‎9
4 out of 5 stars

1: "they've left us nothing. nothing... why do we have to right their wrongs?"


after reading some IMDB trivia, i learned that this movie was originally a short film made by a very young film student @ UCLA (shane acker), and then tim burton... and timur bekmambetov (2 very famous directors) attached themselves to the project for a full-scale production through focus films. it's a very creative and intriguing film about a group of rag doll looking robots fighting to survive against a destructive machine force in a post-apocalpytic/sans-human world. the doll robots have numbers stitched to their backs, and each of them have distinct personalities... 9 (voiced by elijah wood) is the brave/answer-seeking one, who wants to know why the machine is trying to kill them? 1 (voiced by christopher plummer) is the old-school/fearful leader of the group, 7 (voiced by jennifer connelly) is the warrior, and 5 (voiced by john c. reilly) is the creative/inventive thinker. so when 9 wakes up in a room with no knowledge of what's going on, he tries to seek answers by approaching the machine, looking through archived materials, and eventually learning how he and his companions are connected to "the source"...

it's very much like the matrix or resident evil, where there is something destructive trying to annihilate everything good in this world. it's all about control, and i just love how we learn why the machine was created. (hint: think adolf hitler & nazis) the animation and stoyrline is actually quite well done, and this one is definitely a hidden gem! tim burton's touch is quite apparent with the macabre factor and his own stylistic approaches i.e. the funeral scene channeling the penguin's own funeral in batman returns and the inventor's relationship w/ his robots channeling the inventor and edward in edward scissorhands. it's no wonder he wanted to attach himself to this project... ;)