The advent of new technology in cinema is both a daring and dicey proposition. The medium demands that its makers push up against what can be done, but that can mean experimenting in bold ways that don’t always pay off. In the early 2000s, motion-capture animation had enabled the actor Andy Serkis to embody the transformed character Gollum in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, to masterful acclaim. (It got to the point where some critics argued, logically, that Serkis should have been nominated for an Oscar.) But there’s a difference between turning one actor into a motion-capture character vs. using motion-capture technology for an entire film. Making a risky technological choice, though, has never stopped the director Robert Zemeckis, as was the case with his adaptation of Chris Van Allsburg’s The Polar Express, turning 20 this week.
The premise of the film is as simple and innately powerful as that of the source material: what if there was a magical train that would send certain kids to the North Pole on Christmas Eve to come face-to-face with Santa Claus? As detailed in both the book and film, it’s not just any kid, but specifically those kids who are hovering on the edge of no longer believing in the power and magic of Christmas. But the book is just 32 pages long, and heavier on lush illustrations than on words or even a story arc. Thus, Zemeckis and co-writer William Broyles, Jr. expanded the story to include a Hero Boy (voiced by Daryl Sabara) encountering the train’s Conductor (voiced and performed by Tom Hanks), a mysterious Hobo (voiced and performed by Hanks), and Santa himself (voiced and performed by…Hanks). Oh, and the Hero Boy motion-capture was provided by – you guessed it – Hanks.
The Polar Express is unquestionably a daring film. At times, it feels like a proof-of-concept video to be displayed at a technology expo, as in an extended single take that starts with a train ticket being sucked out of the window of the fast-moving locomotive, before heading past a stampede of wolves and even getting regurgitated by a bird. (Yes, really.) But while Zemeckis never fails to aim big, the technology is simply not appealing. That this movie was a moderate hit when it was released in November of 2004, just a week after The Incredibles, is a testament less to the power of motion-capture and more to how holiday family movies are almost guaranteed to do well at the box office. Plus, its IMAX run was unstoppable for years thanks to annual re-releases; in fact, it was the highest-grossing mainstream IMAX release until Avatar came along.

And Zemeckis has not avoided leaning into such impulses, choosing to push technology farther than it can go for decades. Arguably his best film, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, was a brilliant fusion of live-action and animation, and his Oscar-winning adaptation of Forrest Gump (whatever you think of its Baby Boomer mentality and rehash of the 1960s and 1970s) was lauded for inserting Hanks into seemingly real archival footage next to JFK, Elvis, and Nixon. And Zemeckis has only gone further down the rabbit hole; three years after The Polar Express, he delivered a gnarly and compelling adaptation of Beowulf in motion-capture. This month, he’s back in theaters, and reunited with both Hanks and Robin Wright in Here, a graphic-novel adaptation tracking the life and times of a single spot, essentially spanning centuries without ever moving the camera from a static position and often utilizing de-aging technology to allow the leads to look as young as they did back in the days when Jenny exhorted her beau to run (Forrest, run).
While it would thus be unfair to say that Zemeckis started scratching this itch with The Polar Express, that film was the first time he truly lost the thread and refused to stop following his impulses. This film is a fascinating disaster, and one that some of us may tend to revisit often. (Especially those of us with kids, and/or spouses who like this movie in spite of their better natures.) And because the book was already a holiday staple, you may not be able to avoid the film at this extended time of year, what with various train stations around the country (including one in this writer’s home state of Arizona) doing Polar Express-themed events that not only send you on a train to the North Pole but play “Hot Chocolate,” the boisterous but awkward song Hanks sings in the animated film to announce the arrival of a certain beverage to the juvenile passengers.
The Polar Express, twenty years later, has not held up well, but it’s still managed to become a Christmas standby, which is perhaps the most impressive magic trick Robert Zemeckis has ever pulled off.
“The Polar Express” is streaming on Max.