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9 - An impressive apocalyptic vision with a few design flaws
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Elijah Wood in a fantastic journey that's not Lord of the Rings
9 is the brainchild of writer/director Shane Acker, and it has Tim Burton’s name thrown on it somewhere so you’ll buy a ticket to it. Let’s check the box office, shall we? As of this article’s posting, 9 has made a little over $10 million after being released on 09/09/09. The film works to a certain extent, and is absolutely beautiful to look at, but too many questions prevent it from being a runaway animated hit.
A small doll comes to life in the hands of a scientist. He zips up the doll’s brass zipper on the front of its torso, installs a pair of cylindrical eyeballs and takes a tiny screwdriver to test the functionality of the quad-fingered copper hands. Then, a bright green light, and the doll awakes. The number 9 is etched onto his back, and he stumbles into the world and discovers the body of his master on the floor of the laboratory. He notices the window shutters fluttering and upon investigating stares into a destroyed urban landscape, bombed and burnt and devoid of life. He notices movement below and runs out to learn more. Meet 9, a burlap-skinned doll voiced by Elijah Wood. Here is where his journey begins.
9 meets several other characters in the wasteland. He meets 2, an inquisitive, resourceful doll voiced by Martin Landau. The kind-hearted 5, voiced by John C. Reilly. The totalitarian 1, voiced by Christopher Plummer, and 3, an acrobatic vixen voiced by Jennifer Connelly. We are introduced to a rich cast and because one of their own is captured by the Beast, we now have a… what is the word… MacGuffin! (Look it up on Wikipedia if you’re confused. I know I was.) In any case, 9 and 5 set out to rescue their friend, merely out of the kindness of 9’s heart. Some drama unfolds, a battle takes place and 3 comes to save the day. 9 celebrates by inadvertently awakening the scourge of mankind, the very machine responsible for the wasteland they currently traverse. It’s all 9’s fault, 5 is a little upset, and 1 is positively furious.
The rest of the film encompasses the numerically named group relocating after a number of attacks on their livelihood by imaginative, terrifying machine creatures. One is a mix of an eagle, a scorpion, and a kite, and has a face full of needles and red, glowing eyeballs. Another is a slithering menace with a baby-doll’s face that looks a lot like the foe in a nightmare I had last night. Here is where Shane Acker’s vision comes to life. The film is absolutely breathtaking to watch, and the art-design of the various machines is frighteningly amazing. Similarly impressive are the apocalyptic vistas, the yellowish haze of the sky above the defeated city and the rust hues of civilization overturned.
The movie is beautiful, but the story feels incomplete. Though the purpose of the numbered doll characters is explained, their physical creation is given just a brief, unsatisfying answer. And as for Elijah Wood’s titular character, why is he so immediately willing to favor heroic action over mere survival? Character motives are just slightly underdeveloped. Because of all this, the story becomes rather familiar. Stop me if you’ve heard this one: Man-made machines get too smart and rise up against their creators, and are aided by the fact that the humans wanted to use them to win wars in the first place. 9 is more of a straight action film than an innovative and original animation film.
But it does deserve your attention. Go ahead and buy a ticket to this one because the art-direction is just too amazing to pass up. The voice acting is top notch, and each character possesses their own distinct personality, which makes the arrival of nightmare machines that threaten them much more compelling. One other strength of the movie? It doesn’t set itself up for a sequel.
Besides, what would it be called? 10? Or maybe 92?
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