Why animate these?

[2099net]

I've looked at the new Polar Express trailer today, and I'm not impressed. Why the heck is it an animated film? Especially with a CGI Tom Hanks look-a-like? What is the point? Are they aiming for reality or animation? I guess looking at the trailer they're aiming for a look more towards reality rather than animation (but I'm not impressed - its been a few years since the Final Fantasy movie, and things don't seem to have moved on in human rendering). But why? Why not live action on computer generated sets? Why not fully live action with a few CGI effects? What are the filmmakers trying to achieve?

Then I was thinking about King of the Hill. King of the Hill may not look realistic, but on the whole it has 'realistic' animation. People don't bend and distort when hit. Eyes don't pop-out of their heads. People don't even run fast, fall great distances or pull funny faces. So does anyone think King of the Hill would work better as live action? Or do you think animation adds to the appeal? Just wondering.

[Loomis]

I tend to agree,

First off, film is a useful medium, and as time has gone on, people have realized that the best and most effective use of the cinematic medium is to do things you simply can't do elsewhere (i.e. as opposed to filming a stage play).

Animation is even more unique in that it allows filmmakers to do things they can't possibly do in live action. So 'Net is right - why possibly try and emulate live action anyways? Isn't that simply denying the possibiities animation has to offer?

King of the Hill is a good example, because - as you say - the storytelling does half the work. Having just watched the Polar Express trailer in the time it took me to type this (yes, my new computer is very fast ), I can say that animating that story seems pointless. It is so "real" looking, that animation may as well have not been used.

Fidning Nemo was a success as it not only had a simple, but effective, story; it used animation in the best way - to show things you couldn't possibly do in real life (i.e. fish talking).

[TheZue]

I totally agree that animating the Polar express is completly useless. It looks like a pretty lame movie, animated or not, though.

King of The Hill does benifit from the animation though. If it was life action Bobby would be in his late teens/early twenties by now, and the show would probably be coming to an end. The animation gives the writers freedom to slow down the timeline with things like that. Also the people in King of the Hill don't look completely real like they do in the Polar Express, Mike Judge's artistic style still comes through.

[Jens]

I respect all of your opinions, but I totally do not share them. I just love the trailer of the movie and it made me anxious to go see it... The animation was done like that because the filmmakers wanted to keep it as close to the book as possible. The technology is something new, the actors all have little sensors on their body and then their actions are put into the computer. There they are animated further... I really like how they have done it

[Prince Adam]

I think that the movie is trying to capture the look of the childhood illustrations from the book.

[toonaspie]

I never read the book either, but despite the money blown and pointlessness of animating this film it looks well done from looking at the previews. (except for Santa Claus)

[indianajdp]

I might be in the minority here, but I did enjoy the trailers and am looking forawrd to this one come November. In addition, I cannot imagine this film presented in any other fashion. It's based on the best-selling, award-winning children's book and I think it would lose a lot of it's appeal if it were a live-action film.

And let's face it, this is for kids first and foremost. I think CGI will capture a lot of these kids immediately and hold their interest throughout, something that is never guaranteed with a live-action film. Sure some of the characters look cheesy, but most 7 year-olds are not technical critics like we are. It's a proven fact that kids absolutely LOVE this story, and I'm betting they will love the animated film version, too.

[Paka]

Sorry, but this film looks repulsive.

As in, involuntarily repulsive. The uber-realism of the almost-but-not-quite humans is downright creepy. And people have been reacting to the PE trailers like this across the board. And there very well may be a concrete explanation for it -

http://slate.msn.com/id/2102086

Read that Slate article. It cites a phenomenon called the Uncanny Valley effect. The discovery of Japanese roboticist that a person's affection for example robot models grew as the robots became more human-like, but at an abrupt point, when the robots looked "too" human - too uncanny - that affection completely disappeared and gave way to revulsion. It's an instinctive response.

The screwiest part of this phenomenon is that game designers pride themselves on the quality of their sepulchral human characters. It's part of the malaise that currently affects game design, in which too many designers assume that crisper 3-D graphics will make a game better. That may be true when it comes to scenery, explosions, or fog. But with human faces and bodies, we're harder to fool. Neuroscientists argue that our brains have evolved specific mechanisms for face recognition, because being able to recognize something "wrong" in someone else's face has long been crucial to survival. If that's true, then game designers may never be able to capture that last 1 percent of realism. The more they plug away at it—the more high-resolution their human characters become—the deeper they'll trudge into the Uncanny Valley.

