Chapter 4: Cinematography

Essay: “The Uncanny Valley”

In November of 2004, two animated films - Warner Bros.’s The Polar Express and Pixar’s The Incredibles - were released for the holiday season. Produced for nearly $170 million, The Polar Express was not quite the box-office triumph its director, Robert Zemeckis, or its studio, Warner Bros., had hoped for: it earned just $2 million above its production cost in U.S. box office receipts. The Incredibles, in contrast, was a relative bargain to produce, costing Pixar $90 million, and it was a clear box-office success, earning more than $260 million in domestic receipts.

Critical reviews, too, favored The Incredibles over The Polar Express. Although there are many reasons for the differing box-office performances, the key issue for many critics was an unsettling feeling that they couldn’t shake while watching the characters in The Polar Express - a feeling that the whole thing wasn’t heartwarming or endearing, but was instead simply creepy. Among fans of computer-generated imagery, there was considerable debate about why, exactly, The Polar Express left so many viewers feeling weird and uncomfortable rather than filled with the holiday spirit. Eventually, on blogs and listservs all over the Internet, a consensus was reached: The Polar Express had fallen into the “uncanny valley.”

Polar Express and the "uncanny valley"

The uncanny valley is a theoretical concept first described in 1970 by a Japanese robotics engineer, Masahiro Mori. It states that the closer an object (a robot, an animated character) comes to resembling a human being in its motion and appearance, the more positive our emotional response to that object becomes until suddenly, at some point of very close (but not perfect) resemblance, our emotional response turns from empathy to revulsion. This revulsion or uneasiness, Mori says, is the result of a basic human tendency to look for anomalies in the appearance of other human beings. When an object such as a robot or an animated character is so anthropomorphic that it is nearly indistinguishable from a human being, we monitor the appearance of that object very closely and become extremely sensitive to any small anomalies that might identify the object as not fully human. For whatever reason, these anomalies create in many people a shudder of discomfort, similar in effect to the feeling we have when we watch a zombie movie or see an actual corpse. In both cases, what we see is both human and not fully human, and the contradiction produces a very negative reaction. The following graph illustrates the concept of the uncanny valley.

The "uncanny valley" and empathy

When applied to special effects in movies, the implications of the uncanny valley are clear: if a filmmaker strives for a very high level of verisimilitude in computer-generated characters, she may risk taking the humanlike resemblance too far, causing viewers to notice every detail of the characters’ appearance or movement that doesn’t conform to the way real human beings actually look or move. Our emotional response to these “almost human” characters will therefore be unease and discomfort, not pleasure or empathy.

If the filmmaker decides instead to render characters in a more stylized manner, clearly signaling that they are not supposed to appear “almost human,” we will notice, paradoxically enough, all the aspects of their appearance and behavior that resemble human beings, and we will be more likely to perceive these characters as more complex and more “human” characters than the characters that are designed to look nearly human. The characters in The Incredibles were certainly described by critics and fans alike in more detailed and sympathetic ways than those in The Polar Express. 

We can extend the concept even further to acknowledge that, when an animated object or a creature that is clearly not human is shown onscreen exhibiting certain human traits or emotions, we may actually feel more sympathetic to that creature than we do to overly detailed “human” animated characters.

From Over the Hedge, 2006

From Cars, 2006

A good portion of the production budget for The Polar Express was devoted to an elaborate process (since dubbed “performance capture”) whereby actors, most prominently Tom Hanks, perform scenes in motion capture (“mocap”) suits that record millions of pieces of data that computers use to render the motion of CGI characters onscreen.

Robert Zemeckis decided to use performance capture rather than straight CGI or a combination of live-action and animation (such as he did in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) because he wanted the movie to be faithful to the original children’s book by Chris Van Allsburg, which had a luxurious and “realistic” visual style. Zemeckis and his collaborators decided that doing the entire movie using performance capture and CGI, rather than a mixture of animation and live action, would create an immersive and magical world in a way that mixing live action and animation wouldn’t. But he probably didn’t figure that the careful attention to verisimilitude would turn out to be the most distracting element of all.

In contrast, Brad Bird, the director of The Incredibles, set out from the beginning of the project to avoid the uncanny valley. Instead of striving for realism in the movie’s characters, Bird and his creative team developed a cast of dramatically stylized characters. Even though they are recognizably human, all of the characters in The Incredibles are unmistakably cartoons.

The Polar Express wasn’t the first film to fall into the uncanny valley, and it’s not likely to be the last. But it may be that the uncanny valley proves to be a momentary obstacle for filmmakers who use CGI to create cinematic verisimilitude. The technological and creative advances in this field may someday create a perfect likeness that is indistinguishable from a live human actor. If that day arrives, the uncanny valley will be remembered as an interesting side note in film history, and other issues - ones that are much more important to the living, breathing actors whom these “synthespians” may replace - will come to the fore.

 

FOR FURTHER READING

The Uncanny Valley, Masahiro Mori, 1970

Pixar and the Uncanny Valley, RobotJohnny.com

The Polar Express: A Virtual Train Wreck

Wikipedia, Uncanny Valley

Credits

All images from The Polar Express are copyright © 2004 Warner Bros.
All images from The Incredibles are copyright © 2004 Disney / Pixar.
Image from Over the Hedge is copyright © 2006 Dreamworks Animation SKG
Image from Cars is copyright © 2006 Disney / Pixar.