Robert Zemeckis: Please Stop Making Freaky Animated Faces

Sometimes I sit back and think through the career of a particular director that I like. I think about the movies that started off their career and then the movies that solidified their certain niche in Hollywood. It is always interesting to note the types of movies that directors can make work for them. Every director has a certain brand they are usually categorized with. Michael Bay is obviously the big blockbuster action blow shit up guy. Wes Anderson makes quirky, off-beat dramedies and so on. But some other directors, either by their own choice or by the sheer fact that they are so bad they can't brand themselves well with at least one form of film tend to skip around a lot. There are a few out there but right now I'd like to focus on Mr. Robert Zemeckis, director of such films as the Back to the Future trilogy, Forrest Gump, and Cast Away--all films that I LOVE. He's also directed piles of crap like Polar Express, Beowulf (trailer), and the soon to be crap-pile A Christmas Carol.

I know it's in bad form to assume this movie will be bad without seeing it but here is my proposal: if this film is in fact bad then Mr. Zemeckis must cease and desist all future forays into CGI animation films aka real actors animated into CGI. He must agree to stick to what has made him successful in the past: films that rely on their actors and stories as opposed to how realistic he can make an animated actor look. Even writing that statement makes me angry. I don't get these films folks. What in holy hell is the point of making a film with fully animated people, if you are just going to make the characters look as real as possible. I know I'm going out on a limb here but why not just use the real actors faces instead of animating over top of them and making them look creepy and dumb and stupid. I mean just take a look at how idiotic cartoon Tom Hanks looks in this movie. Stupid.


People like animated films because the characters are drawn as hyperbole-- they are caricatures of all the features and personality traits that go into that particular character. For example, take a look at the characters in Up! They are human characters i.e. not talking penguins. But their features and they way they are drawn is totally unrealistic. The focus is on their shape, or their features, such as glasses or thick eyebrows. Look at Mr. Incredible's legs in proportion to his upper body. All of these features are funny and necessary for the look and style of these films. But with Mr. Zemeckis' CGI films the animation serves no purpose for the story at all. He is merely using it as a crutch to supplement for an overused storyline that people have heard millions of times. Remember also that each of these films are remakes of old stories: Polar Express was a popular childrens book; Beowulf is taken from an old faery story, and A Christmas Carol is of course a Dickens classic which in my opinion has never been told better than the Bill Murray classic Scrooged.


Now, I dont want people thinking I hate Robert Zemeckis movies. In fact i love them with all my heart. I love his REAL movies. The films that got him to where he is, the ones we all grew up on and learned to love. Who Framed Roger Rabbit? is a spectacular film-- a satire of both noir and Disney it is both funny and uses animation with live action. But note that these are animated characters, not people. When you look back at all of his past films you realize that Mr. Zemeckis indeed has a knack for telling a compelling story. The Back to the Future films he and Bob Gale wrote in the 80s were probably the most fun and unique films to come out of that entire decade. Those films have an effect that is extremely difficult to mimic in films. The simultaneous effect of both action adventure and comedy, done intelligently. You watch those films and you know that he and Mr. Gale spent time on writing the stories, the characters, and the scenes--as opposed to spending time only on how best to animate Jim Carrey's nose hairs.


So in short, I propose this: If A Christmas Carol is bad, which it will be, then Robert Zemeckis must swear to never again animate a film EVER again, and he and Bob Gale must write an original screenplay that doesn't just focus on special effects and fancy animation. I still cry over the day where we had great story driven films to watch from these two gentlemen. But maybe it is more of a personal choice. I know Mr. Zemeckis has always had an interest in special effects from reading interviews. So maybe now that the form has finally caught up to his vision maybe this is his inherent style, maybe this is how he's always wanted to tell a story. I sure hope that isnt the case because if it is, My Zemeckis' vision or his ars poetica if you will is crap. I only hope that he can look back on his own filmography and remember movies like Forrest Gump and Cast Away and realize how great a filmmaker he can really be when he leaves all the lame tricks and special effects at the door. And if these films don't have you or he convinced then Romancing the Stone or Used Cars surely will. However, I think we can all agree that Contact is a movie that even he wants to forget.