So, I think that this Uncanny Valley effect is what will kill the film's success the hardest. And yes, even kids will notice it; they, in fact, may be turned off the most. I don't care that Zemeckis was "trying to capture the look of the book's illustrations," you'd think they would give up on this mo-cap and CG realism method after a few tests. I would have been perfectly fine if they had shot it live action, then CG'd and digital-graded the hell out of it - because at least that way the human characters would look real - because that way they are real.
And concerning the story, yes, it's cute. A neat little Christmas story. But I fear that this short kid's book will suffer from "Seuss-itis" - as in, Hollywood taking a short, simple tale and bloating it up to grotesque proportions to fill out a 90-minute feature time. Sorry for the bad pun, but I'll be sure to steer clear of this train wreck.

[Maerj]

Sorry, but this film looks repulsive.

As in, involuntarily repulsive. The uber-realism of the almost-but-not-quite humans is downright creepy.

I think that's what may have gone wrong with Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. They were pretty releastic, yet it was like they had no...life. It was like animated corpses or something, lol. Oh well.

[Christian]

The uber-realism of the almost-but-not-quite humans is downright creepy.

That's soooooo true. I started feeling like I had spiders crawling all over me near the end of watching the trailer after watching all the stiffness and the creepiness of the human characters. The animators may think they're approaching some new level of realism but if it just turns people off then what good is it? The technical achievement may be noteworthy but the artistic achievement is worse than nil. I've tried to shove the whole thing out of my mind but wasn't there a part with all these train attendants doing back flips in a dining car or something? That part just looked very awkward and unnatural. Both Shrek movies were afflicted with the same stomach-turning problem, where everything looks fine except for the human characters.

[2099net]

I totally agree that animating the Polar express is completly useless. It looks like a pretty lame movie, animated or not, though.

King of The Hill does benifit from the animation though. If it was life action Bobby would be in his late teens/early twenties by now, and the show would probably be coming to an end. The animation gives the writers freedom to slow down the timeline with things like that. Also the people in King of the Hill don't look completely real like they do in the Polar Express, Mike Judge's artistic style still comes through.

While the lack of aging may be a benefit of animation, I don't see it as being a reason for animation. After all, you may as well say Malcolm in the Middle or maybe even Full House or Home Improvement would have had the same benefit.

Talking of Malcolm if I'd had to read a script of MitM and KotH, I'd have placed money on Malcolm being the animated show. Does anyone thing Malcolm would have benefitted more than KotH by being animated?

As for The Polar Express looking like the book, does anyone have example illustrations they can post or link to? Surely traditional animation would be more fitting? (Unless the book is illustrated in a realistic airbrushed style). Doesn't this just show people are making CGI films because they are precieved as popular when another media would be more appropropriate (traditional animation or live action)?

If you all blast Eisner for saying "2D is dead" why no similar blasts for Zemekis? Who, let's face it, is making a redundant Tom Hanks CGI figure using data captured from the real Tom Hanks to represent Tom Hanks on screen? Just because he can.

[TheZue]

While the lack of aging may be a benefit of animation, I don't see it as being a reason for animation. After all, you may as well say Malcolm in the Middle or maybe even Full House or Home Improvement would have had the same benefit.

Talking of Malcolm if I'd had to read a script of MitM and KotH, I'd have placed money on Malcolm being the animated show. Does anyone thing Malcolm would have benefitted more than KotH by being animated?

I think that many of the sitcoms that revolved around kids being a certain age would benifit from animation on that level. Malcom in the middle would have worked animated as well. There have been many sitcoms where the kids growing up was anoying since their characters got anoying, Mark from Home Improvement and the Olsen twins on full house both come to mind. I think a lot of times the writers put these pilots out that rely heavily on children with no plan with how they will age them.


And speaking of creepy CG, has anyone seen the baby in the trailer for the Mask sequel. That one is super creepy.

[Ludwig Von Drake]

I remember enjoying the book growing up, and I liked the previews until this new one when you see all of the kids' faces, they are terrible, though I still might see the movie for posterity.