9

[bloodyrosemccoy]

9 was underwhelming. The art direction was fantastic, and the set design and animation were great, but it was mostly a pretty movie without much else going for it. The characters were stock, the pacing was off, and the plot turned into a shaggy dog story.

There was a lot of buildup, but no payoff. Kudos to them for a cool premise and an attempt to do something unexpected with an old story, but I’m afraid it didn’t give me so much a sense of a hopeful beginning as it did a sense that the writers got through the climax and then got bored trying to think of a conclusion and went bowling instead. “We’ll just say it’s deep!” they assured each other over their delicious bowling feast of pizza and fries. “Nobody can argue with that!”

At least the ham-fisted ending to WALL*E looked like the writers had given it half a second's thought.

Which is a damn shame, because, with a little more thought, the elements the writers put in and then didn’t use could have made for a pretty cool story.

(Also, I decided fairly early on that one of the antagonists was GLaDOS, which suggested an interesting alternate ending …)

Comments

[pandoras-closet.livejournal.com]

Yeah, we saw the similarities to GlaDos too.

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

Everything I've heard about this movie so far seems to be agreeing on the points of "gorgeous visuals" and "characters/plots are from the Giant Book of Fantasy Epic Cliches." Which has me torn about whether or not to see it in theater, as the first suggests yes, and the second suggests netflix.

Maybe once it hits the dollar theaters...

[mfb.livejournal.com]

Obligatory Female Character.

[kadharonon.livejournal.com]

While I agree that it was mostly underwhelming, there is one thing that definitely made it worth going to see in the theater.

And that is the sound of GLEE from two rows of assorted Information Science students when 3 and 4 appeared and were said to be "cataloging".

[kittikattie.livejournal.com]

So a Netflixing?

[stormteller.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was disappointed by it too, but in retrospect I had no reason to expect more. It was clear from the previews that there wasn't much to this movie. The whole thing was basically an excuse to tie-in the 9/9/9 anomaly. (I went to see it on the day, which was cool, though I was bummed it wasn't in theater #9 as well. Way to drop the ball, Cinemark)

Throughout the thing, I kept trying to reason out possible ending plot twists that would make it a better movie. "Okay, clearly the Machine will absorb all the dolls except 9, who will finally give himself up in a Heroic Sacrifice, causing the Machine to develop a complete soul, have a My God What Have I Done moment, and commit suicide, leaving the earth barren and clean." But that didn't happen. Instead they went with an ending that was symbolic but made no logical sense (hey guys? How about putting your buddies' souls back in their bodies? Is that too much trouble?).

Ultimately, it was just a kid's action movie with pretty visuals. On the plus side, it's the first kid's movie I've seen with corpses lying wantonly about the place, so that was kind of edgy. Also, there was the overt drug abuse reference.

[biomekanic.livejournal.com]

I liked the visuals, but the story was meh.

One of the commentors over on the IMDB said that the Russian language version was rather different than the English language one. Then again, the commentor was Russian and had not seen the English language version and was basing this on what they'd read. So, who knows.

I'd give it a B.

[sriti.livejournal.com]

What alternate ending would you suggest for WALL*E?

[jill-calico.livejournal.com]

Underwhelming is really the only way to describe it. It wasn't bad, it just...wasn't good.

[agenttrojie.livejournal.com]

Haven't seen it yet, but am I the only one who was mildly hurt but the SCIENCE IS OMG TEH EVIL trailer?

Anyone know any neat animated movies where Science Saves the Day? Cos I'd like to see those.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

Can't say I'm surprised. The preview bits I saw at WonderCon gave exactly that impression. Pretty visuals, but vapid.