Discussion WesternAnimation / ThePolarExpress

Since Santa doesn't actually exist, is there even a point to this movie? Like, is the message about believing lost?

Was there ever a notion of adding an Irony as She Is Cast or Hilarious in Hindsight due to Tom Hanks being in this film, considering a few years prior he kind of pooh-poohed the whole notion of replacing flesh-and-blood actors with CGI performance capture? I seem to remember him saying this specifically around the time Final Fantasy:The Spirits Within was in theaters... Notwithstanding Hanks's work in the Toy Story series, however...