Uncanny Express
When I first saw the trailer for The Polar Express, something about it struck me as disturbing. Since then, I’ve come across more and more reviews that echo my opinion. Then, yesterday, I learned about the Uncanny Valley, and it all made sense.
It’s like this: as an objects resemblance to real humanity grows, people’s empathy for it also grows, until a certain point where empathy drops severely into what is called “the Uncanny Valley”: a place where something looks both amazingly realistic while remaining not quite right. In my opinion, and apparently in the opinions of many others, The Polar Express falls quite neatly into this valley: it looks like the moviemakers attempted to create realistic animated people in the film, but also tried to make them stylistic, like Chris Van Allsburg’s drawings. The end result is a bunch of creepy animated dolls who seem vaguely sinister for no obvious reason.
Suffice it to say, I won’t be going to see this movie.
(While doing some searching on this topic, I came across this great post on Mile High Comics’ blog on the same topic.)
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Wow, I’m really glad it’s not just me! I haven’t seen the movie, and I’ve been pretty good about avoiding most of its reviews and publicity, but it’s made queasy ever since I first saw the trailer. (Not that I have the slightest idea when THAT was, since I’ve seen a total of three movies this year, and that’s not an exaggeration.) It just looks really ugly and uninviting to me; I don’t care what the story is about.
But, then again, I don’t get why anyone would want to do animation like that anyway. What’s really the point of doing animation that close to real life anyway? Past a certain point, doesn’t it cost about as much to just get actual actors (if not name actors) in there to do the roles? Although I suppose big-name actors can be paid less for just using their voices, it still seems weird to me. If I’m seeing an animated film, I want it to be animated, not live action; I could (theoretically) see any of dozens or hundreds of movies every week/month/year like that. I find the quirkiness of something like The Incredibles far more visually interesting than something like The Polar Express.
Of course, the problem with animation of any sort is variety–not all animated movies can (or SHOULD) look alike. The trick, I would think, is finding exactly the right style for the story you’re trying to tell. What’s done for The Incredibles, for example, couldn’t remotely work with The Polar Express. But I can’t believe that no one was capable of finding SOMETHING that would work better than what they finally chose. I can’t even bear to look at it in commericals, so I certainly can’t imagine how bad 90-120 minutes of it would be in a theater.