I recently viewed the trailer for Polar Express, a forthcoming computer-animated holiday film. The idea seems cute, but I found the characters to be, well, creepy. Even though the animation is quite good from a technical perspective, the people look quite inhuman, like zombies or automatons — arguably more inhuman than less sophisticated animation. Oddly, the less realistic characters in this trailer for The Incredibles seem more alive than the more “life-like” in Polar Express. This article in Slate (yes, they’ve taken a break from their Reagan bashing) offers an explanation. (It also might suggest why the animation is less disturbing in a sci-fi context, as in Final Fantasy or the Animatrix, than in a more contemporary or “real-life” setting.)