Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by Troy (A) on November 12, 2004 at 11:05:54

In Reply to: The Polar Express - 3D IMAX posted by Raiderman on November 1, 2004 at 15:26:30:

From the NY Times:

“. . . A grave and disappointing failure, as much of imagination as of technology . . . "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 . . .”

I don't think they liked it very much.