The Christmas Classic Kids Accepted Because They Had Nothing Else, It’s A Horrible Movie
Christmas movies are allowed to be saccharine, bright, colorful, and overly cheerful, making them feel-good movies to watch every year with the family. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, Elf, The Santa Clause, and A Christmas Story are all classics, but yet, for some reason, these days you’ll find The Polar Express, Robert Zemeckis’s motion-capture box office disappointment, considered a modern classic. How anyone can look deep into the soulless eyes of Tom Hanks as the Conductor and think, “That’s the spirit of Christmas,” is beyond me because this film drove straight into the uncanny valley, and the plot must have lost its ticket since it’s nowhere to be seen.
Straight Into The Uncanny Valley
Released in 2004, The Polar Express was filmed in motion capture, the same style that Zemeckis would use later on for Beowulf and A Christmas Carol, specifically to capture the painterly quality of the famous children’s book. The book exudes warmth and wonder from its pages thanks to the talent of Chris Van Allsburg, but it’s very short and lacks enough content for a feature film. I’d argue the feature film lacks enough content for a feature film, as even when talking to people who like this movie, they only ever talk about the train sequence itself and leave out the back half of the film with kids running through the Elf command center.
The Polar Express is about Hero Boy, a young boy (motion capture provided by Tom Hanks)who is losing faith in Christmas when the train stops in front of his house, and he walks on after being urged by The Conductor, played by Tom Hanks, on the journey to the North Pole. Hanks, as The Conductor, isn’t playing the role big enough for this type of movie and for any emotion to register in his performance. Coming across as a stern dad, The Conductor isn’t the villain of the movie, but he’s also not the type of joyous guide you’d expect on a train filled with children going to the North Pole.
There’s an action scene along the way, created for The Polar Express film, when it goes off tracks and over an ice-covered lake, it is the only moment of the film that feels like it has any real stakes or momentum to it. Outside of that moment, nothing happens. Sure, it ends with a sweet moment with the ringing of the bell (which goes against the original meaning of the novel), but that moment is not worth the journey to get there due to the off-putting CGI, lack of plot, and, finally, the annoying kids.
A Classic By Default
I know The Polar Express is meant for kids, but in the 20 years since the film’s release, it seems like studios finally realized that children in movies can be fully realized characters that go beyond the old style of representing a single stereotype, like know-it-all, lonely, hero, and girl; those are the main kids of the film. If Zemeckis had any guts, he would have had Billy the Lonely Boy receive the first gift of Christmas instead of Hero Boy. Still, instead of subverting expectations, we’re left with irritating dialogue, bizarre facial expressions, and poor decisions that are obviously there to give the film something to show on screen.
And yet, it’s because the movie is meant for kids that it’s considered a classic now after those kids have become adults and they look back with nostalgia at the early-Aughts. This is the same generation that has decided the Star Wars prequels are great, but I can’t judge them too harshly, as I thought Three Ninjas was peak cinema, and I loved A Claymation Christmas Special. In 2004, there were no big-budget, G-rated Christmas movies getting major releases, which leaves The Polar Express as the favorite of a generation by default.
When we’re kids, we have horrible taste, and again, I will admit my love of Three Ninjas, which is why no one talks about The Polar Express outside of “I love that movie.” There’s no discussion about scenes, great moments, iconic lines, or classic characters, yet people will talk fondly about the film. It’s because they were kids when they saw it, and they can still hear the bell today, and not because it’s a good movie or even an okay movie, it’s a movie, and when you’re a kid, that’s good enough.
The Polar Express is streaming on Disney+, and Max, in case you need a reminder that this is the movie in which nothing happens.
Login with Google