News culture 20 years later, this legendary animated Christmas film is finally getting a sequel!
After 20 years of waiting, one of the most iconic Christmas films is finally returning with a sequel, and we’re hoping to find Tom Hanks in the cast.
In 2004, you discovered The Pole Express, a feature film directed by Robert Zemeckis – a man with an extensive filmography including Back to the Future, Forrest Gump and Alone in the World – and on based on the book of the same name. It told the story of a little boy’s journey to the North Pole on Christmas Eve aboard the legendary Pole Express train. The animated film features Tom Hanks, Zemeckis’ regular collaborator. Although the film is considered a great contemporary Christmas classic, the critical and public reception of the film upon its release was quite mixed.
This is the first feature film to combine live action and motion capture animation, a technique that, according to some, gave a rather strange result and was perfected five years later in the first part of Avatar. On rotten tomatoes, Pôle Express inherits the score of 56% from the presswhich agrees that “Although the film is visually impressive, the animation of the human characters is not realistic enough and the story is too detailed“. Similar sentiment for the New Yorker, who said: “Tom Hanks (in multiple roles) and the other actors do a good job, but the waxy, animated faces they get are off-putting.
Pole Express 2 confirmed
This year we find out that after 20 years The Pôle Express returns to cinemas with a sequel already in development. At the moment the information is very scant, but of course we suspect that the animation techniques used today will have a much more natural rendering. However, it’s hard to say whether Tom Hanks will be there, his absence would likely be felt given his heavy involvement in the first part.
It was producer Gary Goetzman who broke the news of a sequel in the ComicBook columns, while also adding that he was also considering further sequels to the film:
I would love to do a sequel to Max and the Maximons. For a lot of films we’ve made, if they’re successful, the studios want another one. This is how it happens. I’m ready for Mamma Mia 3. Now that would be great… We’re definitely trying to find a solution, and Polar 2. Yes.
Before we add that there is still a long way to go before we even know “who owns the artistic property.” “It all takes time and that’s okay because we don’t mind if things go slowly,” he says.
