Was The Polar Express Just a Dream?

Released in 2004, director Robert Zemeckis’ The Polar Express is a modern Christmas classic. It’s a fantastic film with thrilling moments, highlighting the magic of a round-trip journey to the North Pole. In fact, it’s so fantastic that even the characters involved question whether the Polar Express was a dream.

It’s easy to believe the adventures on the Polar Express didn’t actually occur. After all, the story starts with the boy in his bed, falling asleep, and ends with him waking up on Christmas. The kids find themselves in mortal peril, and yet are never in any true danger, because much of the train ride has a dreamlike quality. It’s only when the silver bell is unwrapped at the end that The Polar Express’ veracity is proven.

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Is The Polar Express a Dream?

This presentation of two interpretations of events — the realistic and the fantastic — stems from 19th-century American Romanticism. During that literary movement, the fantastic was experimented with, and pushed, but always with the option for a more realistic explanation presented to the audience, such as with Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Great Carbuncle and Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. This storytelling mechanic extends to the 21st century, with films such as The Lone Ranger, and is often a staple of horror films, which actually fits well with the eerie nature of The Polar Express.

Until audiences see the bell, there’s really nothing to indicate this isn’t a dream. Everything within the film has a hazy, unreal quality. Beyond the lights of the train, there’s little definition of the world around them. At moments, it feels like a waking nightmare, such as the scene with the Scrooge puppet or when the main character thinks the hero girl has been thrown off the train. The train itself performs some incredible feats, like going down an almost-vertical incline and through a track better suited for a roller coaster before rocketing across an icy lake.

There are also characters like the hobo, who feel more like the sort of abstract recurrence that would occur in a dream: He shows up when needed, and then vanishes when his job is done. Then, there’s the hot chocolate sequence, which is loud and bombastic compared to the rest of The Polar Express. Waiters perform dance numbers and fling hot chocolate, with nary a drop spilled, and tablecloths are capable of supporting dishes and people, despite hanging on nothing. Nearly everything about the show is strange and ethereal, operating less on real-world logic and more on the abstract. There’s also the magical nature of the tickets themselves. They’re golden and shiny, vanishing when their job is done, and apparently incapable of being lost, as shown when the girl’s ticket finds its way back to the train.

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The Polar Express’ Ending Proves It Wasn’t a Dream

The perils the kids find themselves in further the feeling of a dream — or, rather, a nightmare, which is ironically the same debate questioning Christmas with the Kranks as a horror movie. Facing sheer drops, near misses, potential death by drowning, and nearly falling off the train, the children are frequently in mortal peril. Yet, there’s some remaining belief they’ll find their way back out. Because of magic, yes, but also because it has to be a dream. If it isn’t a dream, then these children were in real danger, which leaves some terrifying implications.

Come Christmas morning; it certainly seems like it was a dream. When the main character hops out of bed and grabs his housecoat, his pocket rips in the precise same way it did before he boarded the Polar Express. There’s no sign that a train ever showed up, and when it did, it disturbed no one on his block and no one else in his house. The entire train ride could be perceived as a dream where he processes his doubts over Santa Claus, with him finally accepting it before waking up. The other characters can be translated as aspects of his psyche, arguing for, and against, his belief. Until his sister finds the bell under the tree, there’s nothing to say it wasn’t a dream. Even then, the bell only working for certain people strays back into the fantastic, firmly giving weight to the fact that the train ride actually took place.

However, the story wasn’t a dream, as the main character tells Billy and the bell at the end proves. Magic can explain how the train could make that incredible journey in less than a night and survive all those perils. It also explains how the children were able to stay safe no matter what. Whether real or a dream, what matters, in the end, is the memories made along the way.

The Polar Express is available to stream on HBO Max this holiday season.