Tweet

From the looks of this short clip from A Christmas Carol featuring Jim Carrey as Scrooge and Gary Oldman as Marley, it would seem that Motion Capture technology hasn’t advanced an inch since Robert Zemeckis used it for The Polar Express.

It just looks exactly the same. Maybe that’s a consequence of the style that the director is going for or a limitation of what Mo-Cap can do, but something about it just looks distorted to me. Like something melted everything in the image slightly, like everything is just a bit too malleable. And then there’s the issue of Jim Carrey.

See for yourself:

I know it’s a quick clip, and I know that Jim Carrey just sounds like Jim Carrey at the end of it, but the overall look is killing me. Part of me wishes that it was just a live-action version done really well with CGI-enhancement. Instead, it looks like the kind of thing that will make kids need counseling until their mid-30s. If you’re going to do something artistic, shouldn’t you be showing us something we’ve never seen before? Or is this what we can expect from Robert Zemeckis forever and ever?

There’s also a new still shot of Scrooge that looks pretty fantastic on its own…

…but when this thing is set in motion it just looks nauseating to me. There’s a decent chance that something in the film will highlight the advancements of the technology, but this clip and image aren’t doing it.

What do you think?