Hey, you.
Yeah, you.
Do you know what kind of train this is?
Huh?
It's a magic train.
Actually, it's a Baldwin 284S3 class prototype steam
locomotive built in 1930--
Throughout the '80s and '90s, Robert Zemeckis
was one of the preeminent directors of the Hollywood
system.
He made classics like Back to the Future,
Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, and Forrest Gump.
And then around the turn of the century,
Zemeckis became interested in a new vista, a grand frontier
of infinite possibilities, CGI.
He stepped away from making live action feature films
and instead devoted almost a decade of his life
to making things like this.
There about.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, Zemeckis was always
a kid who loved movies.
He was also someone who was obsessed
with the technical trickery of how these magical things were
made.
It's no secret that Zemeckis loves a good visual gag.
And cut.
Cut!
What the hell was wrong with that take?
Look at any of his live action feature films,
and you'll see that he uses the stories he tells
to create new and ever more complex visual problems for him
to solve.
How do you have a cartoon and a real human actor interact?
How do you have newsreel footage and a real human actor
interact?
These are the questions that keep Robert Zemeckis up
at night.
Every great artist is asked to reinvent themselves eventually.
And in the year 2000, Zemeckis reached a major turning point.
Zemeckis released two films that year,
What Lies Beneath and Cast Away.
The central selling point of Cast Away
is that we follow one of the most famous actors
on Earth, Tom Hanks, get marooned on an island
and then lose over 60 pounds.
It's mesmerizing.
But what we, the audience, don't see
is that the production of Cast Away
was shut down for close to six months
so Hanks could lose the weight.
During this time, Zemeckis used the same crew
and shot What Lies Beneath while they were waiting.
When looking at what comes next, it's
very apparent that Zemeckis did not enjoy this creative limbo.
He was frustrated at being halted
by the frailties of the human condition.
Over the next decade, Zemeckis would
be the key creative figure behind four films that
would be created exclusively using
computer generated imagery.
These films would utilize a new technique called performance
capture to make animation.
On its surface, this seems like a great idea
copied from animation's past to forge the filmmaking
tools of tomorrow.
During the golden era of Disney animation,
the Disney animators would bring in models and actors
to shoot performances on film.
They would then draw from these test shots,
sometimes even going so far as to rotoscope over
the tops of these drawings.
Utilizing a similar technique with cameras and computer
animation seems like the logical next step.
There was just one hitch.
The classic Disney animation was appealing to look at.
The general reaction to the films
that would be produced with this CG performance capture
technology, not so much.
The first in the trilogy of films that Zemeckis would
direct in an exclusively CGI aesthetic
would be 2004's The Polar Express.
An adaptation of the picture book by Chris Van Allsburg,
the film was originally intended as a live action
vehicle for Tom Hanks where he would play multiple parts.
He optioned it, set it up, and was going to produce it alone.
However, after the success of Cast Away,
Hanks and Zemeckis were looking for another project to work on.
And Polar Express was pivoted to be the Guinea
pig for Zemeckis' bold new vision of what filmmaking
could be.
Zemeckis originally pictured a film
where Hanks, freed from the limitations of his body,
would play every part.
However, this proved too complex and taxing.
After shooting five of the principal characters,
including a small child, who would later
be dubbed over by Daryl Sabara, this approach was abandoned.
However, it wasn't the acting that took center stage
on this project.
It was Zemeckis attempting to cut loose as a storyteller,
gliding camera shots, zooming movements and angles that
would not have been physically possible with the three
dimensional camera.
Zemeckis appears to have had the time of his life making
Polar Express.
Regrettably, he might have been the only one.
The key element that Zemeckis overlooked
was that the almost real animation style
was too close to being lifelike for the general public
to accept.
If it had been more stylized, it would
have been easier to understand and emotionally embraced.
However, the film's aesthetic leaves everyone
with weird plastic faces, dead eyes,
bizarrely fitting clothes, and disturbingly flat mouth
movements.
She didn't lose her ticket.
I did.
The Polar Express skyrocketed the term, the uncanny valley
into the cultural consciousness like never before.
Polar Express cost roughly $170 million to make,
but only pulled in $314 million at the box office.
This might sound like a lot, but after marketing budgets,
the film basically broke even.
Things were not looking good for Zemeckis'
dalliance in this new burgeoning art form.
So what did he do?
He doubled down.
Released in 2007, Beowulf, written by acclaimed writers,
Neil Gaiman and Roger Avery, was an attempt
at bringing an animated film that adults
could enjoy to the marketplace.
With a PG-13 rating and an almost nude Angelina Jolie
at the center of its marketing, Beowulf
was squarely aimed at people who were not children.
