October 26, 2004

The Polar Express is on the way… let's talk about the Wooly Mammoth in the room…

The thing cost a whole lot of money… money, money, money, money… the budget being thrown around in the media is, conveniently, significantly lower than the real cost. This thing is one of the most expensive films ever made. And it will not gross its cost at the domestic box office.

Now… try to forget what I just wrote because it is wholly irrelevant. I know. It's funny coming from me. And the cost of the movie will be something I write about in future, I'm sure, particularly when wrapping up the wins and losses of the season. But I'm writing this for you, a bunch of people who are really interested in and can, mostly, effectively surf the interior life of a film production with some perspective. If I was writing this for a mainstream paper or editing a major print critic, I would be trying to tread very lightly on the cost of this film.

It becomes harder because Warner Bros. seems to be trying to sell the SPECTACULAR element of the film. And they have to do that. They have a huge investment to recover and they have a film that…

Well…

Bob Zemeckis is one of my favorite filmmakers. More than any other director out there, he has locked on to genre after genre, let them assimilate with his own view of the movie world and put out movies that push their genres a step further than anyone else seems to have before. Even going back to Used Cars, Zemeckis (then teamed with Bob Gale) took the southern fried comedy someplace smarter and darker and much more adult, all under the watchful eye of his first and forever supporter, then-family-mogul Steven Spielberg.

With the amazing success of his films - at the end of 2000, Zemeckis had directed 5 of the 75 all time highest grossing movies… Spielberg had 8, Chris Columbus had 3 and no one else had more than 2 as of the end of 2000 - Zemeckis has become a guy who can do almost anything he wants. And often what he wants happens to be something that doesn't already exist. In this case, the core of the film was Chris Van Allsburg's book, The Polar Express, which was a favorite of the Zemeckis and Hanks families, among others. But Zemeckis had to figure it out… how could he do this book, which is so much about the visual art of the book, and get it right? Was it possible?

The result is something called Performance Capture, which took motion capture to a whole new level. I'm not going to elaborate on the technology… you'll be sick of reading about it soon enough without my help. But like Star Wars, then Close Encounters, then Levinson's Young Sherlock Holmes (also under Spielberg's supportive gaze), then The Abyss, then T2, then Titanic, then Lucas' second set of Star Wars films, Lord of The Rings' Gollum/Smeagol, and last year's Matrix movies, this is one major new piece of the effects puzzle. I don't think - and more importantly, Zemeckis doesn't seem to think - that this specific technology is "the future." After all, how many water snakes or molten metal people do you see in movies these days?

But Polar Express, along with efforts currently underway to make a "traditional animation" style movie with CG technology (recreating hand drawn animations is too complex for a computer so far), represents a major shift in the notion of CG. (Luddites beware!) The Polar Express is, by its very nature, a movie first and a technological exhibit second. Zemeckis didn't make a movie that is straining to be "the first" or "the biggest" or the "most breathtaking." He made The Polar Express. And it just so happens that it has created new firsts and is often visually breathtaking.

What the "CG is ruining everything" crowd - who were in force when sound forced the motion picture camera into the closet, literally, for a decade or so just when camera movement was being taken to sublime levels by Hollywood's immigrant directors - is missing is the simple notion that all this technology allows cinematic storytellers to tell their stories in any way they wish. "New" is not necessarily the goal. As with any new technology, the aesthetic abuses of those not creative enough to see past the new are irritating. But as Tom Hanks said at a Polar press conference, wouldn't it be fascinating to be able to see Meryl Streep as a black child in the Civil Rights era? (Ironically, Streep did play wildly not-her roles in the filmed version of Angels in America and was brilliant… but what if she could have been so well disguised by a computer that we were never aware of her being a her under her old rabbi's make-up? And how would the physical freedom of not having to disguise her female form free up her acting brilliance even further?)

