I very much doubt whether Jim Carrey’s new version of A Christmas Carol will be the best ever made – there have been numerous versions, some of which are corkers, but it definitely will be the best animated version of the classic Dickens tale and could also end up being the best CGI movie ever made.
This new version of A Christmas Carol, set to be released this coming November handily in time for Christmas, sees Jim Carrey playing a number of different roles. Very much in the same way Tom Hanks took on a number of roles for The Polar Express. And that isn’t the only similarity.
Both of the movies utilize motion capture technology coupled with CGI in order to meld together real-life and non-existent worlds. Although Beowulf was a rubbish film (in my opinion) it did at least see the same technology improved so that Angelina Jolie rising from a swamp looked suitably impressive.
Michael Lantieri, the special effects supervisor on the film, told MTV Movies:
“I think you should be prepared to be blown away. I’ve seen some things that I haven’t seen before.”
“‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit,’ that I did with [Zemeckis], we took cartoons and put them into a real environment. What we’re doing now is taking people and putting them into a nonexistent environment, which is just 180 degrees out of what we were doing.”
“There used to be limits because of the amount of data that you could retain when you’re capturing. You couldn’t do crowd scenes. Now we can capture more information, which will make the eye blinks and the eye movements beyond anything you’ve ever seen.”
If you don’t know the story of A Christmas Carol by now then you must either be very young or very stupid. There have been an inordinate amount of movie versions made over the years, with the one starring Patrick Stewart as Ebenezer Scrooge probably my favorite. But is there room for one more? Probably.
