The Polar Express

Squirrel · Post by **Squirrel** » Sat Nov 15, 2003 2:37 pm

In Quicktime, at the link...

http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/the_polar_express/

I'm looking forward to this one more than Pixar's The Incredibles (whose trailer didn't really do anything for me, honestly). This is by Warner Brothers. Though I still feel offish about 3D animation, sometimes strongly offish...but I do think this will be a good film, a hit. What with its director, as well as Tom Hanks...and the children's book it's based on is beautiful (and I would've liked to have seen it animated traditionally). Could it win Animated Feature next year?

But, again, I think this will be a lovely film. Certainly very advanced. The animation is helped using motion-capture. I'll be seeing it when it comes out. Thoughts?

Lady · Post by **Lady** » Sat Nov 15, 2003 4:04 pm

looking forward to this as well.

indianajdp · Post by **indianajdp** » Sat Nov 15, 2003 6:16 pm

Oh man does this look great. Looking forward to what should be a fantastic November '04

Disneykid · Post by **Disneykid** » Sun Nov 16, 2003 7:10 pm

This film looks great. Both the animation and the score impress me very much, even if a CGI Tom Hanks is slightly creepy (only because, well, it's Tom Hanks!). I'm actually looking forward to this more than Incredibles which is saying something since I'm always rooting for Pixar. Perhaps my familiarity with the book is influencing my decision. We'll see.

ArtOfDisney · Post by **ArtOfDisney** » Mon Nov 17, 2003 10:53 am

I'm looking forard to it as well. I think it could have made a great 2D film as well. The Tom Hanks Animation looks Awesome!!!

Papa Bear · Post by **Papa Bear** » Sun Nov 07, 2004 4:31 pm

I did not see anyother posts on "The Polar Express" so I thought I would start one I saw an early showing of this film yesterday on our local Imax screen and it was shown in 3-D. The film itself was awesome, the story was great easy to follow and kept you involved with the charecters. The animatimation is great. At times I forgot that the charecters on the screen were animated the background shots were totally sweet. And seeing it all in 3-D just enhanced the whole experience so much more. I would reccomend this film to everyone it is a great film to see with family or close friends to share this wonderful holiday season together. And if any of you have an Imax screen within a reasonable distance to you I would suggest that you see this in the Imax with the 3-D It was great!! I hate to say this on this forum but I evan enjoyed this film more than the Incredibles, Which I also enjoyed a great deal. But this film has that magic we all have come to know and love from Disney, so it is good to see that other film companies can spark the magic fire within us all.

indianajdp · Post by **indianajdp** » Mon Nov 08, 2004 6:46 pm

Papa Bear wrote:I did not see anyother posts on "The Polar Express" so I thought I would start one I saw an early showing of this film yesterday on our local Imax screen and it was shown in 3-D. The film itself was awesome, the story was great easy to follow and kept you involved with the charecters. The animatimation is great. At times I forgot that the charecters on the screen were animated the background shots were totally sweet. And seeing it all in 3-D just enhanced the whole experience so much more. I would reccomend this film to everyone it is a great film to see with family or close friends to share this wonderful holiday season together. And if any of you have an Imax screen within a reasonable distance to you I would suggest that you see this in the Imax with the 3-D It was great!! I hate to say this on this forum but I evan enjoyed this film more than the Incredibles, Which I also enjoyed a great deal. But this film has that magic we all have come to know and love from Disney, so it is good to see that other film companies can spark the magic fire within us all.

Many thanx for the mini-review, PB. I have eagerly anticipated this since I saw the first teasers online in mid-2003 ... much moreso than The Incredibles. I am so excited to take my daughter to see this!

Celtic · Post by **Celtic** » Tue Nov 09, 2004 1:33 am

I've seen the trailers for this and it looks brilliant. I can't wait to see it. Films like this make me feel like a kid again!

castleinthesky · Post by **castleinthesky** » Tue Nov 09, 2004 3:15 pm

hopefully I will see this.

Post by **Luke** » Wed Nov 10, 2004 5:20 am

Not to play devil's advocate, but the New York Times' review of the film is so comically harsh I just had to share:

Manohla Dargis of The New York Times wrote: Based on the 32-page children's book by Chris Van Allsburg, the new animated feature "The Polar Express" has already received attention for the advanced technology employed to make the film and the heart-skipping amount of money reportedly spent to transpose the story from page to screen. I suspect that most moviegoers care more about stories and characters than how much money it took for a digitally rendered strand of hair to flutter persuasively in the wind. Nor will they care that to make "Polar Express" Tom Hanks wore a little cap that transmitted a record of his movements to a computer, creating templates for five different animated characters.

It's likely, I imagine, that most moviegoers will be more concerned by the eerie listlessness of those characters' faces and the grim vision of Santa Claus's North Pole compound, with interiors that look like a munitions factory and facades that seem conceived along the same oppressive lines as Coketown, the red-brick town of "machinery and tall chimneys" in Dickens's "Hard Times." Tots surely won't recognize that Santa's big entrance in front of the throngs of frenzied elves and awe-struck children directly evokes, however unconsciously, one of Hitler's Nuremberg rally entrances in Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will." But their parents may marvel that when Santa's big red sack of toys is hoisted from factory floor to sleigh it resembles nothing so much as an airborne scrotum.

