Ewww…that’s creepy. I’m sure you’re correct.

I saw “The Polar Express” at an advance screening in November and had a very strange – though entirely accidental – experience. Just as the kid makes his decision to “believe” it occurred to me that the pseudo-religious tone was getting a bit thick. Then we get the first glimpse of Santa, who is absolutely glowing and looks an awful lot like Max Von Sydow in “The Greatest Story Ever Told”. At which point, the screen went entirely white, just like at the end of “The Last Temptation of Christ” .. Well, it turned out that the film had broken, but the coincidence was pretty funny…

yeah and the more i think about it the more fascist examples i can come up with–it’s really woven into the whole film.

and every review i read said the animation was “creepy” (even though you hate that word).

oh, and:

http://www.cmistudios.com/2004/12/zemeckis-polar-express-takes-motion.htm

maybe it’s because i’m german, too, that i was too sensitive to this, but this dude is totally right. it was a very fascist movie, and the imagery *is* straight out of the ‘triumph’.

damn mozilla won’t let me fix those typos.