9 (2009)
When our world ended their mission began.
I feel that tonight’s movie was something that people didn’t quite know what to make of when it came out. On one hand, it was animated - so it must be for kids, right? The other hand brought with it a very heavy atmosphere and a lot less whimsical tone than you would think of an animated movie about little puppet people. In turn, you had a lot of folks that probably anticipated a whimsical and nice adventure romp and found out they were in for something much heavier. Still, I don’t remember not liking it at the time, so let’s see how age has treated the computer work and story of 9.
The story is given largely through some visual exposition - but you can also really get the entire story without any of it. Apocalypse? Roger. Weird machines? Check. I bet someone built some Skynet action, didn’t they? Check. Really, the only question left to be really answered is about the little characters themselves - even though we start off with the process being shown to us. Of course, I guess a lot of that isn’t entirely story - as the story is in fact a little bit more nebulous than that. Little puppet guy wakes up, sees another little puppet guy and goes to meet up. A mechanical monster attacks and drags away the one, and the other wants to go and rescue him. Unfortunately for all the little puppet people that end up finding each other, the new one in the group’s rescue attempt suffers a bit of curiosity-led stupid that creates a whole new world of problems. The rest of the story is the underdogs versus the super-robot, with some background filling in done through a few different scenes.
The story is kind of weak - I mean, when the same person trying to save everything is also the one that caused it all from a really dumb choice, it makes it feel weaker then it is. Still, despite the story and some of it’s overlook-able contrivances, the world building is actually pretty good. There’s mystery slinking around all the corners until things are answered - what’s with this little magic people? Whats with happened to the world? So on and so forth. Now sure, some of it is pretty guessable and foreseeable - but other bits of it beg for the imagination to get it’s teeth in there and really thrash about. Of course, to the person looking for a fun Pixar romp, the immediately clashing, dangerous, death-filled gloom of the world would be a hard wall against the expectations. It’s more akin to something you’d expect out of Tim Burton, just with a lot more color. There’s a lot of things here that could feel slightly less fleshed out than desired - however, the short run time (almost an hour and a half) keeps it from feeling like it has the runtime to really pad it all out. At the same time, this is nice because we don’t suddenly bog everything down to flesh it out.
Characters are one of those things that aren’t really all that fleshed out feeling. Granted, this is kind of explained at the end of the movie but at the same time most of the characters aren’t really too much more than an attribute - the brave fighter lady, the curious 9, the big and dumb 8. The “each character is an aspect of something” works within the context as we go through the movie, and it isn’t without actually containing an arc or two - specifically with 1, who really doesn’t get all the much screen time given the story really follows 9. Acting is mostly all in line deliveries here - the animations will do a little bit for things, such as a meek posture or the look of a raised eyebrow (despite lacking eyebrows). The characters do all have a bit of a unique look about them however, somewhat playing with their character traits but also taking something that would otherwise look very identical and allowing them to stand apart from each other.
Looking pretty nice there.
Animation is the name of the game with this movie. It doesn’t go for photo-realistic, which is usually a good choice as it allows the avoidance of the uncanny valley. It all looks pretty good, with some decent details here and there. Admittedly, in most times it’s nothing incredibly fancy - the little people that we see the most are all made with a burlap type material having that twine-like texture about them. The mechanical iris in their eyes allow for some extra expression, while also function as a pupil to make things more identifiable as human. Actual movement animations work well enough as well - perhaps not as fluid as some of the things the modern technology is capable of, but it’s really not terrible. The mechanical creatures are all quite inventive looking, from blimp creatures to big mechanical naga-creatures and robotic cat-monsters. It holds up pretty decent in quality, and nothing really stuck out as super horrible while I was watching it - although there is a time or two when it might be a little goofy, like if on of the monsters gets mashed up and a select bit of bolts and the like come spraying out the end.
As mentioned a few times - the mood in this is kind of dark. The environment reflects this, and the entire thing feels like it belongs in World War 1. It can be colorful, but environmentally it’s very ruined browns and greys, with plenty of wreckage and even some trenches strewn about. it tells a lot of story without actually having said anything - and the few humans we see aren’t in great shape (by which I mean they dead). We do see a few different environments - mostly all in a ruined state. A library, a church, a bit of the town streets, a factory - it’s enough where you don’t feel like things clash with each other without looking identical, but also not so much that you feel like your on some epic Lord of the Rings adventure. The camerawork, be it digital I would imagine - manages to stay rooted. It shoots everything as though it was a physical shoot with actual actors and sets - and that really helps it feel a bit more believable and engrossing, and something that doesn’t always happen in the biggest of budget movies. The way they shoot also helps wonderfully with the scale of everything, making our little heroes actually feel small within the world as they fight this large, menacing robot.
Audio balance is fine. Line deliveries are fine. If I’m being honest, which I normally am, it’s nothing really stand out in the audio department. It does it’s job, picking appropriate sounds for mechanical creatures and balancing things out so you can always hear what someone is saying regardless of the danger levels. The movie brings up some concepts that could be used as talking points if someone really wanted - the corruption of science, the dangers and essence of soul, character traits that make a person up like courage or cowardice. It’s not really something that it feels is blunt force trauma on your senses, and you’d honestly feel like you were reaching for an extra thing to talk about, but it’s stuff to kind of comes up one way or the other if you were into that sort of thing.
Where did you crawl out of, Sid’s room?
If nothing else, the movie is pretty imaginative. The world, the character designs, the designs of the horrendous monstrosities pumped out by the would-be Skynet, it’s all stuff that someone with a heck of a thinker came up with. It all looks pretty good, not really showing too many rough edges even though it was made over a decade ago. It might not stand out in the ways that some other flicks do, and it might be a bit of a downer in mood, but as a dark fantasy or alternative past kind of thing it’s solid enough that watching isn’t a regret. If you go off the bulk scores, it’s average or a bit above average - but it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if most the lower end of reviews went in expecting something they didn’t get and reacted accordingly. The presentation is great, the plot perhaps a bit basic, and really it very well may just be a case of either you like it or you don’t - and hopeful message aside, go in expecting a dark fairy tale and you’ll probably have a lot more enjoyable experience than if you expect another Toy Story.