The Polar Express (film)

The Polar Express
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Robert Zemeckis
Produced by	Robert Zemeckis Gary Goetzman Steve Starkey William Teitler
Screenplay by	Robert Zemeckis William Broyles Jr.
Based on	The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg
Narrated by	Tom Hanks
Starring	Tom Hanks Daryl Sabara Nona Gaye Peter Scolari Eddie Deezen Charles Fleischer Steven Tyler Michael Jeter
Music by	Score: Alan Silvestri Lyrics: Glen Ballard
Cinematography	Don Burgess Robert Presley
Editing by	R. Orlando Duenas Jeremiah O'Driscoll
Studio	Castle Rock Entertainment Shangri-La Entertainment ImageMovers Playtone Golden Mean
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release date(s)	October 21, 2004 (2004-10-21) (Chicago) November 10, 2004 (2004-11-10) (United States)
Running time	100 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$165,000,000
Box office	$306,431,864

The Polar Express is a 2004 motion capture computer-animated film based on the children's book of the same title by Chris Van Allsburg. Written, produced, and directed by Robert Zemeckis, the human characters in the film were animated using live action performance capture technique, with the exception of the waiters who dispense hot chocolate on the train, because their feats were impossible for live actors to achieve. Performance capture technology incorporates the movements of live actors into animated characters. The film stars Daryl Sabara, Nona Gaye, Jimmy Bennett, and Eddie Deezen, with Tom Hanks in six distinct roles. The film also included a performance by Tinashe at age 9, who later gained exposure as a pop singer in 2010, as the CGI-model for "Hero Girl". The film was produced by Castle Rock Entertainment in association with Shangri-La Entertainment, ImageMovers, Playtone and Golden Mean, for Warner Bros. The visual effects and performance capture were done at Sony Pictures Imageworks. The studio first released the $170 million film in both conventional and IMAX 3D theaters on Wednesday, November 10, 2004.

Plot

On Christmas Eve, a young boy who lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan is hoping for belief in the true spirit of Christmas. He suddenly hears a noise from downstairs and runs to investigate. Seeing a shadow of what appears to be Santa Claus, he soon discovers that it is his parents. He runs back to his room and looks through magazines and encyclopedias for confirmation of Santa Claus and the North Pole, but to no avail. Hearing his parents coming, he runs back to bed and pretends to be asleep while his parents whisper about how he had once stayed up late listening for Santa Claus. After about an hour, he hears rumbling in the distance and his room starts to shake. In his haste to get outside, he accidentally rips open the right pocket of his robe. Once outside, he finds a magical train called the Polar Express. The conductor (played by Tom Hanks) tells him that the train is headed to the North Pole to go to Santa, and that this year is the year that he should board the train. Although he initially hesitates, at the last second as the train is pulling away he decides to board.

The train route goes north, first through boreal pine forest, then across tundra, then across the frozen Arctic Ocean, to Polar City on an island, everywhere snowbound. In the tundra, the train had a difficult crossing of an area where flood submerged the track and then froze.

On the train, the boy encounters a group of other children who are on their way to see Santa Claus, including a young girl, a know-it-all, and a lonely little boy also from Grand Rapids whose name is Billy. When the conductor asks for tickets from everyone so he can punch them, the boy discovers his ticket is miraculously in his left pocket. The conductor punches two letters into each child's ticket ("BE" for the Hero Boy and "LE" for the know-it-all). However, he forgets to punch the girl's ticket. Then hot chocolate is served, with waiters performing acrobatic jumps and flips to serve everyone while the conductor sings. The girl, however, kept a cup under her seat so she could give it to Billy, who is sitting in the observation car. The conductor catches her, but when she tells him what she was doing, he helps her. The Hero Boy then sees the girl's ticket lying on her seat and, realizing that it wasn't punched, tries to go to the next car to give it to her. However, he loses the ticket in the wind, but unknown to him, the ticket miraculously ends up in a vent in the same car that the boy was in. However, the boy does not realize this, and he tells the conductor that he lost the girls ticket. The conductor then takes the girl up to the roof, and the know-it-all says that she will be thrown off the train. The boy suddenly sees the ticket in the vent, and grabs it just before it slips away. The boy then climbs on the roof to try and stop the conductor. He meets a hobo (the self-proclaimed owner of the train as well as the "King of the North Pole") on the roof, who helps him to get towards the conductor and the girl by skiing as the train goes downhill. The hobo warns the boy that Flattop Tunnel is approaching, and that it only has 1 inch of clearance. They do make it in time, and the boy jumps and lands in the tender. The hobo had disappeared after the boy had jumped.

