I’m sorry to Robert Zemeckis and his crew for dismissing a film they have obviously worked hard on from the just the trailer alone but I see no logical reason why they shot A Christmas Carol in performance captured 3-D. None what-so-ever.
It certainly can’t have been for an easier life as A Christmas Carol can be performed adequately enough with very few sets, actors and most importantly, not a big load of the American dollar.
For those with long memories, I didn’t think much of the trailers for Beowulf around this time two years ago and one of the more shockingly unexpected articles I’ve read since I started movie blogging was when Harry Knowles completely creamed himself over the picture because by then the knives were well out of the drawer, and Beowulf along with this technology was ready to be slain, mocked, and sent to the gutters.
In the end, I very much dug Beowulf …
but even in the pre-release days when I thought the movie looked liked trash I could still understand why Zemeckis used the technology. With all it’s creatures, it’s ancient old myths and larger than life legends and sequences, it benefited from a technological push over the harder jumps.
But for A Christmas Carol -Where’s the benefit in having Jim Carrey play all the “Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present & Future” when he is barely recognisable outside of his other role as Scrooge?
Where’s the benefit of having Scrooge fly to the moon – does that really add anything to this story?
You dig up the graves of Alastair Sam and George C. Scott, and you ask them whether the trailer for Disney’s child baiting A Christmas Carol works? Wait… don’t give Zemeckis ideas because at this point he could probably resurrect any actor that ever lived with his animation and exploit them for his own purposes.
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All that based on a trailer?
Doubtless Zemeckis will have used this technology to blow the whole story wide open and make it a visual feast. I’m not a huge fan of mocap animation yet, but I will always give Zemeckis credit for using it to show the impossible. The shots of Scrooge soaring through London, up into space, through bridges, etc, looked beautiful, and I’m glad that Zemeckis doesn’t seem to be just going through the motions. Redundant would be simply pulling a George C Scott or Alastair Sim.
Once again, I am bowled over at how close-minded the ‘writers’ on this website are. Zemeckis is pushing technology and trying to find new, revolutionary ways of telling stories. Sure, he hasn’t quite gotten it right yet, but he’s getting there.
Does the technology improve the storytelling in this instance though?
That’s what I’m struggling with in trying to get myself pumped for seeing A Christmas Carol in this way.
I loved Polanski’s Oliver Twist from 2005… I would hate to think of that being redundant.
Does it improve the storytelling? I don’t know, I haven’t seen it. And neither have you.
All we can gather from that trailer is that it looks spirited and pretty.
What does Polanskis Oliver Twist have to do with anything? But since you mentioned it….one of the most redundant films I’ve seen in a long time. Awful performances across the board (Kingsley aside), uninspired visuals, bland bland bland. It doesn’t add anything new to previous adaptations or the musical, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it was just so badly done.
Personally i like the mocap for the mouths and makes it much more realistic in a fun kinda way..im still optomistic for this one.
What does Polanski’s Oliver Twist have to do with it? Um, both Dickensian adaptations (and both, interestingly, I think, the two most-filmed entries in the Dickens ouevre, not entirely surprising as their sentimentality is tailor-made for Hollywood I s’pose).
Personally I think they should stop remaking A Christmas Carol for at least a couple of years. It’s been done to death, and it’s not a particularly good story anyway. The fact that Zemeckis has to resort to CGI tomfoolery, having Jim Carrey play 4 characters, and having Scrooge FLY TO THE F’N MOON OMG in order to generate interest in the story suggests the degree familiarity has bred contempt for the plot.
Eh, Hanks played like a million characters in Polar Express. Winstone played the dragon in Beowulf. That’s kinda Zemeckis’s point with these mocaps…showing how he can keep any performance actor-based, regardless of how much of a stretch it may be. The casting for this proves it. And these films are always gonna be half-story, half showing off the technology. Beowulf was a really fun film that actually told a damn good story. The way he tied the two halves of the tale together was terrific and much more cohesive. This new one looks cool, and at least he’s experimenting with animation and not just churning out the same old derivative, spoofy shit that Dreamworks specialise in.