The Uncanny Valley

Ever since early flipbooks and nickelodeons, animation has captured the hearts and minds of artists and moviegoers. And from the doodles of “Steamboat Willie” to the final rendering of “Up”, animation has certainly come a long way.

Two weeks ago, the latest example of a new form of computer-generated animation hit the theaters. However, instead of bringing some early holiday cheer, “A Christmas Carol” may have taken technological innovation a bit to far. The reviews have been lukewarm at best, with a general consensus that while the film was digitally impressive, it lacked the heart and soul of a Dickens’s classic, not to mention being downright creepy.

But what makes animation creepy? It’s a problem that has plagued filmmakers for several years, all beginning with the computer.

Computer generated imaging, or CGI, is the art of creating moving images on computers. It is the digital successor to older forms of animation including stop motion and frame-by-frame 2D illustrations. The technology was revolutionary. It made animation more believable and opened up a whole new world of special effects and graphics.

Realistic can be a good thing, but studies have shown there may be a point where enough is enough. There is a theory among robotics that if a robot or other human facsimile looks and acts too much like a human, it makes people uncomfortable.

The hypothesis, nicknamed the “uncanny valley”, describes the phenomenon when representations of humans are to close to being the real thing. It makes the animation seem “eerie”, and elicits a repulsive response from viewers. In other words, if the likeness of the animation and human comfort ability were put on a graph, there would be a significant dip just before the animation becomes live action. Essentially, the animation in movies like “A Christmas Carol” is so lifelike, that the audience cannot relate to the characters, as well as being slightly repulsed.

“A Christmas Carol”, directed by Robert Zemmicks, has not been the first movie to “creep” people out. In fact, Zemmicks’s previous two films “The Polar Express” (2004) and “Beowulf” (2007) are guilty of the same thing. The graphic fight scenes in “Beowulf” left audiences uneasy, and the overuse of Tom Hanks in “The Polar Express” was strange to say the least, Hanks playing about half of the cast including Santa Clause himself. All three films were filmed with a technique Zemmicks is now infamously known for, called motion capture.

In motion capture animation; the movements of actors are recorded into a digital format. Futuristic-looking wires are hooked up to actors as they move about and say their lines, allowing the computer to capture not only body language, but also subtle facial expressions and nuances of human behavior. Humans have traditionally been regarded as the most difficult subject to animate, and back in 2004, the visuals in “The Polar Express” blew audiences away.

Many critics have accused Zemmicks of using a dead end technology. At what sacrifice are our filmmakers forging new paths in animation? Animation is supposed to allow the storytellers of film to take audiences to places that are impossible with live action. It allows their characters to perform feats beyond normal human capacity, and to behave in new and exciting ways. It is the realm of fantasy. But motion capture and other high tech animation are blurring the line between reality and fantasy.

As humans, everything needs to fit into a category, and ambiguous films like those of Zemmicks are difficult to place. Actors in motion capture are still limited by their own laws of physics if no extra editing is done, forcing critics to wonder what the point of this new technology is, other than allowing Tom Hanks to be five people at once.

Motion capture has gone in such a different direction, that it is difficult to even consider it animation any more. It implies something more real than a normal cartoon; that something in the film applies to real life. The authenticity of animated characters can completely alter the message of a film. What kind of message would WALL-E have sent if its humans were modeled with motion capture?

Only ten years ago, critics were rejoicing the computer technology that allowed thousands of Hun soldiers to spill over a snowy hill in the Disney classic “Mulan.” Of course, the computer effects of “Mulan” didn’t come at the price of its well-told story. Motion capture may be contributing to technological advances, but not so much to art, and I refuse to pay money to see somebody’s science project.

The good ol’ days when movies were either animated or live action are behind us. Now it seems we’re doomed to deal with these spooky near-human zombies indefinitely. As for my holiday wish this year, I would love it if Zemmicks would retire, but I guess not all dreams can come true.