Films like this rarely get made in the studio system, let alone
get made in this unproven CGI world Zemeckis was obviously
preoccupied with.
The film has some structural issues and interesting action
sequences.
I hacked flesh from these foul beasts with my sword,
spilling their guts into the sea.
But the main takeaway here is it still
has all the same issues Polar Express suffered from.
Photorealistic animation based on performance capture in 2007
was not capable of bridging the gap in the human mind.
The viewers were not excited about the omnipresent one, two,
punch of plastic skin and dead eyes
that all these films endured.
Regrettably, Zemeckis' sophomore outing fared even worse.
Audiences did not show up for the Swords and Sandals
PlayStation cut scene epic.
It only made $196 million off of a budget of $150 million.
We're not even in breaking even territory now.
Things weren't looking good for Zemeckis.
Thankfully, prior to the release of Beowulf,
Zemeckis signed a joint business venture
with the Walt Disney Company to produce two more CGI films,
the first being an adaptation of A Christmas Carol starring Jim
Carrey.
This is Zemeckis' only solo screenwriting credit,
and it's obviously an attempt at cloning
what he thought could have been a winning formula about Polar
Express.
Beloved holiday stories, plus iconic actors,
plus swooping camera shots equals
at least breaking even money.
Only this time, there would be less glass eyes
and silicone mouth movements.
The other film that was greenlit was Mars Needs Moms
written and directed by a close friend of Zemeckis' Simon
Wells.
Wells had worked as a supervising animator
and storyboard artist on Who Framed Roger Rabbit as well
as Back to the Future Part II and Polar Express.
A Christmas Carol was released in 2009 and Mars Needs Moms
in 2011.
Christmas Carol was a modest success.
However, people still complained about the weird feeling
they got from the faces of the characters.
This would prove to be the final entry
into the strange thematic trilogy of Zemeckis'
exclusively CGI films.
The reason for that was Zemeckis didn't get any more at-bats.
After three tries, he didn't have any real success
to point to.
And the next CGI project that he vouched for, Mars Needs Moms,
was about to capsize the boat.
She tucks me in at night.
She talks me in, my mom.
In 2010, Disney knew they had a problem,
but they had no choice but to move forward
with Mars Needs Moms.
They'd already spent too much money to pull the plug.
In November of 2009, Dick Cook was
replaced as a chairman of Disney by Rich Ross.
As reported in a Hollywood Reporter piece
subsequent to the film's release,
after attending an early screening of Mars Needs Moms,
Ross inquired about what it would
take to stop the film dead in its tracks.
But the train had already left the station,
so Ross did the next best thing.
He severed Disney's relationship with Zemeckis' company image
movers while still agreeing to release the film.
All the hopes and dreams for digital tomorrow
rested on this film from Zemeckis' point of view.
Any guesses what happened?
It bombed, like not it still made a few hundred
million dollars and broke even bombed, like opening weekend
and made $6 million off of a budget of $150 million bombed.
It was the 12th worst opening of all time.
That sealed the deal.
These attempted photo real animated projects
were dead in the water.
Robert Zemeckis had attempted to remove the human element
from filmmaking, and he had failed.
He waged a war against the difficulties of time
and the frailties of the human condition.
We got plenty of time.
We got nothing but time.
We got time to kill.
Ironically, time had run out on his chaotic quest.
From here, he returned to live action
filmmaking where he made a string of forgettable adult
dramas and that one Steve Carell vehicle about miniature adults.
Who are you?
My name is Wendy, and you are saved.
This CGI performance capture-obsessed period
of Zemeckis' career stands apart from nearly
every other live action feature film director.
It's a strange sojourn onto a path
that apparently no one else other than him
responded to in any meaningful way.
And yet, when you look at the landscape of Hollywood
today, photo real CGI characters mined from performance capture
are everywhere, James Cameron's Avatar, every Marvel film,
Star Wars.
Essentially, everything else is fair game now.
And how was this accomplished?
In part by the nearly decade-long research
and development process that Zemeckis' team
spent attempting to replicate the real world
in a digital space.
Ultimately, these films have yet to find an audience
of any significant import.
Will they eventually?
The jury is still out.
In the most charitable version of events,
Zemeckis' obsession has served as a Rosetta Stone-esque
cinematic event that pushed studio filmmaking
into the new millennium.
In the more grounded version of events,
well, they say history is written by the winners,
and none of these films won anything.
And that's all we have today.
So what do you think?
Will Zemeckis return to the land of CGI again soon?
Let us down in the comments.
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nostalgic.
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