Does The Polar Express (2004) Still Hold Up Today?
All aboard! It’s the most wonderful time of the year, folks! A time of giving, joy and spending time with your loved ones. And the second time of the year when you get presents! Unless you’re an adult. Then Santa Claus doesn’t really care whether you get presents or not. That is, if you still believe in Santa as an adult. Why am I bringing this up? Because this holiday season, we’ll be taking a look back at this Christmas classic based on Chris Van Allsburg’s award-winning children’s book of the same name: The Polar Express, directed by Robert Zemeckis.
On the night of Christmas Eve, a young boy (voiced by Josh Hutcherson) hears a train outside his house. Curious, he stumbles outside where he sees a regal locomotive with only one destination: The North Pole. Quickly hopping on, The Conductor (voiced by Tom Hanks) clips the boy’s ticket as he sits down among the other kids. He makes friends with two other kids: the Hero Girl and the last passenger, the Lonely Boy. Despite all the other kids around him excited to finally see Santa Claus (also voiced by Tom Hanks), the boy remains skeptical on whether Jolly Saint Nick really exists.
I was about 7 years old when I first came across this movie. I remember sitting in my dad’s car watching the previews for Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe on this tiny portable DVD player. The shriek of the train whistle and the low rumble of the wheels rattled through my bones as I stared in awe at the train outside the boy’s house. Tom Hanks asking the boy whether he wants to board was the sweet cherry on top. I knew that I had to get my hands on the movie. And 2 years later, I did. That Christmas night, I watched the film in its entirety while munching away at a mountain of jelly beans. Despite that year being particularly hard, it was one of my happiest childhood memories.
Unlike most other animated films I’ve come across, The Polar Express is brought to life through live action motion capture. To do this, actors wear skin-tight mo-cap suits to capture their physical movement and head cameras to capture their facial expressions. Even though CGI was becoming commonplace at the time (thanks to Pixar and DreamWorks), the idea of a film made completely using motion capture was very novel. Fortunately, The Polar Express was a financial success, grossing $318 million on a budget of $170 million. This success spoke volumes for the art of motion capture, resulting in several more movies spawning in the years to follow, such as Beowulf in 2007 also directed by Robert Zemeckis.
What people often don’t realize is how expensive and time-consuming the art of animation really is. Every minute of The Polar Express cost $1 million to make. And each scene is crafted and packed with creativity. For example, after the Hero Girl’s ticket is blown away by the wind, we follow it through a pack of wolves, see it swooped up by an eagle, chewed up and spat out by its baby before finally returning to the train. Fully demonstrating the magical qualities of the ticket and how it always returns to its owner. But despite the film’s superb animation by 2004 standards, it feels a bit dated today. Some of the character faces have this really uncanny valley look, making them seem unnatural and even horrifying. Just take a look at the elves if you want a good idea.
Since Van Allsburg’s book was 32 pages, the movie has to take some liberties in order to make it a full length feature film. So what do they do? Why, make the journey to The North Pole as dangerous as possible! There are so many bombastic rollercoaster-like sequences, you’d think that Universal distributed the film. And ironically, Universal actually turned down the film citing its high budget. There’s even a scene where the train nearly derails and drifts across a frozen lake. I’m sorry, am I accidentally watching “The Fast and Furious: Christmas Edition”? (At the rate the franchise is going, it’ll be an actual movie) What purpose do these scenes serve other than to drag out the film’s precious runtime and waste money that could’ve been better spent? But it gets worse. In the midst of its action phase, the movie suddenly becomes a horror flick complete with creepy puppets that’d make both Chuckie and M3GAN blush! Look, if I want to watch a horrifying Christmas film, I’d watch this absolute monstrosity.
The movie also features characters that were not in the original book. Now I’m by no means a stickler for adaptation purism. However, the additions have to make sense. About a third of the way through, the Hero Boy meets a hobo who somehow lives on the top of the train. How does he live up there? He’s a ghost. And his sole existence is to…convince the boy that Santa’s real? He continues to sporadically appear throughout the film, but we never get any idea of who he is. Which begs the question, why was he in the movie to begin with? I originally thought he was a fragment of Santa’s spirit or maybe the Spirit of Christmas. It turns out his existence was explained in a deleted scene as a simple hobo who died on the train. I guess that settles that!
Much like Takeshi Koike’s Redline, The Polar Express is the definition of stellar animation with some less than enjoyable storytelling elements. Now that’s not to say it’s bad, just that it could’ve been better had it stuck to its ethereal aesthetic and wholesome childhood tone rather than putting in bombastic action sequences, creepy puppets and pointless original characters. Will I be revisiting it as a Christmas movie time and time again? I think I’d rather watch this movie instead. Should you decide to check the film out, be ready to witness the pure imagination and pure insanity of The Polar Express!