The freedom of technology allows not only progress, but aesthetic "regression." Actually, you will soon see that kind of "regression" in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, which has a Rankin-Bass style character animation segment that was created completely in the computer to look like hand-done frame-by-frame model animation. The suspension of disbelief is a fascinating element in all forms of the narrative arts. And there is something to be said, for instance, to the economies of style that a CG-free world forces on some films. As I wrote in April, Van Helsing is a movie that suffered from too much technology and not enough of the old-school style that its director displayed a skill for in his earlier efforts. Sommers was no less competent than before, he just had too many choices and the humanity of the work was lessened.

So, what do I think of The Polar Express, all that money and technology aside… the way a regular human being sees a movie?

I liked it. It was charming and warm and I got past the non-human human look of the characters quickly in the context of the story and the world that they built for it, based so accurately and lovingly on Van Allsburg's work. It is, by its nature, a tiny movie. It is a Christmas movie, through and through. And I suspect that it will be a perennial, the DVD broken out by the family to watch each Thanksgiving morning after the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and dozens of times in the month between then and Christmas.

The Polar Express is not a movie thrill ride or a movie that teenage boys will ever admit they don't hate or a film you need to look at next summer. It is not a movie for adults, though it will be pleasant enough for senior citizens who are looking for something that doesn't blow up. It is not The Incredibles, which is joyously silly, rangy in style and paced like a man chasing a bullet. Polar Express is a very specific film. And if you put the money and the technology to the side, there is something wonderful about that notion… and about the film.

Of course, talking to Zemeckis, you realize that he has already moved along on the money and technology sides. He is producing another Performance Capture film with a first-time director at the helm about a living "monster" house that he says will cost half of what The Polar Express cost with technology that is twice as effective.

But before that film arrives, I will have seen Polar Express at least one more time. It may turn out to be the best IMAX version of a conventional film to date, running in IMAX in 3-D and sure to be a visual stunner. And I'll let the big, loud movies of the season fill that part of my movie loving time… Alexander, National Treasure, The Phantom of the Opera, Lemony Snicket, etc… and I will treasure Polar Express as the small gem it is… until we look back in a few years with the perspective of time and see how this film changed the face of filmmaking. How others use that technology… well, that is their responsibility and I can only hope that they honor the spirit of this groundbreaker.

READER OF THE DAY: A CANDAIAN FRIEND writes: "How could reader Stella's Boy defend the popularity of the Grudge and then turn around and call Saw a "derivative and cliched piece of crap"? Granted, Saw borrows from Se7en and all those other twisted serial killer movies, but at least it pulled me in. I can't say the same for the Japanese horror re-make, which was a derivative and cliched (not to mention overrated) horror film it its native language. Don't even get me started on the quicken-the-pace-for-the-attention-defecit-American-audience remake. I spent most of the movie observing how Sarah Michelle Gellar speaks out of her lower lip.

I just thought I'd drop a quick note to defend Saw. I didn't love the movie, but it's definitely the most interesting, nail-biting thriller of this Halloween season (not that we had a lot to choose from...though Surviving Christmas was pretty scary). The acting by Cary Elwes is attrocious, but then again when isn't it? The fact that the co-screenwriter is playing the supporting lead isn't any better. But damn is the script pieced together in a way that'll pull you in. If you want to see how newcomer directors can score a cast of bad actors and still come out with a watchable movie, Saw is it. I'm taking my friends next weekend just to show them how a distaster waiting to happen (it even had a shooting schedule that was hardly 2 weeks) can turn into a fun little thriller."

And THE CATALOG KING writes: "The answer to the question "Will The Grudge do well next week at the box office?" is NO. Big-time NO. I find that my experience in seeing this film was about as different as possible from Stella's Boy. Everyone was heckling the film in various ways, and although there are a couple of good scares, the film is bad.
Saw may not be very good, it may be; The Grudge only made money because of the marketing. It'll disappear in a few weeks.

E-ME: Are you ready to roll with the new technology of film?