I will definitely wait and even then, I am on the fence. The 'performance-capture' animation just takes away to much from the story. Which I'm sure from the likes of Spielberg and company, this is a great adventure story. I have not seen any of Polar Express, parts of Beowulf, parts of Mars needs Moms, because well, the animated faces (eyes in particular) blew it.

so...

This sums up my complaint with performance-capture...

But the most glaring problem with Mars Needs Moms is the use of Zemeckis’ breed of performance-capture technology. While the results have improved significantly since The Polar Express, the human characters in Mars still look distractingly “off” and unnatural. Their facial mannerisms are never quite right, their pupils are always too dilated, and their physical movement remains noticeably exaggerated. Unlike the stylized human characters in, say, a movie by Pixar or DreamWorks, the humans here look like detailed replicas of the real thing - and it’s frankly more off-putting than awe-inspiring.

I can't find it now, but I've read studies about the crop of performance-capture technology and why it fails and why it may never work. Why a film like Rango does. Part of it has to do with human rendering, and exaggerated facial features. Bottom line, it become a critical part of the movie and if just a portion of core part of movie making doesn't make it, the rest of the film suffers.

I like that the animation is able to get close to near-realistic renditions of humans. But I has a fan of movies don't necessarily need it to be perfect. I'm all for "humans" looking as they do in The Incredibles with their exaggerated features. Having said that, the boy in Tintin is probably the best looking CGI character I've seen as it's not horrible in the sense of Polar Express. Just based on the trailer for that movie, I stayed away because I knew it wouldn't be an enjoyable 90 minutes for me.

Another thing, there really is no reason to go hyper realistic. That's what actual actors and actresses are for.

Agree, and there is a tipping point. Why animate, if it looks real. Mars Needs Moms had incredible facial features. I was rather impressed...

but, there are key elements that are missing and making it all very creepy looking.