Robert Zemeckis has perhaps the most unusual career arc of any filmmaker on this list in that he quit working in live action for a decade to focus entirely on directing multiple films. with motion capture animation. Zemeckis has already had a long career pushing new horizons in special effects in movies like “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” and “Forrest Gump.” “Roger Rabbit” has successfully combined animated and live action characters, so it makes sense that it would be drawn to a technique that combines animated characters with the performance of a live actor.
Whether this change in artistic direction was successful is another story. His first mo-cap film, 2004’s “The Polar Express,” was the most successful at the box office of the three, especially considering its multiple Christmas re-releases, but not quite a cartoonish death but not all quite realistic. the eyed figures instantly came to define the “strange valley”. 2007’s “Beowulf” and 2009’s “A Christmas Carol” offered some improvements in technology, but were very expensive to produce and failed to recoup their huge budgets.
Zemeckis has also produced two other mo-cap films through his studio ImageMovers Digital: 2006’s “Monster House,” directed by Gil Kenan, and 2011’s “Mars Needs Moms,” directed by Simon Wells. The latter was ImageMovers’ last film and the biggest box office bomb of its year. A mo-cap remake of “The Yellow Submarine” never surfaced, and Zemeckis would return to live action, though he would still use extensive animation in films like “Welcome to Marwen” and its Disney remake. + “Pinocchio”.