'9': Animation for All Ages

Apocalyptic sci-fi fable is not just for kids

By Don Kaye
Special to MSN Movies

"9" is not a movie about an alien shantytown in Johannesburg, nor is it a musical about a film director having a midlife crisis. It just happens to be coming out a few weeks after the former ("District 9") and about three months before the latter ("Nine"). But other than the shared number in the title, "9" is utterly unlike either of those other films. And, in fact, it's utterly unlike most movies you'll see this year, an animated excursion into dark, fable-like science fiction. "9" is the brainchild of director Shane Acker, whose 2004 short film of the same name, which served as his graduate thesis at UCLA and was subsequently nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film, provided the springboard to bring his haunting yet beautiful vision to the big screen.

In the feature version of "9," the titular character, a tiny, seemingly living creation with burlap for flesh, lenses for eyes, and mechanical insides, wakes up in a ruined world where machines have turned on humanity and eradicated it, leaving behind only abandoned, devastated cityscapes. Finding eight others like him, 9 soon learns that he and his fellow creatures may hold the key to the future of civilization, but only if they can find the strength to work together and vanquish the malevolent automatons that still roam the blasted wasteland.

"I was blown away," recalls Elijah Wood, who voices 9, while speaking to several reporters in Los Angeles about the first time he saw Acker's short. "It's not often that, when you're approached about a movie, that you get to see a fully realized example of what that film is going to be, which was in this case Shane's short film. I thought the animation style was extremely unique, and the world and characters that Shane created -- I had never seen anything quite like them before. The visuals are almost like paintings. Shane also took a lot of cues from stop-motion animation, and I love that quality about it as well."

"I think it's innovative, it's original, and I've never seen anything like this before," agrees Jennifer Connelly, who voices the stalwart and powerful warrior 7. "[Shane has] created his own world ... just in visual terms alone, it's so extraordinary to look at. And I think the subject and themes he's grappling with in the film are interesting."

In the production notes, Acker says he conceived of the character of 9 as "an innocent who would risk his life for his brethren and use intellect rather than might to slay a beast." From that basic concept he conceived of his tiny hero, which he describes as "stitchpunk," and began to formulate the fallen world around him. "It's as if the Industrial Revolution had been allowed to progress for hundreds of years beyond what it did," Ackers tells reporters at a roundtable interview. "There's something romantic about that Victorian era and that celebration of the machine, and how back then industrialization was taking over and we were becoming more of a mechanized society. There was still a lot of ornamentation and detail and craftsmanship that went into the machines, and there was still this artistic endeavor and human touch in them that I wanted to explore.

"At the same time it's sort of Eastern European," continues the director. "It's somewhere between World War I and World War II, but in an alternate reality, because I really feel like that was some of the darkest of our days. So it's sort of a cautionary tale from that place -- what if we created these machines that had the potential to destroy the world? The fact that it's not our world, it's not modern, makes it like a fable in some ways."

Wood concurs that he sees "9" as a cautionary tale about society's present-day obsession with technology, but sees another theme in the material as well: "I also see this as being as much about the human lust for power, and greed, as it is a cautionary tale against technology itself. The scientist in the movie builds his machine for peace, but it's ultimately used for war. It's then that the machine turns on man. So it's about that corruption of that machine by man; it's man's lack of humanity that creates the spark in this machine that allows it to turn on humanity."

The "machine" that Wood refers to, a giant, lumbering, spider-like monstrosity that is seeking a rare and powerful essence from 9 and his companions, is just one of the many strange creations that inhabit Acker's retro-futuristic universe. Perhaps the most unusual of all are his protagonists, who walk the line between being downright alien and unexpectedly humane. "I wanted them to feel like they were made out of found objects or everyday things just assembled in some way," explains Acker. "I wanted to have that sort of tactile feel and assembled feel, and also make them kind of gritty and grimy and dirty so they feel like they're of that ruined landscape and of that world. But at the same time, their eyes are round, they have softer features, they're made of cloth instead of metal, so they are more appealing and empathetic as characters, in stark contrast to the metallic, rusted, sharp-edged creatures pursuing them."

There was no dialogue in Acker's original short, an effective experiment that was appropriate for the film's tone but would clearly not work for a feature. In addition to Wood and Connelly, other actors in the film include Christopher Plummer, John C. Reilly, Crispin Glover and Martin Landau, each of whose voices is recognizable as their own. "What's different about this film is that it's more dramatically based, and it's not as 'pushed' or as 'cartoony' as other animated films," says the director. "The whole challenge is to get the audience to see the humanity in these little burlap characters made out of mechanical bits and pieces, to take that leap of faith. So we wanted the actors to speak in their natural voices. We wanted to choose actors that seemed like they had the characteristics of these creatures in the film, so that at some point the audience would start to believe that these things are real and that there's a human spirit trapped inside them."

For the stars, the challenge was acting with their voices alone, and not being able to use their eyes, expressions or bodies to physically embody the characters. "Considering that the majority of the film is recorded vocally first, it's really just about imbuing every scene and every physical act with a sense of realism," says Wood. "That's certainly a challenge, particularly because we're not moving around and the characters are in situations that aren't real ... If you're in an action scene being swatted around by giant beasts, you have to create your voice in such a way to evoke those things." Connelly adds, "I really approached it the same way as I would approach a live action film. I'm still pretty much doing as much as I can get away with, without making noises that they don't want to pick up on the microphone. I try to keep the rattling and clunking and foot-stomping to a minimum. But, you know, I'm also trying to get myself into what's going on in the scene. I find it very hard to just sort of stand stock-still, especially with these action sequences."

The action sequences in "9" rival those of a lot of live-action blockbusters out there in terms of energy and scale, and coupled with the film's apocalyptic setting and darker tone, it's clear that the film is not necessarily for younger children. "I think it's too dark for young kids, but I don't really know what the cutoff is," admits Connelly. "For example, my younger son is 6 and I think it's too frightening for him. But my older son is 12 and he's seen it and loves it. It definitely has some mature content, in terms of the subject matter, and it feels more to me like kind of an action film that happens to be in an animated format."

If anything, "9," like some of Pixar's recent offerings and independent titles like "Persepolis" and "Waltz With Bashir," could further help break the perception that animated films are geared strictly toward family audiences. "I think the animation medium can be used to tell any kind of story you want," says Acker, who compares his tale to something by the Brothers Grimm rather than something from Disney. "I don't think it should be limited to just one genre or one audience. It started as an adult medium in a lot of ways, with the Winsor McCays and the Betty Boops and the little shorts they'd have in front of feature films, and then at some point it became more of a children's medium. I'm not sure if that was because of the Saturday morning cartoons or whatever. But at the same time, if you look at the short film arena, animation's always been an adult medium. It's always been a way for artists to express themselves in that way. In Europe and Asia it's always been an adult medium as well, so it's a stigma that's here in the States more than other places perhaps. And for me, I didn't set out to change the animation industry with this -- this was simply the only medium in which I could tell this story."

Don Kaye covers film, TV and other entertainment for MSN.