Director, Shane Acker, and Screenplay writer Palmer Pettler collaborate with producers Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov to create ‘9,’ this fall’s apocalyptic tale that leaves humanity on the losing team.
In ‘9’ humanity is wiped out after a large, and intelligent robot called ‘The Great Machine,’ that was originally created to help society, falls into the hands of a dictator who uses the machine as a wartime weapon. Eventually the machine, which was designed to create machines in its own image, begins to destroy everything in its path.
It’s the age-old story, what would happen to society if everything we worked so hard to create turned against us. Only this time it isn’t humans who come to the rescue but instead nine miniature life forms, a scientist’s latest experiment, that each holds pieces of his soul. It is the same scientist who created ‘The Great Machine,’ and he uses the nine experiments as his last attempt to right the wrong that he had created.
The 79-minute film follows ‘9’ as he meets the life-forms, the only remaining living creatures, that came before him and his adventurous mission to restore humanity and finally destroy ‘The Great Machine.’
The nine travel back and forth a small-destroyed grounds area that through their eyes appears to spam a much larger battlefield.
Animator, Shane Acker creates this beautifully dark landscape battlefield with the use of dark color schemes such as browns, blacks and dark toxic green. To compliment these dark atmosphere are even darker beings such as the metallic monsters that are pieced together with the remains of what was once humanity. One frightening looking creature created in the film is one with a serpent-style body with a ‘stomach’ that opens to store the nine as it attempts to kill them and topped off with the head from a child’s doll.
The nine life-forms created by the scientist, whose names are simply the numbers painted on their backs, follow human mannerisms so well you tend to forget that their not people which shows how much careful details the animators put into this film.
The movie works as a puzzle, not revealing until almost the end exactly what was the downfall of the human race, a puzzle in which ‘9’ is hoping an eager to solve even though some of his fellows life-forms don’t want him to.
The movie may not go in the direction that most might expect but it does disappoint. It ends on a bittersweet mark that leaves the audience optimistically wondering what will happen next.
For those who enjoy dark animation with a message that is sure to go past the head of younger audiences, be sure to catch ‘9.’
Running Time: 1 hour, 19 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Starring: Elijah Wood, Jennifer Connelly, John C. Reilly, Crispin Glover, Martin Landau, and Christopher Plummer.’
