than most about technical challenges. Everyone remembers that he directed Forrest Gump, but it somehow manages to escape many people’s memory that he directed the revolutionary live-action/animation hybrid Who Framed Roger Rabbit? But the director points out that The Polar Express and Roger Rabbit were two vastly different experiences.

“Roger Rabbit was an insane endeavor,” Zemeckis says. “That was probably the hardest movie I ever made. This, in comparison, was an absolute dream. Roger Rabbit had a team of animators that had to be directed for two years after we finished doing a live action film noir movie and I walked away from every setup hoping that it was right and it couldn’t be changed.”

“Decisions had to be made before you even saw the rabbit’s performance, which took like a year maybe to do a minute’s worth of his performance, that sort of thing.”

By contrast, Zemeckis was able to split The Polar Express into two distinct phases, working first exclusively with the cast on their individual performances. “When we were done with that, in the comfort of an office, you did the cinema part. And it was just great. You didn’t have to worry about the elements, the rain, whether the trucks were going to get stuck in the mud, whether the generator’s going to run out of gas, any of that stuff. It was wonderful.”

Back in 1988, Roger Rabbit charmed and elicited chuckles from both kids and adults alike. If Warner Bros. hopes to recoup its sizable investment on The Polar Express, kids and adults will have to embrace the film’s heart, playfulness and sense of adventure. However, Zemeckis – despite the fact that The Polar Express will roll into theaters with a G-rating from the MPAA -- insists that he never set out to make a kiddie movie.

“I have a very simple philosophy about movies and kids, and that is, when I was a kid I never wanted to see a movie that was made for kids,” he explains. “I only wanted to see a movie that was made for adults.”

“I believe that all the great kid movies that have been made, like the ones Walt Disney was making, they were all made for adults,” he continues. “My approach was to make this movie for adults because kids get everything. I think one of the things that they resent is when they're being talked down to.”

So once again, when making The Polar Express, Zemeckis steered completely clear of the well-worn tracks of a kids’ movie. “I just made the movie that I would enjoy and that other people would enjoy. Obviously, you have certain boundaries because you don't want kids offended or disturbed by the movie.”

“But I wouldn't even know how to begin making a movie that a kid would kind of understand,” he concludes. “So I just did it and hoped that the kids would enjoy it.”

[Ghostboy]

I saw this this morning in IMAX 3D. It's not on the level of, say, The Grinch, but it's still all too obviously and laboriously stretched out to fill the 90 minute running time, and all the excessive developments just get tedious. And the Christmas Spirit message is very heavy handed. There are some stunning individual action sequences, but this is a story that didn't need action sequences at all -- the gorgeous simplicity of the book has been ruined.

Also, the North Pole looks like some sort of corporate nightmare universe...it's strikingly off-putting. And the elves are very...um...odd.

The animation is pretty -- the characters are a bit wooden, some more than others, but overall it works. However, I don't know if it would have looked as good in 2D, so I strongly recommend seeking it out on an IMAX screen if you're going to see it. This is the first narrative film I've ever seen this way, and it was pretty impressive. I'm excited about James Cameron's eventual 3D sci-fi film.

I wish this had been a 30 minute short. Then it would have been very easy to recommend.

[©brad]

170 million to produce and another 100 for prints and to promote it?!?!?!?! jesus christ i had no idea these animated shits were that much.

[cine]

Isn't this two Tom Hanks bombs in a row??  

[MacGuffin]

Isn't this two Tom Hanks bombs in a row??  

"The Terminal," while not the huge box office numbers Spielberg's films make, was not a 'bomb'.

[cine]

Isn't this two Tom Hanks bombs in a row??  

"The Terminal," while not the huge box office numbers Spielberg's films make, was not a 'bomb'.

I was basing that call on the track record of Tom Hanks. I even forgot to include the Ladykillers so that's three in a row. The Terminal made double the money than that but it was also in about twice as many theatres and twice as much money put into the production and marketing.

So I would call those both Tom Hanks box office bombs.

[cine]

No because we're always talking about domestic BO. I'm talking about his track record as an American actor starring in American movies making money in America.

I don't see how we're even arguing this. In the past 10 years, all of his films have exceeded over $100 million domestically (I'm excluding That Thing You Do!, in case you wanna pull a Bush-like "you forgot Poland!" thing). Ladykillers made under $40 million. And we all know it had a ton of marketing, same with The Terminal which made under $80 million.

Again, why are you arguing with me about this? You don't think Tom Hanks would call those unsuccessful? Fuck, I wasn't trying to compare the guy to Ben Affleck or anything.


EDIT: Oh, you deleted your post. Figures.

[Sleuth]

Also, the North Pole looks like some sort of corporate nightmare universe...it's strikingly off-putting.

I always thought it looked like those Coke commercials with the polar bears that looked like mongoloids

[Pubrick]

No because we're always talking about domestic BO. I'm talking about his track record as an American actor starring in American movies making money in America.

I don't see how we're even arguing this. In the past 10 years, all of his films have exceeded over $100 million domestically (I'm excluding That Thing You Do!, in case you wanna pull a Bush-like "you forgot Poland!" thing). Ladykillers made under $40 million. And we all know it had a ton of marketing, same with The Terminal which made under $80 million.

Again, why are you arguing with me about this? You don't think Tom Hanks would call those unsuccessful? Fuck, I wasn't trying to compare the guy to Ben Affleck or anything.


EDIT: Oh, you deleted your post. Figures.

ahh, the mystery reply.. the paradoxical victim and victor of self-deletion.

[Weak2ndAct]

How the F can this cost 170 million dollars?  That's just insane.  Did they pay Tom Hanks 20 million for each role he played or what?

[Alethia]

damn zemeckis and how he always seems to disappoint me in some way