"9" - mini review

[MrDisco]

Just came back from watching the animated film "9". From IMDB:
'When 9 first comes to life, he finds himself in a post-apocalyptic world where all humans are gone, and it is only by chance that he discovers a small community of others like him taking refuge from fearsome machines that roam the earth intent on their extinction. Despite being the neophyte of the group, 9 convinces the others that hiding will do them no good. They must take the offensive if they are to survive, and they must discover why the machines want to destroy them in the first place. As they'll soon come to learn, the very future of civilization may depend on them.'

Like any CG film nowdays, the artwork and animation is quite stunning (and done right here in Toronto). There is a certain amount of steampunk influence here so fans of that style should be happy. The Little Big Planet(tm) Sackboy-wannabes have copper appendages with zippers, buttons, and thread to keep their bodies together. The rag tag group consists of characters '1' through '9', each with their own talent - a leader, an enforcer, twin researchers (my fav. characters), a ninja-ette, an old maverick, a timid engineer, and our valiant hero.

The machines left behind by the humans are voiceless automatons bent on destruction. 9 unknowingly awakens a machine (that looks like an extra from War of the Worlds merged with a Sentinel from the Matrix) that quickly starts constructing an army of machines. Like the raptors in Jurassic Park, the machine gets smarter with each failed attempt at wiping out the heroes.

Overall this wasn't a bad movie, but I felt it was too short with little meat to the story. There isn't much by way of dialog and the story seems like just one chapter into a much larger world. The movie has a definitive, if not melancholic, ending. It's a little violent/scary so I wouldn't take young kids to see it.

[Arcturus]

The story concept looks interesting. The art though is not to my taste. Probably will wait
till it comes on TV.

[Susano]

I had similar thoughts on this movie as well. There were some holes to the logic that were just a tad difficult to ignore. As a friend I saw the movie with had suggested, 9 would of been a much better 40+ hour RPG than this very short movie had any hopes of achieving with it's storyline. The ending was also very unimaginative- almost childish- and needed more thought put into it than it received.

[Syn13]

Although the movie looked greated, I could not get past the plotholes and two dimensional characters in this film but then again, I would like to think that I am unbiased about movies(paying money to watch them so I always enjoy the movies I hope).

I'd hate to say it but mid way through the movie, I just dozed out for a few seconds because the movie was so mono tone(when 6 was caught from the master machine), yes I hate when people fall asleep while describing their opinion about the movie they just watched but the sheer amount of the plot holes got to me.
What happened to the Master Machine after the war they won? Why was it deactivated(lack of power?), same goes towards the remaining machines. It seemed that the cat-like machine was the only active machine left since throughout the entire movie, the present only showed the Master(re-activating), Car, Bird-like machine(which it created afterwards) and the 5 dud worm thing.

So the real problem was over near the end of the movie? Seemed like it has only been possibly a couple of years before the war was lost and the scientist transfered his remainly "soul" into 9. The storyline really picks up when 9 accidentally re-activates the Master Machine.

We are given almost no character development towards the cast, you got your main character, jerk(who isn't really a jerk in the end), heroine, jock and other characters which believe it or not gets taken out rather quickly. Background was presented that they were "awakened" one by one by the one scientist struggling to survive through the war(unable to do anything).

The dolls are the future of the world...of what? It seems that every living organism was dead except for the earth unless the ending rain scene has some significance to the future.

So yeah, those were my initial questions right after watching the movie but I soon found out:
-Dolls were created to to take the scientist's device(soul device) to shut down the Master Machine(during war so man wins, they're were a bit too late).
-War was ended due to gassing the remaining humans that survived.
-In the present, the Dolls' mission was not clear since the Master Machine was already de-activated while the only machine(cat) was left to find that soul device to re-activate the Master Machine.
-Some of the Dolls had knowledge of the Soul device but unfortunately wasn't there to explain it's purpose.
-Cue in the main objective, dolls must reclaim that device to deactivate the Master Machine.
-Ending was flawed because there was really nothing/nobody to save except for themselves which I guess were now a race of Man/Machine species.........?

Just a little rambling, the original Final Fantasy movie is relate-able except the ending of FF was a bit more thought through(Human race survived, life returned back to the life stream).