Hanks boards 'The Polar Express' ( article )
Rick in Oz
Tom Hanks boards 'The Polar Express'
Tom Hanks and Robert Zemeckis are on board for what they hope will be a ride
unlike any other.
By BRUCE KIRKLAND -- Toronto Sun
The risks riding on The Polar Express are enormous.
The results are spectacular.
But the questions remain: Will the latest collaboration between superstar
actor Tom Hanks and director Robert Zemeckis justify its reported $165
million US price tag? Will one of the most expensive Christmas gifts Santa
Claus has stashed in his bag this year disappoint audiences and leave Hanks,
Zemeckis and Warner Bros. feeling like the Grinch? And will the dazzling
technological advances in this North Pole fairy tale be all for naught?
"Is is a big risk?" Hanks says, repeating a question posed by the Sun at a
recent New York press conference. "Yeah, of course. We could lose our shirts
and people could lose their jobs -- if the movie stinks!"
The filmmakers, of course, are confident that their movie doesn't stink and
that The Polar Express is strong enough to withstand the apparent backlash
against movies which rely too heavily on digital effects.
Titles such as Van Helsing and Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow bombed
at the box office this year, at least in relation to their huge budgets and
marketing costs.
The new film is based on a popular 29-page children's book, The Polar
Express, written and illustrated by author-artist Chris Van Allsburg in
1985. It is the story of a seven-year-old child, Hero Boy, who hops on board
a mysterious train bound for the North Pole on Christmas Eve. The child has
been growing cynical about Santa Claus and the spirit of the holiday. On the
journey and at Santa Claus' amazing home, he just might learn to believe
again. Van Allsburg's other work includes The Garden Of Abdul Gasazi (1979)
and Jumanji (1981), the latter book becoming a surreal live action movie in
1995 with Robin Williams.
Hanks, who has been re-reading The Polar Express to his children at
Christmas since it was published, bought the film rights to the book and,
with Zemeckis, worked out an innovative strategy to film it. "The idea of
turning it into a movie was a complete 'X' factor," Hanks says now. "You
have no idea if it's going to be possible, which is why, when Bob and I
first started talking about it, it was really only from the perspective,
'Well, what do you think? Is anything possible here or not?' "
The Polar Express is a hybrid film resting somewhere between live action and
animation. Just as in the failed adventure movie Sky Captain, none of the
sets and landscapes is real. They were created by computer artists, in this
case with scenes inspired specifically by the oil and pastel illustrations
Van Allsburg painted for his intensely visual book. Zemeckis says it would
have cost "billions" to do the movie properly in a real-life setting with
actual sets.
Hanks says that was not even a possibility because of the goals set for the
film's look. "There is something very stunning, quite frankly, about Van
Allsburg's paintings. They're not drawings. They're something (he searches
for words) ... impressionistic ..." So the paintings were absolutely
essential and could never be recreated in life, says Hanks.
Zemeckis agrees. "The paintings are where the emotion comes from, in my
opinion and, without those paintings, you're throwing half the book away."
Unlike Sky Captain, none of the people on screen is exactly real, either.
But they are not cartoon creatures. They are digitalized versions of a human
beings. In the case of the five characters that Hanks plays, each contains a
core of movement and facial expressions that powerfully suggest the actor.
So the recognition factor is high. Yet they are not quite human, either, and
the effect is unsettling for anyone who is not receptive to the idea of a
hyper-real screen image.
The on-screen people were all created through the advancing process of
motion capture, the same technique which allowed Andy Serkis to develop the
Gollum character for The Lord Of The Rings, although his mutant being was
obviously distorted to extremes. Nor is this technique new. Walt Disney used
a more mechanical form in Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs (1937) to help his
artists animate Snow White, although she was then turned into a cartoon.
The difference now is the sophistication of the process, the role of
computers and the desire behind
The Polar Express to have human-like characters but maintain the spell of
fairy tale-like magic in the story. To do it, the real actors -- with Hanks
playing each of his different roles one at a time -- performed in a
rehearsal-like studio setting while as many as 150 reflective sensors were
attached to their faces and scalps and more on their bodies. The sensors, or
"reflective jewels" as the filmmakers call them, recorded even the most
subtle movements and gestures for the computers.
Hanks says there is no comparison to what he did for the Toy Story movies.
