The Polar Express is a 2004 motion capture computer-animated fantasy film based on the children’s book of the same title by Chris Van Allsburg. Written, produced, and directed by Robert Zemeckis, the film’s human characters were animated using live action performance capture technique, with the exception of the waiters who dispense hot chocolate on the train, because their feats were impossible for live actors to achieve.

On the night of Christmas Eve 1956, a young boy who lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, is hoping for belief in the true spirit of Christmas. He wakes up near midnight and when studying evidence of the existence of Santa Claus, the boy hears loud screeching sounds and runs

   The Polar Express arriving at the North Pole

outside. He sees newly blown steam reveal a magical train called the “Polar Express.” The conductor tells him that the train is headed to the North Pole to go to meet Santa Claus, and that this is the year he should board it. He initially refuses, but hops on the train at the last second as it begins to move away from the neighborhood.

The boy encounters a group of other children aboard the train, including a young girl and a know-it-all. The train stops again, and a young boy named Billy replays the same events that happened with the protagonist, initially refusing, then running to catch up to the train. Unfortunately, Billy isn’t fast enough and is thrown into snow by the train’s speed. The protagonist finds this unfair and thinks Billy should get a chance to get on the train, so he pulls the emergency stop and Billy boards, although he enters a bit dejectedly into a carriage two carriages back.

The Hero Boy and his friends

A sequence ensues with singing, dancing waiters serving hot chocolate and the girl hides some extra hot chocolate under her seat for Billy, then sneaks away into the back to give it to him. When the conductor asks for tickets from everyone so he can punch them, the boy discovers his ticket is miraculously in his pocket. The conductor forgets to punch the girl’s ticket as he takes the girl to give more refreshments to Billy. The protagonist finds the girl’s ticket and tries to give it to her so it can be punched. However, he loses the ticket in the wind. The girl comes back to find her ticket missing and the boy guiltily tells the conductor that he lost it, not her. The conductor then takes the girl up to the train’s roof, and the kids assume that she will be thrown off. The boy finds that the ticket has 

miraculously flown back into the train, grabs it and climbs onto the train’s roof to give the ticket to the girl but arrives to see the light of the conductor’s lantern vanish in the darkness. He hikes across the train’s roof until he meets a hobo, who gives him some Joe (Old-fashioned coffee). When the protagonist expresses his doubt that Santa is real, the hobo replies that “Seeing is believing.” Afterwards, he helps him pursue the conductor and girl. They are forced to frantically ski down the train when the train is driving to enter Flattop Tunnel, which has only one inch of clearance on the roof; just before they can be knocked off by the tunnel the boy hops in the engine as the hobo magically vanishes in the air.

The boy finds that the girl is actually driving the train. She explains that Steamer, the engineer, is trying to fix the train’s light, so the conductor is letting her control it in the meantime. The light is fixed but they are forced to stop when thousands of caribou block the tracks. They restart their trip when the conductor comically gets the caribou to move, but unfortunately, he, the boy, and the girl are stuck in the front of the engine. The cotter pin of the throttle slips off causing the train to drive at a top speed out of control forcing the three to have to hope for survival as the train goes down the steepest downhill grade, Glacier Gulch. The train, after going down the roller coaster like gulch, lands on a frozen lake that has frozen over the railroad; and the ice begins to crack because the lost cotter pin rolls off the train and pierces the ice. The conductor has the train slowed down after Stoker, the fireman, uses a back-up cotter pin to re-attach the throttle, but when seeing the cracking ice behind them, the conductor orders the train to full-speed and they make it back on the railroad just before the ice completely cracks apart back into water.

They soon reach the North Pole and get off the train amid thousands of Christmas elves to see Santa and the magical Christmas tree. Billy stays in the train car; he does not want to see Santa, as he comes from a broken home due to a dissolved marriage from his parents’ cultural differences. He says that Christmas never turns out well for him. The boy and girl try to get him to come along with them, but are trapped when the observation car speeds backwards. The three of them travel from section to section of the North Pole to get back to the town square, with guidance from the girl, who claims she hears the sound of bells that will show them the way if they follow the sound. 

  Santa Claus giving a bell to Hero Boy

Billy hears the bells as well but the boy realizes he can’t hear them. Before long, they return to the town square and Santa appears. As his sleigh one of the bells fall off. The boy picks it up and shakes it, remembering that the girl and Billy could hear a bell earlier when he could not. As before, he cannot hear it. The boy then says he believes the spirit of Christmas and finally hears the bell. The boy is handpicked by Santa Claus to receive “The First Gift Of Christmas.” Realizing that he could choose anything in the world, the boy asks for the beautiful-sounding silver bell (that only believers in Santa can hear). The boy places the bell in his pocket, and all the children watch as Santa takes off for his yearly deliveries.

As the children leave the North Pole and are each dropped off at their homes, the boy discovers the bell is missing because there was a hole in his pocket. He is saddened by the loss of his bell, but is happy when he sees Billy holding up his present at his doorway, meaning Santa visited him already.

On Christmas morning, the boy’s sister, Sarah, finds a small present hidden behind the Christmas tree after all the others have been unwrapped. The boy opens the present and discovers that it is the bell, which Santa had found on the seat of his sleigh. When the boy rings the bell, both he and Sarah marvel at its beautiful sound; but because their parents don’t believe in Santa Claus nor the spirit of Christmas, they do not hear it and remark it to be broken. The film’s last line repeats the same last line from the book; the boy narrating years later:

“At one time, most of my friends could hear the bell, but as years passed, it fell silent for all of them. Even Sarah found one Christmas that she could no longer hear its sweet sound. Though I’ve grown old, the bell still rings for me, as it does for all who truly believe.”