The boy then finds the girl driving the train. She explains that the two people who are supposed to be controlling the train, Smokey the engineer and Steamer the fireman, are trying to fix the light on the train and the conductor let her control. The scene goes to Smokey and Steamer, who manage to repair the light but see a herd of caribou on the tracks. Steamer yells to stop the train and the girl tells the boy that a yellow lever is the brake. He doubts her at first, but at the last second he pulls it, and the train stops in front of the caribou. The conductor comes out, angry at the boy for stopping the train, but the girl says that he was saving them. All three of them go outside, and they see thousands of caribou on the tracks. They tell the caribou to stay off the track by communicating using Smokey's beard (they pull it to make Smokey yell and thus communicate). The train continues on with nothing wrong until they reach a gulch. The conductor tells the boy and girl that the gulch is the steepest in the world and that the train should be slowing, but it is going too fast. They try to warn Smokey and Steamer, but they have their own problems; the cotter pin (British: split pin) functioning the throttle shears off, and they end up riding the gulch at full speed until they stop on an ice field. The cotter pin that Smokey and Steamer lost ends up sticking into the ice, causing the entire ice field to crack, but, with guidance from the conductor, they get the train safely on the tracks again before the ice completely cracks from under the train and the boy safely hands the girl her ticket for the conductor to punch. The throttle is mended using another cotter pin which Smokey was using as a hairpin.

They soon reach the North Pole and find out that Billy is riding alone in the observation car, because he does not want to see Santa, as he comes from a broken home on the bad side of his hometown due to a dissolved marriage from his parents' cultural differences. He says that Christmas never turns out well for him. The boy and girl run back to try to get him to come along with them, but the Hero Boy accidentally steps on the uncoupling lever and the observation car speeds backwards. The three of them travel from section to section of the North Pole's industrial area with guidance from the girl, who claims she hears the sound of bells that will show them the way if they follow the sound. They first visit the Control Center, then the Wrapping Hall, and finally a warehouse, before they are airlifted back to the center of the city via airship. As the sleigh is being prepared, one of the bells fall off. The boy picks it up and shakes it, remembering that the girl and Billy could hear a bell earlier when he could not. As before, he cannot hear it. The boy then says he believes in Santa and the spirit of Christmas. He sees Santa's reflection on the bell, shakes the bell again, and hears its sound at last. He gives the bell back to Santa.

The boy is handpicked by Santa Claus to receive "The First Gift Of Christmas." Realizing that he could choose anything in the world, the boy asks for the beautiful-sounding silver bell (that only believers in Santa can hear) that had fallen from Santa's sleigh. The boy places the bell in the right pocket of his robe, and all the children watch as Santa takes off for his yearly deliveries.

The children return to the train, and the conductor punches more letters into each ticket. These letters spell some form of advice (such as "Learn," "Lead," or "Believe" for the Know-it-All, Hero Girl, and Hero Boy respectively). As the train leaves, the Hero Boy discovers one of the pockets of his robe is torn and the bell is missing. His friends suggest they go back outside to find it, but it is too late. He is saddened by the loss of his bell, but is happy when he sees Billy holding up his present at his doorway, indicating that Santa had already visited him. When the train arrives at Hero Boy's house, he says his goodbyes to all of his friends, and waves from the doorway of his home as the train pulls away.

