Mechanical Mordor
So, just saw the movie 9.
It's definitely a mixed bag, pardon the pun:
The Good: The setting is insanely cool -- and genre bending. Most hard core geeks will recognize quite a bit of dieselpunk/steampunk in it, generously mixed with technomancy. More then one fellow geek has classified this as "stitchpunk" and I fully agree. The story was tight, well paced and Elijah Wood did a great job as the Ragdoll protagonist 9. The progression of the story actually reminded me a whole lot of a good action-adventure game -- 9's early actions are what you'd expect a naive gamer fresh into a new game world to do when confronted with the things he's confronted with! And the visuals were to die for.
The Bad: The supporting characters were, with a couple of exceptions, unmemorable and far too archetypical. You had the Conservative Leader (1) and his thug (8). You had the happy-go-lucky Machine bait/gadgeteer (2), the Lone Warrior (7) the Wounded Survivor (5) and even 9 suffered a bit from archetype -- "We can't just sit here, we have to take the fight to them!".
The Ugly: The story was quite predictable and derivitive -- the setting may be where nobody has gone before but we've seen this story quite a few times already. Also, the rather anticlimactic ending. I disagree that it was too abrupt or that it didn't fit the rest of the plot; anyone that's seen the original short film has at least some clue as to how it will end. But Shane's Strange Stitchpunk Universe has far, far more potential then the closing coda may suggest.
Was it worth seeing? Most definitely, especially to us geeks! Shane Acker's got some insane world creation chops, and once he gets his storytelling skills down a little more, he will be a force to be reckoned with. Tim Burton did a great thing giving him his Big Break.
It's definitely a mixed bag, pardon the pun:
The Good: The setting is insanely cool -- and genre bending. Most hard core geeks will recognize quite a bit of dieselpunk/steampunk in it, generously mixed with technomancy. More then one fellow geek has classified this as "stitchpunk" and I fully agree. The story was tight, well paced and Elijah Wood did a great job as the Ragdoll protagonist 9. The progression of the story actually reminded me a whole lot of a good action-adventure game -- 9's early actions are what you'd expect a naive gamer fresh into a new game world to do when confronted with the things he's confronted with! And the visuals were to die for.
The Bad: The supporting characters were, with a couple of exceptions, unmemorable and far too archetypical. You had the Conservative Leader (1) and his thug (8). You had the happy-go-lucky Machine bait/gadgeteer (2), the Lone Warrior (7) the Wounded Survivor (5) and even 9 suffered a bit from archetype -- "We can't just sit here, we have to take the fight to them!".
The Ugly: The story was quite predictable and derivitive -- the setting may be where nobody has gone before but we've seen this story quite a few times already. Also, the rather anticlimactic ending. I disagree that it was too abrupt or that it didn't fit the rest of the plot; anyone that's seen the original short film has at least some clue as to how it will end. But Shane's Strange Stitchpunk Universe has far, far more potential then the closing coda may suggest.
Was it worth seeing? Most definitely, especially to us geeks! Shane Acker's got some insane world creation chops, and once he gets his storytelling skills down a little more, he will be a force to be reckoned with. Tim Burton did a great thing giving him his Big Break.