All aboard!
2004 would be a foundational year for Robert Zemeckis. Coming back from a three-year filmmaking sabbatical after making back-to-back hits with his films What Lies Beneath and Cast Away, Zemeckis began looking for material that was decidedly less thorny than his two previous films. Though not exactly his first choice, Zemeckis found his next project in the form of a book optioned by Tom Hanks in 1999: Chris Van Allsburg’s 1985 children’s book The Polar Express. Against Allsburg’s wishes, Zemeckis decided that the adaptation needed to be animated to reduce the estimated budget from $1 billion to $160 million. Though the decision to make the film animated seemed to be a practical one to reduce its budget, the opportunity afforded by this decision allowed for Zemeckis to play around in the motion-capture toy-box first opened by George Lucas in 1999 with Star Wars – Episode One: The Phantom Menace. However, Zemeckis wanted to go beyond Lucas’ experimentation with the motion capture technology, which only materialized in the creation of a single character, Jar Jar Binks. With the blank check afforded to him by the success of his previous films, Zemeckis used his $160 million budget to cross the filmmaking Rubicon and create the first film entirely animated using digital motion-capture technology. The limitless potential of computer animation had an obvious appeal to Zemeckis, a filmmaker notorious for his complex blocking and sweeping cinematography. There was one problem in pulling these things off that plagued Zemeckis’ earlier work that computer animation could help to eliminate with The Polar Express: the human factor.
Zemeckis’ interest in the potential of animation to remove human accountability from the filmmaking process did not appear in a vacuum, however. His first attempt at using the medium of animation to fulfill his lofty filmmaking aspirations would be with 1988’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit. In order to integrate the cel animation into the live-action sequences in Roger Rabbit, Zemeckis and company had to develop new VistaVision film cameras integrated with motion-control technology to properly composite the animation into the live-action sequences. Though on the cutting-edge of cinematic technology, the process proved limiting for Zemeckis, who originally storyboarded for more dynamic camera moves until Walt Disney Animation informed him that the complex cinematography could lead to the animated characters slipping and sliding around the frame. The process also limited Zemeckis’ ability to shoot coverage and reshoots, as the animators needed the finished live-action footage to animate and composite the animated characters. A noted perfectionist, Zemeckis’ frustration with the supposedly freeing animation process swore him off of the traditional animation process for the foreseeable future. His need for complete control over the directorial process was supplanted by the precise nature of animation. Though not a traditionally animated film in the way that Roger Rabbit is, Zemeckis’ fascination with the freeing nature of animation would arise again five years later with his 1992 cult horror-comedy Death Becomes Her.
Zemeckis would bring his experiences on the set of Who Framed Roger Rabbit to Death Becomes Her, though one major advancement in cinematic technology would drastically affect the way Zemeckis approached directing the film: advancements in CGI technology, specifically the creation of computer-generated skin textures for the film. However, much like his experience on Roger Rabbit, that pesky human element prohibited Zemeckis’ filmmaking ambition from being as free as he truly wanted it to be. The complicated shot set-ups and blue screen technology made the actors, specifically Meryl Streep, frustrated with Zemeckis’ machine-like efficiency when it came to perfecting the effects shots. The development of computer-generated skin textures for Death Becomes Her, coupled with the motion-capture technology pioneered by George Lucas in 1999’s The Phantom Menace, would be the final pieces of the puzzle that Zemeckis had been trying to complete for his entire filmmaking career: uninhibited creative freedom through the sacrifice of the human element of the filmmaking process.
From the opening sequences of The Polar Express, Zemeckis actively references his own oeuvre in order to prove the capabilities of the digital animation technology he’s pioneering. In the opening sequence, a picture of mall Santas striking at the Twin Pines Mall (a reference to Back to the Future) is blown off of the wall when the titular Polar Express arrives at his house, Zemeckis’ subtle nod to the evolution into the next stage of his filmmaking career. However, the most obvious reference to his own work is the lost ticket sequence. Much like the feather in the opening scene of Forrest Gump, Zemeckis’ camera tracks a computer-generated object as it drifts along in an open environment, establishing the film’s tone and thesis through the movement of the camera. While the feather scene in Gump is decidedly lackadaisical, visually establishing the way in which the protagonist is wistfully blown through the most important events in modern American history, Express’ ticket scene is chaotic by comparison. Zemeckis has the ticket swooped up by an eagle, the camera rolling three-hundred-sixty degrees as the eagle flies through the sky. The eagle drops the ticket onto the ground where it inevitably rolls into a giant snowball, crashes into the train, flung into the air, blows in through a window, and lands in an air-conditioning vent. As all of this is happening, the camera is flying around through the air, freely tracking the ticket’s journey without the need for complicated shot set-ups or camera support like dollies or cranes.
