Firstly, making there be gas that kills “everything” took the apocalypse too far in my opinion. The idea that there is NOTHING left and somehow new microscopic things in rain are going to repopulated the earth… is that supposed to give the audience some form of hope? “Gee, everything is dead and in a few million years there might be some form of complex life on the planet again…”
Second… the main problem with the end of the film is that is doesn’t jive with the rest of the movie. In my opinion a better end would have been that 9 learns that the little puppet people HAVE to sacrifice themselves to the machine in order to give IT a soul so that the machine - the one that has all the brains and can build anything - can set about nurturing the remaining life on the planet and bring it back from the brink. At that point you introduce conflict between 9 and the others as he tries to force them to get sucked in, you make the audience side with them against 9, thinking he’s going crazy, but in the end when 7 (the last of them) gives up and joins the other and then 9 sends himself in, the machine turns from red to green, the 9 soul pieces join together inside the machine and it starts to rebuild, because he was right. Then you end with some sort of “Garden of Eden” type scene, with machine building and protecting a habitat for life and showing a few remaining people coming out of hiding…
Or maybe like Armando I’m just missing something about 9 that makes the end of that movie better than I think it is…
This is exactly what I was expecting after the big reveal in 9’s burning bush / Hologram Of The Creator scene. That would have been a pretty cool ending: you discover that 9’s activating the machine, which we all thought was terrible, was actually good; that it was good every time the machine sucked out someone’s soul; that instead of running from and trying to destroy the machine, the dolls should be actively trying to get the machine to “kill” them. It’s got a whole salvation vibe to it that goes well with the movie’s religious overtones and mystical-science plot up to that point.
The scientist seemed to be saying that he created the machine but then realized it was a “brain” with no “soul,” and therefore could be easily turned to evil when put into the wrong hands. He knew he couldn’t stop the military from taking the machine, so he came up with this clever trick to sabotage it (at least as far as the general’s purposes go): he found a way to divide up his soul into parts, parts which he programmed the machine to seek out. Once all the parts of his soul were in the machine, they would reassemble and now the machine would have a soul and a conscience, and like you said its mighty powers would be turned from destruction to creation and the world could begin anew – whether for new animal life, or perhaps for a new breed of intelligent and conscious machine life, whatever.
I was 100% sure that’s the ending they were going for, and that actually would have been sort of cool. But the ending we got, I agree, was just nonsensical. I had all the questions that Armando had. It was a big “WTF?!”
jason and Rywill nailed it, that was the ending that the film was leading us to accept. The film copped out at the last minute and settled for some sort of “power of love” variation. Ultimately unsatisfying, but provided a context for some nice set pieces.
Amazing craft in the service of weak storytelling. It’s as if the writer (same as the director IIRC) never actually took the time to select a theme for the work.
I’m starting to see a correlation between the number and quality of Hollywood stars doing the voice acting and the failure of the animated vehicle.
It’s really instructive to watch Shane Acker’s original short, linked above by forge. It’s miles and away better than the movie. You can see a lot of ideas that carried over into the feature-length film (co-written by the woman who wrote Monster House, by the way), but that got swallowed up by adding voiceovers, cool boss fights, and half-hearted attempts at exposition.
I find myself agreeing with Rywill’s post above about the ending of the movie and yet it didn’t detract much from the experience for me. The suggested ending would have felt more complete (and logical), though. Now I’ll have to watch the short to compare the two.
Sometimes a flawed movie is still worth it. That’s sort of how I feel about 9. At least it wasn’t in freakin’ 3D.
Man the voice choices in this film really bothered me. I was really grooving with the picture until 9 got a voice. Once I realized he was going to get to speak I hoped that maybe they’d do something weird with it. Make it sound like a creepy doll (since his vocal mechanism came from a creepy-looking doll) or make it awkward. At the very least give him some kind of learning curve as he got used to it. But no. It worked immediately and flawlessly and sounded just like any generic animated Disney hero. So disappointing.
I could have done with no speaking at all in this film. Or maybe just one of them (since they are all bits of the scientist).
I also could have done without “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” on the phonograph. Really guys? That’s what you’re going to give us? Why not just title the movie “Trite” and get it over with.
Then the icing: “They’re free now.” That made me want to barf. So much beauty, so much potential. Too bad they couldn’t stop themselves from blandifying it.
-xtien
“We had such potential. Such promise. But we squandered our gifts.”
I watched this yesterday. As I watched, I, too, thought that the ending would be 9 trying to get everyone to off themselves. Oh well. I don’t see why they got the stars they did to provide voices. #1 and #2, the old dudes, were fine, but nobody else stood out.
The kids in the theater liked the film plenty, and some appear to have been on their second viewing, calling out character numbers in advance. But I figure the world is too gloomy for most kids. So the film’s kind of stuck in between; I thought the environment was a great setting, but the backstory was also too light to make things feel fleshed out.
One could also wonder how the inventor figured that the little dolls would be able to stop the machine, since in the beginning exposition they barely survive the carnage.
And it seems that besides 9, nobody got their briefing. Apparently all of them were needed to complete their task, but nobody knew what it was or why the hell they were made in the first place.
Aaaand, if 6 tried to stop 7 and 9 from destroying the machine because the others were trapped inside, why did the resolution require destruction of the machine anyway?
