The Polar Express is a computer animated Christmas music animated film of the United States in 2004 based on a 1985 children's book of the same name by Chris Van Allsburg, who also serves as one of executive producer in the film. Written, produced, and directed by Robert Zemeckis, the film features human characters animated using live action motion animation.
Movie stars Daryl Sabara, Miss Gaye, Jimmy Bennett, and Eddie Deezen, with Tom Hanks in six different roles. The film also incorporated a show by Tinashe at the age of 9, which was then gained exposure as a pop singer in 2010, as a CGI model for female protagonists.
Castle Rock Entertainment produces films related to Shangri-La Entertainment, ImageMovers, Playtone, and Golden Mean for Warner Bros.. Pictures, as the first Castle Rock animation production. Visual effects and performance shooting are done in Sony Pictures Imageworks. The film was made with a budget of $ 165 million, a record-breaking number for animated features at the time.
The film was released in conventional cinema and IMAX 3D on November 10, 2004. It earned $ 310.6 million worldwide, and was then listed in the Guinness World Book of Records 2006 as the first digital film capture. The film also marks Michael Jeter's last acting role before his death, and the film is dedicated to his memory.
Video The Polar Express (film)
Plot
On Christmas Eve, a Grand Rapids, Michigan boy grows very skeptical of Santa's presence. As he struggles to sleep, he is awakened by the arrival of steam locomotives on the street outside his home, and puts on his cloak to investigate, tearing his robe pocket as he picks it up. Outside, the train conductor (Tom Hanks) introduced the train as Polar Express, heading for the North Pole. The boy initially refused to ascend, but jumped on the train as the train pulled away.
In the passenger car, he befriends a girl who is passionate and peaceful, and one who knows everything. The train stopped to pick up a poor boy, Billy, who also refused to ride; Billy changed his mind, and the boy applied an emergency brake to allow him to catch the train, much to the dismay of the conductor. When Billy sat alone in the carriage behind the train, hot chocolate was served in the passenger car, and the girl kept the hot chocolate for Billy. As he and the conductor cross into the dining car, the boy realizes that he left his ticket behind without being bent, but lost the ticket hold between the cars when he tried to return it. Entrance tickets to passenger cars, but not before the conductor realized his absence and escorted the girl back to the rear car.
The know-it-all claims that the conductor will throw the girl off the train; the boy returned tickets and strips to the dining car to find the conductor, climbed to the roof of the rear platform. He meets a hobo who is camping on the roof, who offers him coffee and discusses the whereabouts of Santa Claus and his belief in ghosts. The ski hobo with the boys along the top of the car headed for the tender of the coals of the train, where the tramp disappeared. Here, the boy discovered that the girl had been made to supervise the locomotive while the Steamer and Smokey engineers had replaced the train's main light. The train was forced to stop while the conductor spread the caribou, where engineers returned to the cabin and boys, girls and conductors remained on the catwalk at the front of the locomotive. The split throttle pin was tucked away, causing the train to run uncontrollably down 179 degrees and into the frozen lake, where engineers repaired the throttle with hairpins and hovered the train to realign with tracks. The boy returned the girl's ticket, and when the third returned to the passenger car, the boy was greeted by Ebenezer Scrooge marionette (controlled by a batak), taunted him and called him a hesitant one.
The train finally arrives at the North Pole, where the conductor announces that one of the passengers will be chosen to receive the first Christmas present, from Santa himself. The girl found Billy still alone in the back car, and he and the boy persuaded him to come along; However, the boy accidentally unlocked the car, sent it back along the line to the railway table at Santa's garage. Children slip through the elf's command center and gift-sorting offices before accidentally inserted into Santa's sack, where they find that everyone who knows it goes with them, hoping to open his Christmas present earlier. The elves rescued them when Santa arrived, and the boy became frustrated, unable to see Santa through the crowd. A buzzing bell flew out of the reindeer's wobbling reins; the boy was initially unable to hear him ring, until he found it in himself to believe. He returns the bell to Santa as he passes by, and Santa chooses the child to receive the first Christmas present. The boy asks to keep the jingle bell, and puts it in the pocket of his robes.
Four elves used a handcar to topple a dutiful passenger car back to the train while the children all climbed into the Polar Express to return home, but then the boy found that the bag was torn and the bell fell. He went home and woke up Christmas morning to find a gift containing a bell. He held it in his ear and shook it; his parents, not believing in Santa, bemoaned how the bells were "broken".