"The difference ... is extraordinary because The Polar Express really is me,
as opposed to some rendering of a character that I'm supposed to be."
Hanks, once Zemeckis introduced him to the new technique and he got over his
initial confusion, became a devotee. "The nature of motion capture is only
going to work for certain films. It's not going to put any other type of
movie out of business. In fact, motion capture has been used for movies that
you yourself (referring to film critics in general) have said were great: It
was used in The Matrix, in Titanic.
"What this can do from an actor's point of view, quite frankly, is free us
up to a huge degree. It's an extraordinary opportunity for actors to no
longer be limited by size, weight, colour of hair, gender or race. That
actually is really great news. But the fact is that, right now, it is pretty
prohibitively expensive (for most films)."
The Polar Express has circumstances that justified the expense, Hanks and
Zemeckis both say. Hanks' five characters allowed him to range freely -- and
Zemeckis even suggested at one point that Hanks should play everybody in the
story, although the actor declined. As it is, Hanks plays Hero Boy, the
Boy's Father, the Conductor, the Hobo and Santa Claus, the latter as an
austere and powerful gentleman, not as the roly-poly, laughing clown of many
portrayals.
Having Hanks play Hero Boy allowed him to avoid one of the pitfalls he
feared most, Zemeckis says. That was the challenge of "hanging a giant movie
like this on some kid actor that you would have to go around the world and
try to find, hoping you would get a great one. You have to hope you've got
the next Haley Joel Osment (because) the whole movie hangs on that."
The 48-year-old Hanks gave Zemeckis the luxury of having an experienced
actor release the kid inside of him, while bringing the adult to other
roles. Says Hanks: "What this allows, from a filmmaker's point of view, is
that, if they can imagine it, there is literally a new way to film it.
"As far as the actor goes, it is now possible to play any character in any
circumstance in a way that simply was not as feasible before. I found that
it was actually a return to a type of acting that (traditional) film does
not allow you to do. It is exactly like rehearsing a play in the round. You
are surrounded and you don't have to worry about lights, angles, cameras,
over-the-shoulder coverage. We simply did a great series of 10- or 15-minute
plays. And we did it in real time. And, when we were done, Bob had
everything he needed. So it was a blast."
And the risk? Hanks says there is always one when breaking new ground in the
cinema. "I think that every one of these movies is an incredible risk. Every
one. At the end of the day (the question is), 'Who's gonna care?' If they
don't care, then we're in big trouble."
As an example, Hanks says co-directors Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B.
Schoedsack took a big risk in 1933: " 'Let me get this straight,' " he says,
posing as a vintage and cynical Hollywood producer. " 'You're going to make
a movie about a big monkey and you're going to do it with clay figures one
shot at a time? What a stupid thing! No one's going to care about that!' And
then the movie's King Kong!"
With audiences going to The Polar Express, Hanks says, "The only thing
that's gonna matter is the story."
From Sunny Oz, Rick :)
Proud Keeper of the talented & beautiful Halle Berry.
gimmeabreak
looks like the "PR" Express is also going full tilt - and that doesn't
look like steam it's running on; that's stinky gas pooting out of
Hank's and Zemekis' cabooses.
hey Tom, Robert; a 3d rose by any other name is still "computer
ANIMATION"!
way to kill big budget CGI flicks fellas.
i'd rather sit through the short yet kick-ass Christmas-land scene in
Burton's "Nightmare before Christmas" than this pretentious (ahem)
non-animated stinker.
thank the Gods for Pixar.
ob
gimmeabreak
looks like the "PR" Express is also going full tilt - and that doesn't
Font of All Important Info
felt compelled by mysterious forces to say:
>http://canoe.ca/JamMovies/nov7_polarexpress-sun.html
>
>Tom Hanks boards 'The Polar Express'
>Tom Hanks and Robert Zemeckis are on board for what they hope will be a ride
>unlike any other.
>By BRUCE KIRKLAND -- Toronto Sun
> The risks riding on The Polar Express are enormous.
>
>The results are spectacular.
<snip>
every time i see that trailer or the commercial, it creeps me out.
that film looks creeeeeepy, "spectacular." bleah.
--dez
...a pistol-hot cup of Dez...
"Chef of chicanery, your buns are mine!"
--the Tick