On Christmas morning, his sister Sarah finds a small present hidden behind the tree after all the others have been unwrapped. The Hero Boy opens the present and discovers that it is the bell, which Santa had found on the seat of his sleigh. When the Hero Boy rings the bell, both he and Sarah marvel at the beautiful sound; but because their parents neither believe in Santa Claus nor Christmas, they do not hear it and remark it to be broken. The last line in the movie repeats the same last line from the book:

"At one time, most of my friends could hear the bell, but as years passed, it fell silent for all of them. Even Sarah found one Christmas that she could no longer hear its sweet sound. Though I've grown old, the bell still rings for me, as it does for all who truly believes."

Cast

• Tom Hanks and Josh Hutcherson as the Hero Boy, the Hero Boy's father, the Conductor, the Hobo, the Scrooge marionette and Santa Claus
• Leslie Zemeckis and Ashley Holloway Sister Sarah and the Hero Boy's mother.
• Eddie Deezen and Jimmy Pinchak as the Know-It-All Kid.
• Nona Gaye and Chantel Valdivieso as the Hero Girl.
• Peter Scolari and Hayden Mcfarland as the Lonely Boy.
• Andy Pellick as the Pastry Chef.
• Josh Eli, Rolandas Hendricks, Jon Scott, Sean Scott, Mark Mendonca, Mark Goodman, Gregory Gast and Gordon Hart as the Waiters.
• Michael Jeter (in his final film role) as Smokey and Steamer.
• Chris Coppola as the Toothless Boy and an Elf.
• Julene Renee as the Red Head Girl and an Elf.
• Charles Fleischer as the Elf General.
• Steven Tyler as the Elf Lieutenant and the Elf Singer.
• Dante Pastula as the Little Boy.

Voice cast

• Daryl Sabara as the Hero Boy.
• André Sogliuzzo as Smokey and Steamer.
• Jimmy Bennett as the Lonely Boy.
• Isabella Peregrina as Sister Sarah.

Architecture

Administration building of the Pullman Palace Car Company

The buildings at the North Pole reference a number of buildings related to American railroading history. The buildings in the square at the center of the city are loosely based on the Pullman Factory in the Pullman neighborhood of Chicago, and the Control Center is based on the old Penn Station in New York City.

The IMAX 3D version

In addition to standard theatrical 35mm format, a 3-D version for IMAX was also released, generated from the same 3-D digital models used for the standard version. It was the first motion picture not specially made for IMAX to be presented in this format, and the first to open in IMAX 3D at the same time as main flat release. The 3-D version out-performed the 2-D version by about 14 to 1. The 3-D IMAX version was released again for the 2005 Holiday season in 66 IMAX theaters and made another $7.5 million prior to Christmas. Due to its financial success, the IMAX version was re-released in 2006, 2007, and 2008, and has become an annual Christmas movie. The 3-D version was released to DVD and Blu-ray Disc on October 28, 2008. Both formats include both the 2-D and 3-D versions of the film.^{[citation needed]} It was then re-released on Blu-ray 3D on November 16, 2010

The "Polar Express Experience"

In November 2007, SeaWorld Orlando debuted the Polar Express Experience, a Motion Simulator ride based around the movie. The attraction is a temporary replacement for the Wild Arctic attraction. The building housing the attraction was also temporarily re-themed to a railroad station and ride vehicles painted to resemble Polar Express passenger cars. The plot for the ride revolves around a trip to the North Pole on Christmas Eve. Guests feel the motion of the locomotive as well as the swinging of the train on ice and feeling of ice crumbling beneath them. The attraction was available until January 1, 2008, and is now open annually during the Christmas season. The Polar Express Experience is also now available at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden as a permanent attraction and at Dollywood during the annual Smoky Mountain Christmas event.

From November 27, 2009 until January 3, 2010, Polar Express 4D Experience was also available in Vancouver Aquarium.

Movie World Australia during White Christmas event features The "Polar Express Experience" open annually during the Christmas season.

