Why AI Feels Like Motion Capture in 2004
What The Polar Express Teaches Us About AI Adoption
Introduction
This Doodle Loop illustrates AI Evolution, one of the core parts of my book The Doodle Principle—How AI Becomes Your Partner in Curiosity and Creativity. This article applies to individual creativity and business efficiency.
Rather than predicting the future directly, it looks backward—using a 20-year-old movie as a mirror. By examining how audiences reacted to a breakthrough technology then, we can see a familiar pattern repeating now. The tools change but the human response stays remarkably consistent.
By tracing that pattern through The Polar Express, this loop isn’t arguing that AI and animation are the same. It’s showing how technological disruption always feels uncanny before it becomes invisible, and how creative intent outlasts the tools used to express it.
The goal isn’t nostalgia. It’s recognition.
Because once you see the pattern, you can stop fearing the phase—and start designing for what comes next.
Observation
Every December, The Polar Express finds its way back onto my television.
I’ve seen the movie dozens of times—mostly with my boys over the years. We even rode the real Polar Express, the steam engine used to model the train in the movie, at the Steam Railroading Institute in Owosso, Michigan. For those who haven’t experienced it, there’s nothing like being up close to a steam locomotive and experiencing it with all your senses—the sounds, smells and feeling as it rumbles by.
And every time I watch the movie, I have the same reaction.
This still feels a little strange… and it still works.
When the film was released in 2004, it wasn’t just a holiday movie. It was a technological experiment playing out in public. Full-performance motion capture at that scale was new. The characters moved like humans. They almost looked like humans.
Critics fixated on the eyes. Audiences talked about the “creepiness.” Commentators debated whether technology had gone too far.
But despite all of that, the message landed.
Wonder. Belief. The quiet bravery of choosing to believe in something you can’t quite explain.
Watching it now, the controversy feels dated. The technology fades into the background. What remains is the story—and the feeling it leaves behind.
And the same thought clicks:
This is exactly how AI feels right now.
Wonder
What if the discomfort around AI isn’t a warning sign—but a familiar phase?
In 2004, people weren’t reacting to bad storytelling. They were reacting to tools that moved faster than our emotional norms. Motion capture collapsed the distance between actor and animation, and audiences hadn’t yet learned how to interpret it.
Today, AI is collapsing a different distance: the space between idea and execution.
People say of AI today:
“It sounds human, but something feels off.”
“It’s impressive, but where’s the soul?”
“This feels too easy.”
Those reactions mirror the language used twenty years ago—just applied to thinking instead of faces.
So the real question becomes:
If The Polar Express didn’t lose its soul when the tools changed, why do we assume creativity will?
AI Exploration
The deeper lesson of The Polar Express isn’t about animation quality.
It’s about tool gravity—the combined weight of language, skill, process, and tooling that determines how difficult it is for an idea to move from intent to reality.
For most of modern history, expressing something meaningful at scale required an institution. Studios, budgets, crews, distribution deals. Not because ideas were scarce, but because the tools to express them were heavy.
The same is true of business. Executing an idea requires departments of people with specialized skills. Even startups need business domain, technology, sales, marketing and business operations. It’s the rare founder who brings all of those disciplines together.
The Polar Express sat at an inflection point. It still required a studio and enormous investment, but it hinted at a future where technology moved closer to the creative spark. Over the next two decades, that trend accelerated:
Digital cameras replaced film
Editing moved to laptops
Phones became cinematic
Individuals told stories once reserved for studios
Business followed the same arc.
For decades, turning an idea into reality required:
Strategy decks
Committees
Funding approvals
Specialized teams for every step
Long delivery cycles to justify the overhead
Creativity existed—but it had to travel a long way before it became real.
AI is shortening that distance.
A technical professional today can:
Explore a business problem in natural language
Prototype a solution without waiting for formal requirements
Generate code, documentation, and visuals in parallel
Test scenarios before asking for permission
Iterate faster than governance models were designed to allow
That compression is what feels unsettling.
Not because creativity disappears—but because control shifts.
Understanding
This is where the parallel becomes unmistakable.
The unease around The Polar Express wasn’t fear of actors being replaced. Tom Hanks’ performance was still underneath everything. The discomfort came from translation—how human intent passed through unfamiliar tools.
AI triggers the same reaction.
The anxiety isn’t that machines are creative. It’s that creation no longer requires institutional mediation.
In business, that forces a reckoning.
When tools are heavy, organizations rely on specialized skills and structure. When tools get lighter, organizations must rely on judgment.
This is where full-cycle development becomes essential—where technical professionals or well-rounded self-contained teams own problems from conception through delivery, combining execution with narrative, context, and accountability.
In an AI-enabled environment:
Fragmented roles slow momentum
Excessive handoffs dilute intent
Permission-based governance breaks under speed
The organizations that adapt will empower technical people to:
Frame problems, not just implement solutions
Carry ideas from curiosity to delivery
Blend building with explanation
Think like operators and storytellers
This isn’t a loss of discipline. It’s a re-centering of responsibility.
Just as motion capture didn’t eliminate filmmaking roles but tightened their integration, AI doesn’t eliminate business roles—it compresses the loop between them.
The Loop Closes
When I watch The Polar Express now, I no longer notice the uncanny valley the way critics once did.
What I notice is that my kids still lean in. That the bell still rings. That the story still lands.
The technology stopped being the point. If anything it’s a bit of nostalgia, kind of like playing an old video game and enjoying the simple graphics.
That’s where we’re headed with AI.
Right now, we’re distracted by artifacts:
Imperfect (or too perfect) outputs
Awkward phrasing
Synthetic edges
Tool-centric debates
But those fade.
What remains is intent.
The question isn’t whether AI will change how we work. It already has.
The question is whether we’ll let it close the loop—or keep forcing modern ideas through outdated structures.
Just like The Polar Express, this phase will pass. What remains is what always remains: the work itself, and whether it moved anyone.
The ideas and concepts in this article are the author’s own. AI assisted with ideation and editing.