9 (2009)
Directed by Shane Acker
When 9 first comes to life, he finds himself in a post-apocalyptic world. 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.
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Though based on a short film made by Mr. Acker, one gets the sense that a number of the crazily imagined creatures flitting through “9’s” landscape have arrived on-screen directly from Mr. Burton’s twisted mindscape: One snakelike creature that uses deceased stitchpunks as bait to draw his fellows closer is strikingly reminiscent of the sand worms from “Beetlejuice.”
In some ways, the dysfunctional relationship evokes that of the family in “Beetlejuice”, even with a haunted house thrown into the mix.
A twisted sensibility prevails, which is clearly what drew Burton to the project; there's a bit of "Beetlejuice" here.
"9" liberally borrows from superior motion pictures of the pastevery post-apocalyptic drama, take your pick, as well as 1990's "Edward Scissorhands" in its portrayal of a scientist passing away just as he completes his inventionand comes up with few, if any, ideas one could call original.
Just before his death, an eccentric, humane inventor, reminiscent of the character played by Vincent Price in Burton's Edward Scissorhands , has used various discarded materials (wire, buttons, bits of hessian) to make a series of doll-like creatures to fight back against the soulless robots that tyrannise a post-holocaust world.
As it progresses, it fills in the backstory about what happened to humanity, which lets the filmmakers echo everything from War of the Worlds to The Matrix by way of The Twilight Zone, The Terminator and Edward Scissorhands.
Backed by producers Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov, 9 carries trademarks from both filmmakers - the relationship between the dolls and their ageing creator is pure Burton (see Vincent Price in Edward Scissorhands ), while the pulse-quickening set pieces recall Bekmambetov's action oeuvre.
The mystically inclined artist numbered 6 (Crispin Glover), meanwhile, wields pen-nib fingers with a skill he might have learned from Edward Scissorhands .
Its gleaming red eye is a reference to HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey and Arnie from The Terminator, while its tentacles recall the squids from The Matrix.
And there are many echoes of other entertaining movies in this respect, from silent Metropolis through the lived-in equipment and crab-like machine troops of the Star Wars trilogy and RoboCops ED 209, the rubbled future of The Terminator and many a post-apocalyptic picture, the feel and mythic quest of The Dark Crystal, the embattled insects of Antz, even the symbology of Dan Browns Robert Langdon franchise.
The most interesting aspect of “9” isn’t the story (the apocalyptic threat of self-replicating robots who have risen against their human creators is nothing we haven’t seen fleshed out more satisfactorily in “The Matrix” or “The Terminator”) or the animation (which is good, if not quite up to Pixar’s standards).
So, yeah, it’s The Terminator and The Matrix and every other postapocalyptic sci-fi movie ever made, with a little Pinocchio thrown in, and Acker’s originality pretty much ends at his visuals.
Its gleaming red eye is a reference to HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey and Arnie from The Terminator, while its tentacles recall the squids from The Matrix.
The story is most certainly an adventure, as the Numbers do battle with the faux bobcat, a winged terror, a giant, multi-legged glowing red eye known simply as the Machine (which has echoes of the machines from The Matrix).
As it progresses, it fills in the backstory about what happened to humanity, which lets the filmmakers echo everything from War of the Worlds to The Matrix by way of The Twilight Zone, The Terminator and Edward Scissorhands.
The most interesting aspect of “9” isn’t the story (the apocalyptic threat of self-replicating robots who have risen against their human creators is nothing we haven’t seen fleshed out more satisfactorily in “The Matrix” or “The Terminator”) or the animation (which is good, if not quite up to Pixar’s standards).
So, yeah, it’s The Terminator and The Matrix and every other postapocalyptic sci-fi movie ever made, with a little Pinocchio thrown in, and Acker’s originality pretty much ends at his visuals.
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Aspects of the plot recall "The Lord of the Rings" (particularly, of course, with Frodo on board), the visuals feel quite Burtonesque (with much Henry Selick thrown in) and the creation of the dolls echoes the work of the puttering puppeteer from "Toy Story 2."
(Interestingly, Elijah Wood, who undertook one of the most classic big-screen quests of recent years in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, voices the lead doll.)
Even granting that if you’ve seen one post-apocalyptic landscape you’ve seen them all, the one here—and the flashbacks to the destruction of the world—owes more than a little to Hugh Harman’s 1939 cartoon Peace on Earth.
The newbie director's aesthetic influences are top of the line: The Quay brothers' nightmarish visions of distressed puppets adrift in decayed landscapes; Wolfgang and Christoph Lauenstein's Oscar-winning 1989 short Balance; Sylvain Chomet's The Triplets of Belleville; Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro's Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children; Czech surrealist Jan Svankmajer's psychologically perverse fairy tales -- we're talking the greatest hits of gloomy, doomy European animation and hyper-stylized live action.
If this doesn’t look familiar, you haven’t seen Tobe Hooper’s Lifeforce (1985).
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Its gleaming red eye is a reference to HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey and Arnie from The Terminator, while its tentacles recall the squids from The Matrix.
The newbie director's aesthetic influences are top of the line: The Quay brothers' nightmarish visions of distressed puppets adrift in decayed landscapes; Wolfgang and Christoph Lauenstein's Oscar-winning 1989 short Balance; Sylvain Chomet's The Triplets of Belleville; Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro's Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children; Czech surrealist Jan Svankmajer's psychologically perverse fairy tales -- we're talking the greatest hits of gloomy, doomy European animation and hyper-stylized live action.