DEVIN IS VISITED BY THE GHOST OF A CHRISTMAS CAROL FUTURE

It’s the eyes. It’s still the eyes. CGI motion capture technology has come very far since Robert Zemeckis unleashed Polar Express, with its character’s faces frozen in horrific expressions of pain, but the technique remains stuck firmly in the Uncanny Valley.

This morning I went to Union Station in downtown Los Angeles for a press event commemorating the launch of a national train tour promoting A Christmas Carol. The train is going to spend the entire rest of the year (I mean it – they’ll be making stops through November) winding its way across the country, and it’s bringing exhibitions and clips from the movie with it.

I got a chance to watch those clips, and my reactions are mixed.

Watching Jim Carrey perform as Scrooge in selected scenes from A Christmas Carol, opening this November, I marveled at how much the word ‘perform’ truly applied. This was Jim Carrey on screen, not functionally all that different than Jim Carrey under heavy prosthetics. It’s amazing to see, but not in a flashy way that pulls you from what you’re watching. Rather it’s simply a complete performance.

But those eyes. While I felt that Scrooge’s eyes, for whatever reason, seemed to work, the eyes of Colin Firth’s character, Fred, looked like a mockery of life. It’s early, and maybe this sort of stuff will be addressed as the movie gets closer to completion, but Firth’s eyes would stay locked on Carrey’s Scrooge no matter where his head went. And they were flat, without a spark.

The eyes on Jacob Marley were totally different. His eyes dart around in his head like the ghost is trying to make sense of his surroundings. I would love to see the original actor’s performance (is it Cary Elwes? I’m unclear, as is IMDB) to get a look at what made the animators choose to do that with his eyes.

Then again, it’s just the eyes. Everything else on display is, frankly, magnificent. While I don’t really understand Zemeckis’ drive towards photo-realistic humans, he’s making amazing headway in that direction. Scrooge’s features are a touch cartoony, but rendered completely realistically within that aesthetic. Firth’s Fred looks like… Colin Firth. And the ghost of Marley looks so real that when he does a The Frighteners-influenced bit of comedy with his jaw it comes across as disconcerting more than funny. (For those playing at home: what I saw today was miles better than the clip from the same scene that appeared online this week)

At a press conference in front of the train, Zemeckis explained that he thought technology finally allowed him to bring this story to life in a way that it never had been before. That’s a weird sentiment to me, one that sounds very 1999; surely CGI has been advanced enough to bring these four ghosts to life before now. And the ghosts and the setting really are the least important element of the story. There’s a reason why A Christmas Carol has become a stage production stalwart – it’s all about the story.

Interestingly, while we got a quick look at some action (after Scrooge attempts to put out the flame-headed Ghost of Christmas Past with a cone of some sort the ghost rockets the old man up out of his house and far, far into the sky), most of the scenes shown were talky. Even the Jacob Marley scene was, after a quick ominous intro, about two guys chatting. I wonder if this isn’t part of why Zemeckis chose this story. He’s shown he can do a kid’s movie and an adventure movie with mocap, and now he’s moved on to a story whose core can easily be expressed on stage. Can mocap work in a film that’s mostly drama?

It’s too early to tell. What I’ve seen is intriguing, and well done. Zemeckis has obviously committed himself to being at the forefront of this technology, and he’s patiently fine-tuning it with each film. The evolution from Polar Express to A Christmas Carol is almost breath-taking.

Now it’s all about seeing if he can make a good movie with these tools.

You can see the footage yourself in the coming months as the A Christmas Carol train tour makes its way across the United States. It’s free for everybody, and even though it’s a blatant advertisement, I think kids will get a kick out of the displays on the train itself as well as the footage.

Here’s the list of train stops. It’s pretty massive.