text: My thoughts on the movie, 9<br /><br />It was not good, not good at all. Visually, it was great. I was pleased with the pacing, the camera angles, etc. However, the characters? eh, kinda bland. Plot? It sucked.<br /><br />This movie seemed more new age crap than anything else. Organized religion is presented as cowardly and fearful. Science isn't portrayed any better. It creates a monster weapon that kills everything... but "souls" have the power to destroy monsters and bring life? Really?<br /><br />That's something that bites my ass a bit too. Here we have a CGI movie... created with science... and they're using it to give us the message that science will destroy the world while promoting the idea that spirituality will save us? At least they had the decency to have one of the characters ask,<br /><br />"Okay, so now what?" (or something similar). I couldn't hear it too well because of the crowd immediately getting up and making a break for the exit. It was a "okay... it was just barely entertaining enough to sit here for the entire movie but now let's get out of here as fast as possible!" type of exit.<br /><br />This is one of those movies where you can't think if you want to enjoy it. Just look at the visuals and nod your head prettily. Any thought as to, "what's the point of that?" will suck you out of disbelief and make you eye the exit sign with longing.<br /><br />Okay... SPOILERS follow.<br /><br />So, basically, a scientist creates "the Machine" that is capable of creating other, intelligent, robotic life. Evil humans use it as a weapon. However, the scientist realizes that he is also at fault. He gave the Machine his intellect, but didn't give it his heart. <br /><br />The Machine goes Skynet on humanity's collective ass and wipes out all life on earth, finally slowly powering down. However, the scientist manages to survive and create walking sock-puppets. Each one, containing a piece of the scientist's soul.<br /><br />The last one, #9 wakes up not knowing anything about the world. He sees a strange device nearby and picks it up. He meets up with another like himself, #2. <br /><br />Well, #2 gets captured by a last surviving robot of the Machine. #9 finds more like himself ands sets off to rescue #2. <br /><br />They succeed.<br /><br />#9 notices that there is a matching hole that fits the device perfectly. He inserts it and the Machine comes back to life... pulling out #2's soul in the process.<br /><br />The movie then continues with action scenes with #9 trying to rescue his soul-yanked compatriots. <br /><br />They eventually succeed and destroy the Machine. They release the souls of their fallen friends, who go up into the clouds. It then rains and we see life returning back to the planet.<br /><br />Hunh?!?<br /><br />That makes no sense. None at all. Why the heck did the scientist want to split his soul into 9 homunculi? What did it accomplish? Were they created to stop the machine? Everything is dead! The machine was dead! Why bother?!?<br /><br />Why did he expect nine little critters to succeed when nothing else had? Why not create a second intellectual machine, but with a "soul" to fight the first.. at least that would have seemed like it would have had a reasonable chance at success.<br /><br />Why did they have to have their souls sucked into the device by the Machine and then destroy the Machine and then release the souls in order to bring life back to earth? Why not just wait for the machine to power down and bring life back without all the rest of the insane steps?