Directed by Robert Zemeckis, who wrote the film with William Broyles Jr., "The Polar Express" is a grave and disappointing failure, as much of imagination as of technology. Turning a book that takes a few minutes to read into a feature-length film presented a significant hurdle that the filmmakers were not able to clear. The story seems simple enough: a nameless young boy neither fully believes nor disbelieves in Santa, but doubt nags at him so hard that he dreams up a train, the Polar Express, which transports him to the North Pole. Essentially Mr. Van Allsburg's story is about faith, not in Jesus, but in the fat man in the red suit who pops around each year on Jesus' birthday. As with many children's stories, it's also about the power of the imagination.

Read the rest of the article (free registration required), which goes on to be very praiseworthy of Pixar while offering a much different view (brutally condemning) of this film:
Do You Hear Sleigh Bells? Nah, Just Tom Hanks and Some Train

Marielle · Post by **Marielle** » Wed Nov 10, 2004 1:41 pm

Well thanks for that great review, I have to admit you made me more interested in it. I'll probably see it when it comes to DVD though. I think the only reason I'd go see this film is because the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (with Johnny Depp) Trailer is supposed to be shown before the film. Lame reason, I know.

Paka · Post by **Paka** » Wed Nov 10, 2004 2:04 pm

Manohla Dargis wrote:But their parents may marvel that when Santa's big red sack of toys is hoisted from factory floor to sleigh it resembles nothing so much as an airborne scrotum.

Gee, how often do you hear the word "scrotum" used in a movie review? In the New York Times, no less?

EDIT: The film is going downhill fast with critics - as of this post, it was only barely fresh at 60% (and 60% is the minimum for a "fresh" movie...), and interestingly enough, almost all of the rotten reviews point out the same thing - the characters are freakin' creepy!!

People are getting it.

Hopefully this means a nasty fate for this film. I just hope that it receives rotten word-of-mouth, and doesn't become the "default" holiday film that people will flock to just because it's Christmas-y...

PatrickvD · Post by **PatrickvD** » Wed Nov 10, 2004 2:05 pm

I read a review that referred to it as "Night of the living dead" lol

This movie looks so unbelievably scary....

AwallaceUNC · Post by **AwallaceUNC** » Wed Nov 10, 2004 6:55 pm

I'm avoiding reading the rest of this thread until I see the movie tomorrow, but does anyone know what the very good Christmas song was in some of the early trailers? I think it was like a children's choir singing and it closed out the trailer. Is it in the movie or on the soundtrack? I hope so!

-Aaron

AwallaceUNC · Post by **AwallaceUNC** » Thu Nov 11, 2004 9:27 pm

^^Still no one knows?

Well I just got back from seeing it. Overall, it was pretty good... but not great. Sadly, great is what I expected (perhaps these ridiculously high expectations are part of the problem). It didn't quite move me as much as I had hoped it would. It almost gets there, but then it doesn't. The film just tries to be too many things at once (and there's WAY too much Tom Hanks... what's the point in using him for almost every character?? What do they achieve?)

It suffers from plot holes as well. The scenic animation is amazing, but just as I feared, their attempt to make animation toorealistic (why not just make it live-action?) got in the way. The character animation was distractingly awkward and the words and mouths didn't even synchronize at parts. The little girl was terribly animated and terribly annoying. They really should have gone with live-action, I think, and spent a little more time on screenplay and casting (but then, I'm not the world's biggest Hanks fan).

It never got boring, but you could definitely tell they were killing time at parts. There were a lot of "huh?"s from the room. I think this could have easily been resolved, so I'm not sure why it wasn't.

All this negativity may leave you with the wrong impression, though. I did think it was pretty good, and I'll probably even buy it- it was just a bit of a letdown, considering its potential.

-Aaron

Post by **Luke** » Thu Nov 11, 2004 10:20 pm

Aaron, don't leave us hanging. Tell us about this "airborne scrotum"!

AwallaceUNC · Post by **AwallaceUNC** » Thu Nov 11, 2004 10:29 pm

How could I forget the scrotum? Well I know what they're talking about now, but the thought never crossed my mind when I saw it. I doubt the NYT was being serious (or perhaps it's that I never take them seriously

), but I'd say that's going a bit far.

pinkrenata · Post by **pinkrenata** » Thu Nov 11, 2004 11:12 pm

awallaceunc wrote: (and there's WAY too much Tom Hanks... what's the point in using him for almost every character?? What do they achieve?)

Um, a big name to draw attention?

AwallaceUNC · Post by **AwallaceUNC** » Fri Nov 12, 2004 7:35 am

This is true, but I think that having him as the conductor (the only role of his we hear on the trailers and that looks like him) would have sufficienty achieved that. I was most upset by their decision to allow him to voice Santa.

-Aaron

Just Myself · Post by **Just Myself** » Fri Nov 12, 2004 9:48 pm

I saw it at 8:00pm and I loved it. The CGI is NOT creepy, it's actually beautiful in most places. The plot is very interesting, and Hero Boy's many adventures kept me having fun. Tom Hanks does get old after a while, and I think they could have gotten a better Santa voice (namely old freind Tim Allen

), but aside from him getting old I love the movie. About the scrotum... What the hell movie did that woman see? Only someone with a dirty mind could see that. A word of advice for NYT: Don't let an obsessive porn watcher review a kid's film. e_e

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