Maps The Polar Express (film)
Cast
- Tom Hanks as a Heroes Boy (motion-capture only), father of Hero Boy, Conductor, the Hobo, Santa Claus, and Narrator
- Daryl Sabara as Hero Boy (voice)
- Josh Hutcherson as the Hero Boy (additional motion-capture)
- Leslie Zemeckis as Sister Sarah (movement only) and mother of Hero Boy
- Isabella Peregrina as Sarah Sarah (voice)
- Ashly Holloway as Sister Sarah (additional motion-capture)
- Eddie Deezen as Know-It-All
- Jimmy 'Jax' Pinchak as Know-It-All (additional motion-capture)
- Miss Gaye as a Hero Girl
- Chantel Valdivieso as a Hero Girl (additional motion-capture)
- Meagan Moore as a Girl Hero (song)
- Tinashe as a Hero Girl (motion-capture modeling)
- Peter Scolari as Billy the Lonely Boy (motion-capture only)
- Hayden McFarland as Billy the Lonely Boy (additional motion-capture)
- Jimmy Bennett as Billy the Lonely Boy (voice)
- Matthew Hall as Billy the Lonely Boy (singing voice)
- Dylan Cash as Boy on Train (sound)
- Brendan King and Andy Pellick as Chef Pastry
- Josh Eli, Rolandas Hendricks, Jon Scott, Sean Scott, Mark Mendonca, Mark Goodman, Gregory Gast, and Gordon Hart as Servants
- Andre Sogliuzzo as Smokey and Steamer (sound)
- Michael Jeter as Smokey and Steamer (motion only)
- Chris Coppola as Gus the Toothless Boy and an Elf
- Connor Matheus as Toothless Boy (additional motion-capture)
- Julene Renee as Red Head Girl and Elf
- Phil Fondacaro, Debbie Lee Carrington, Mark Povinelli, and Ed Gale as Elf
- Charles Fleischer as General Elf
- Steven Tyler as Lieutenant Elf and Elf Singer
- Dante Pastula as Little Boy
- Eric Newton, Aidan O'Shea, Aaron Hendry, Kevin C. Carr, Jay Joyer Bee, Jena Carpenter, Karine Mauffrey, Beth Carpenter, Bill Forchion, Devin Henderson, and Sagiv Ben-Binyamin as Acrobatic Elves
- Evan Sabara as a Young Child (additional motion-capture)
Production
Architecture
Buildings in the Arctic refer to a number of buildings related to the history of the American railways. The buildings in the central square are loosely based on the Pullman Factory in the Chicago Pullman neighborhood.
Polar Express Locomotive
The locomotive featured in this film is the Berkshire 2-8-4 American steam locomotive, with a cowcatcher, modeled after Pere Marquette 1225, who has spent years on static screens near the Spartan Stadium in East Lansing, Michigan on the campus of Michigan State University , where Chris Van Allsburg recalls playing on the machine while attending a soccer match as a child.
In July 2002, Warner Bros. approached the engine owner, Steam Railroading Institute, to study the machine. The machine in the film is modeled from the image of PM # 1225 and the sound of a recording made from 1225 operating under steam. The whistle, however, is taken from Sierra Railway # 3.
IMAX 3D Version
In addition to the standard 35mm theater format, a 3-D version for IMAX was also released, resulting from the same 3-D digital model used for the standard version.
Home media release
The film was released in DVD format as a separate widescreen and full-screen version in single and two-disc special editions (with bonus features) and on VHS on November 22, 2005, one year after the movie came out. It was released on Blu-ray with bonus features and presented in original widescreen aspect ratio on October 30, 2007.
Soundtrack
Reception
Critical response
At Metacritic, which gives a normalized ranking for review, the film has a weighted average score of 61 out of 100 based on 36 critics, showing "favorable overview". On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 55% approval rating based on 202 reviews, with an average rating of 6.4/10. The critical consensus of this site reads, "Although the film is visually stunning overall, animated for human characters not quite alive, and the story is easy. " Despite the polarized reception of the critics, The Polar Express has been popular among viewers. The Independent reported in 2011 that the movie "is now seen by many as a classic". CinemaScore reported that the audience gave this movie a rare "A" value.
