A full-length adaptation of the eponymous short by Shane Acker, boasting the full talents of Tim Burton and set in the most modern CGI, 9 is the most high-tech example of plot by plonking cliché I can recall. 

The film feels exactly like what it is: a ten-minute short needlessly extended for a further sixty-nine.  The short film’s power lies in tantalizing the viewer with vistas and chronicles unavailable.  While any explanation of these would have cost that sense of mystery, one could at least hope for better than this roll of shopworn clichés.  From the well-intentioned scientist who brings doom, to the “rise of the machines”, to the militarist dictator who identified only as the “Chancellor”, be prepared for absolutely nothing you haven’t seen a dozen times before.

This might work if contrasted against originality and vitality in the plot and characters.  Alas, it is not so.  Each of the Nine is an off-the-shelf stock-character, and there is no development to speak of.  Being one of the nine sentient beings left on a dead world ought to inspire a certain poignancy; with the exception of a half-dozen lines, tossed off at random, the characters seem utterly oblivious to their state.  And, please, avert your eyes to what passes for interaction in this film.  Even events that should carry far-reaching implications – the accidental awakening of a monster, the deliberate and accidental murder of other survivors – are discussed for twenty seconds, and then never seem to trouble the protagonists again.  If these are the last representatives of humanity, the viewer can be forgiven for asking himself “Just what was the point?”.

It cannot be denied that the film has excellent production.  The human-free world of ruins, the sinister machine-god and its servitors, the jerry-rigged devices used by the nine rag-dolls, and the distorted perspectives all convey a wonderful steampunk aesthetic that fans of the genre will enjoy.  Yet these cannot save this film, any more than the star-heavy cast (Elijah Wood as the voice of the protagonist) can save the amateurish script.

Save your money, and watch District 9 instead, a film similarly based on a short, but whose director understands the demands of storytelling.