1 Day till 9

[Anghenfil]

Don't miss it.  Sure, the story could be a little more there, but it's very different and excellent on its own merits.  The critics are being too hard on this one.

***WARNING HUGE SPOILERS AHEAD***





Visually, it's very impressive.  No surprises there.  The story is serviceable, but it really shines with its setting, tone, and concept.  Animation-wise, the acting on 1 was great and the twins 3 & 4 were extremely inspired:  One part film projector, one part magpie, one part ferret.  The end of the "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" sequence is fantastic - you'll know why when you see it.

Like most animated films I see, I have complaints though, and here they are pretty major.

1.  The dialogue.  Oh, the dialogue.  Most of it felt staged, bare as building scaffolding - essential, but revealing very little about characterization.  Nearly all the words spoken in the film are outlining plot devices or exposition.  In at least one bad, bad case, a character monologues to himself.

2.  Zero character development.   None of the characters go through an emotional arc during the story.  Many of them die, but not one is a different person at the end of the day than they were when it started (except perhaps 1).

3.  Lack of unified color theory.  Green symbolizes the machine-made poison that kills all living things on earth, yet the color of the soul of the stitchpunks is also green.  The key color of the machines is red and orange.  I would have used a napalm or Agent Orange-like color for the poison to unify it with the machine color lexicon.

4.  Lack of overall story cohesion, lack of resolution.  Why can the stitchpunks be given a soul, but not the machines?  Why did the brain machine want the stitchpunk souls in the first place beyond the first one (which the brain apparently needed to function)?  It appeared to gain no advantage beyond the first.  Why did the souls need to be set free in the end beyond a "yay, happy time" moment?  It was not entirely clear to me if the soul energy re-seeded life to the earth at the end; the green sparkles in the raindrops of the final shot look vaguely like protozoa, but it's hard to be sure.  If it's not life, why was the story so darn important?  Is there a way to bring humans back or make more stitchpunks?  If so, why weren't we given any clues as to how this might be done?  The ending isn't satisfactorily nihilistic if it was going for a tragedian close, nor sufficiently hopeful.  It just sort of ends with the machines destroyed and the last stitchpunks inheriting the earth, without any hints at a way forward.

The second major aspect:  Why did 9 put the device into the machine Brain without first consulting the others?  He saw the Beast try to put it in.  Why would he try to accomplish what his enemy set out to do?  Everyone in the audience was giving a low groan of nooooooo, don't do it!  It's a very bad thing if your character has to have a moment of temporary stupidity/insanity to move the plot forward.

5.  Plot is repetitious, yet short.  They face several enemies in the story, and they all look and function fantastically, but they spend an awful lot of time on action that they could have used for world-building or progressing the story.  This is especially weird for an 80-minute film with so many unanswered questions.

6.  The main character is pretty boring.  9 is a young resourceful every-man.  Yawn.  He was my least favorite character in the film.  1 was fantastic, 2 and 5 were charming, the twins were very inspired, 6 was suitably odd, 7 was fun to watch in the action sequences.  Even dull number 8 had his moments.  9 was a mouthpiece for platitudes and a tool for moving the plot, and not much else.  It's a bad thing when your main character is the least interesting.





***END OF SPOILERS***

Even with all that said, I immensely enjoyed the film.  It's one of the most visually creative films ever made, and it's the closest to a true adult american animation we've had in a long time.  I won't deny I had logical disagreements with the film, but the presentation is awesome.  It's extremely seductive.