Roger Ebert gave his movie the highest rating to four stars, saying, "There's a deeper tone, grimace, not the unreasonable excitement of the usual Christmas movie." And "It has a haunting, miraculous quality..." Acknowledging comments by other reviewers, Ebert said, "It's a little creepy, not creepy in an unpleasant way, but with a sly and seductive way that lets you know the scary stuff can happened. "Richard Roeper gave a good review for the film, saying that" stay true to this book, to the bitter ending. " James Berardinelli gave it 3.5/4, stating that it was "a delightful story guaranteed to captivate viewers of all ages", and ranked it as the 10th best movie of 2004.
Character and animation designs were criticized for plunging into an incredible valley. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave this movie 1 of 4 stars, calling it "a failed and lifeless experiment where everything went wrong". Stephanie Zacharek from Salon gave the movie 1.5 stars out of 5 and said, "I might be able to tolerate the uninterrupted anxiety of The Polar Express if that look does not give me the creeps "Geoff Pevere of the Toronto Star stated," If I was a kid, I would have a nightmare, and come to think of it. " Paul Clinton of CNN calls it "the most confusing, and the worst, a little scary".
box office
The film opens at # 2 and earns $ 23,323,463 from about 7,000 screens in 3,650 theaters, for an average $ 6,390 per-theater and a $ 3.332 average per screen on its opening weekend. It also brought a total of $ 30,629,146 since the launch Wednesday. The total weekend also includes $ 2,100,000 from 59 IMAX theaters, for an average IMAX theater of $ 35,593, and has $ 3,000,000 since Wednesday. On the second weekend, it grossed $ 15,668,101 again, averaging $ 4,293 from 3,650 places and raising a cumulative 12 days to $ 51,463,282 and over the Thanksgiving weekend making $ 19,389,927, averaging $ 5,312 out of 3,650 places and raising The 19-day cumulative became $ 81,479,861. The film has generated $ 186,493,472 domestically (including IMAX reloads), and $ 124,140,582 overseas with a worldwide gross of $ 310,634.05.
The film has its TV premiere on ABC, December 1, 2006. Its impressions bring in 13.2 million viewers, winning its timeslot and ranked 20th in Nielsen rankings that week, according to TVTango.com.
Awards and honor
The film was nominated for three Academy Awards:
- Best Sound Editing (Randy Thom and Dennis Leonard)
- Best Sound Mixing (Randy Thom, Tom Johnson, Dennis S. Sands, and William B. Kaplan)
- Best Original Song for "Believe."
The film was nominated at the 3rd Visual Effects Society Awards in the category of "Extraordinary Performance by Animated Characters in Animated Animated Drawings."
In 2008, the American Film Institute nominated The Polar Express for a list of Top 10 Animation Movies.
"Polar Express Experience"
In November 2007, SeaWorld Orlando debuted at the Polar Express Experience, a Motion Simulator vehicle based on the film. The attraction is a temporary substitute for the Wild Arctic attractions. The recreational building is temporarily re-themed to the railway station and drove a vehicle painted to resemble a Polar Express passenger car. The plot for the trip revolves around a trip to the North Pole on Christmas Eve. Guests felt the locomotive's movement as well as the swing of the train on the ice and the feeling of ice collapsing beneath them. This attraction is available until January 1, 2008, and is now open every year during the Christmas season.
The 4D movie, distributed by SimEx-Iwerks, has been featured in other amusement parks around the world including the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Gardens, Dollywood (during the annual Smoky Mountain Christmas event), the Vancouver Aquarium (2009 - 2010), and Warner Bros.. Movie World (during the White Christmas event in 2010 and 2011).
Video game
A video game based on the film was released on November 26, 2004 for GameCube, Game Boy Advance, PlayStation 2 and Windows, developed by Blue Tongue Entertainment and published by THQ. The game plot is more different from the movie version. In this time, the Ebenezer Scrooge dolls are set as the main antagonists of the game, trying to prevent the children from believing Santa Claus by stealing their tickets and trying to stop the children from reaching the North Pole.
See also
- List of 3D movies
References
External links
- Official website
- The Polar Express on IMDb
- The Polar Express in the TCM Movie Database
- The Polar Express at Rotten Tomatoes
- The Polar Express in Box Office Mojo
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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