Reception

The film received mixed reviews on its release, but it has since received a cult following. It earned a rare grade of an "A+" from Cinemascore, a 61 out of 100 critic rating on Metacritic, indicating "generally favorable reviews" and a "B" from users at Box Office Mojo. It also has a score of 6.7/10 at the Internet Movie Database. However, the film has a "Rotten" rating of 56% from selected critics with an average rating of 6.4/10, a lower rating of 54% when narrowed down to professional critics, also certifying it as "Rotten", with an average rating of 6.2/10 on Rotten Tomatoes. On the positive side, Roger Ebert gave the film 4 out of 4 stars, saying "There's a deeper, shivery tone, instead of the mindless jolliness of the usual Christmas movie". Similarily, Ebert's At The Movies co-host Richard Roeper also gave a positive review to the film, saying that it "remains true to the book, right down to the bittersweet final image". James Berardinelli gave it a good review as well (a 3.5/4), stating that it was "A delightful tale guaranteed to enthrall viewers of all ages". He ranked it as the 10th best film of 2004.

However, many other critics said it was "a failed experiment", and some even said that it "gave them the creeps". The film was generally praised for its stunning visuals; however, it was largely criticized for its fake-looking and "mannequin-like" human characters. Some even compared them to "zombies". Peter Travers said that it was "A failed and lifeless experiment in which everything goes wrong.", and Geoff Pevere stated that "If I were a kid, I'd have nightmares. Come to think of it, I did anyway." Paul Clinton from CNN.com said "Those human characters in the film come across as downright... well, creepy. So The Polar Express is at best disconcerting, and at worst, a wee bit horrifying."

It opened at #2, being outgrossed 2-to-1 by Disney/Pixar's The Incredibles, and brought in $23,323,463 from approximately 7,000 screens at 3,650 theaters, for a per-theater average of $6,390 and a per-screen average of $3,332 in its opening weekend. It also brought in a total of $30,629,146 since its Wednesday launch. The weekend total also included $2,100,000 from 59 IMAX theaters, for a IMAX theater average of $35,593, and had a $3,000,000 take since Wednesday. Initially, the movie seemed to be headed towards becoming a box office failure after its first week, due to it opening just five days after The Incredibles and 9 days before Disney's National Treasure and Paramount/Nickelodeon's The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, and facing even more competition in the coming weeks with Sony's Christmas with the Kranks and Paramount/DreamWorks/Nickelodeon's Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. However, despite the crowded family audience marketplace, it was one of the few films to improve its gross in the weeks after its premiere. It dropped by only 32.82% in its second weekend, grossing $15,668,101, averaging $4,293 from 3,650 venues and boosting the 12-day cumulative to $51,463,282; and, due to the winter theme, saw its gross rise by 23.75% over Thanksgiving weekend, making another $19,389,927, averaging $5,312 from 3,650 venues and raising the 19-day cumulative to $81,479,861. By New Year's Day 2005, The Polar Express ended up grossing nearly $160 million in the United States alone. 25% of the world gross came from just 82 IMAX 3D theaters. It has been widely noted, however, that much of this latent revenue was due to its status as the only major motion picture available in the IMAX 3D format. As of December 11, 2010, with the original release and IMAX re-releases, the film has made $182,291,282 domestically, and $124,140,582 overseas for a total worldwide gross of $306,431,864. The film was nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Sound (Randy Thom, Tom Johnson, Dennis S. Sands and William B. Kaplan), Best Sound Editing, and Best Original Song for "Believe".

The film had its network TV premiere on ABC on Friday December 1, 2006. The airing brought in 13.2 million viewers, winning its timeslot and ranking 20th in the Nielsen Ratings that week, according to TVTango.com.

The American Film Institute nominated The Polar Express for its Top 10 Animated Films list.

See also

• List of 3-D films
• The Polar Express (soundtrack)

External links

• Official website
• The Polar Express at the Internet Movie Database
• The Polar Express at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Polar Express at Box Office Mojo