Though the use of shot set-ups without the need for large camera supports is certainly appealing to Zemeckis, the ability for digital motion capture to limit the number of actors he needs to make a film is another factor that drew Zemeckis to the CGI hellscape he’d eventually be stuck in for the better part of a decade. Zemeckis has Tom Hanks, his principal actor, playing five different roles within the film – the ability for motion capture technology to have the same actor giving several unique performances making the need for human actors virtually nonexistent. This level of intimacy allows for Zemeckis to further narrow his directorial precision, creating a situation where he can feasibly control every aspect of the filmmaking process. On top of all of this, Zemeckis’ extensive use of computer-generated imagery allowed for him to easily convert and release the film in 3D, granting Zemeckis further control over where the audience’s attention is directed as they watch his film. With The Polar Express, Zemeckis had finally conquered the proverbial mountaintop that had eluded him for years: complete control over the filmmaking process.
With the Brechtian nightmare that is The Polar Express opening the Pandora’s Box for films created entirely with computer-generated imagery, Zemeckis’ imagination ran wild. His next film would be 2007’s Beowulf, a decidedly more adult outing than the G-rated Polar Express. With this film, Zemeckis was attempting to prove to filmmakers and audiences alike that CG-animation was not just a tool to be used for creating children’s entertainment. Much of Beowulf’s runtime is filled with shockingly visceral violence, pervasive sexuality, and themes that ruminate on the existence of God and the nature of consequence. Though a decidedly better film than the one that preceded it, audiences and critics alike mostly ignored Beowulf, with many accusing it of riding the aesthetic and thematic coattails of 300, which had been released earlier that same year. Frustrated by the response Beowulf received, Zemeckis would eventually return to the well of children’s literature, adapting another Christmas-centric tale in 2009’s A Christmas Carol. After receiving much of the same apathy as his prior mo-cap outings, Zemeckis finally decided to sell his stock in the uncanny valley and return to the world of live-action filmmaking, though hints at his earlier mo-cap period do still appear within his live-action work (with prominent examples being the town of Marwen in his 2018 film Welcome to Marwen and the mice in his 2020 Roald Dahl adaptation The Witches).
While his obsession with motion-capture technology seemingly befuddled critics and ostracized audiences, there is a logical explanation as to why filmmakers like Zemeckis would be awe-struck by the possibilities that the technology affords to them. The way in which actors are directed for a computer-generated film resembles the direction found within black-box theatre rather than a traditional piece of film – an intimate, open space where the director and actor can work together to craft the best performance possible, uninhibited by sets or lights or cameras. On top of this, the digital playground allows directors to create experiences more immersive than what’s possible with standard filmmaking technology.
Though The Polar Express and the mo-cap films that followed in its wake are generally considered bad, the precedent they set is incredibly important. Though the motion-capture work on Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films preceded The Polar Express by three years, no other film before it had used digital motion capture to completely generate the entirety of the film’s mise-en-scene. Though poorly received when it was initially released, the possibilities that computers offered for filmmakers were too tempting to pass up. However, the key distinction between Zemeckis’ mo-cap period and the use of similar technology in the works of filmmakers like Zack Snyder, James Cameron, and Robert Rodriguez is the eschewing of any attempts at realism in favor of fantastical worlds that could never exist within our reality. The key in making the CGI-heavy portions of films such as 300 and Sin City work is their embrace of expressionistic special effects, something Zemeckis seemingly had no interest in doing. Instead, Zemeckis’ intent was to create a sort of fantastical realism with the motion-capture technology, stretching the limits of what could feasibly be presented to an audience on-screen while still maintaining a tangible quality the works of the other aforementioned filmmakers purposefully lacked. This would ultimately prove futile, as Zemeckis’ boundless imagination could not adhere to the relatively young motion-capture tech he swooned over.
Time and technology eventually advanced forward, ushering in a smorgasbord of films embracing the potential of the new digital filmmaking frontier. Zemeckis — a reliable curmudgeon — was recently asked about how he felt about the proliferation of the motion-capture technology he helped to spearhead nearly two decades prior. Reflecting on the use of visual effects in the world of tentpole filmmaking during the press tour for Welcome to Marwen, he focused on how films such as Back to the Future and Who Framed Roger Rabbit influenced the blockbusters that would proliferate multiplexes throughout much of the 90s and the 2000s. He expounds on this thought by acknowledging the regret he had for the homogenization of commercial filmmaking, and his move forward into the digital filmmaking frontier was his attempt to create a means of filmmaking that would challenge the popular filmmaking he helped to usher in. In his attempt to diversify the ways in which popular films are made, Zemeckis inadvertently inspired the CGI-heavy blockbusters of the 2010s. When it comes to the world of tentpole filmmaking in the vein of Star Wars or the Marvel Cinematic Universe that dominated the box office during the 2010s, the reliance on computer-generated imagery to create these fantasy worlds is essential for their existence. With that in mind, it’s hard to argue with Zemeckis and his contempt for the technology he helped to pioneer. Zemeckis’ hope for a new filmmaking pioneer has been seemingly dashed by consumerist Hollywood entertainment co-opting his technology. Were it not for films such as The Polar Express or Mars Needs Moms, films like Avengers: Endgame or Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker would not exist in the same way, if at all. If you love these properties, it stands to reason that you have one man to thank for their existence: Robert Zemeckis.
proud of you vance