I just got back from seeing Tim Burton’s 9.
9 is a doll that wakes up in a laboratory, to a lifeless planet and a city in ruins. Near him he finds a hemisphere. He guesses it is important, so he zips it up inside of his burlap body. He sees another burlap doll trudging along in the street far below, and rushes down to find it. The mute 9 is frightened by the death, destruction and decay of his new world. He catches up to the other doll, who is named 2. 2 finds a speaker to give 9 a voice. He also finds the strange hemisphere when he installs the speaker. ‘You found it!’ he exclaims. Only before he can explain anything the pair are set upon by an enormous and malicious mechanical cat. The cat takes 2 away, and picks up the hemisphere with its claws. The injured 9 wakes up in a cathedral, where he has been attended to by 5. They are immediately intruded upon by 1, the ruler of the doll people, and 8, who looks like the Michelin Man. 1 forbids them to go in search of 2. Will 9 and 5 disobey? Will they find 2? Will they discover the secret of the mysterious hemisphere? Why does 6 draw interpretations of the hemisphere? What does 1 know that he isn’t telling? And what is that thing lurking in the shadows?
9 seems less like a Tim Burton film than it does some of the stories in Heavy Metal. I don’t know if you remember the 'zine back in the early-'80s, but many of its stories featured bleak landscapes after horrendous wars. Another feature of many HM stories, particularly the ones by European authors and artists, were that they did not have a great deal of exposition. 9 does use exposition, but not so much that it explains everything. Like the old HM stories, the audience is expected to accept the situation as it is.
I was disappointed by the action scenes. The ‘villains’ developed too quickly, and the ‘battles’ didn’t do much for me. I liked 7, but my favourite characters were 3 and 4. Ten of us went to see 9, but I did not attend the post-film get-together. The husband of the organiser said he was disappointed in the film, and another guy said ‘I tend to be logical, so I think the film could have been better. Some people just communicate that way.’ I don’t think 9 is Tim Burton’s best effort, but I liked the film. Did I like it well enough to buy the DVD? Probably not, unless I want a complete Tim Burton collection. I liked the animation, I liked the characters, and I liked the story; but I thought the story could have been a little meatier, and the action scenes better done. I reckon I’d give 9 about a 7.
