Escape to the Movies: 9

[Casual Shinji]

Fantastic Planet. So that's what that movie was called. Thanks.

9 looks like it should have stayed a short film. I wouldn't want to watch an artstyle like that for one and a half hours.

 

[Sovvolf]

Nice review Bob, I enjoy your reviews and enjoy seeing the new one on the video page and it's sad you don't have a large fan base when compared to Yahzee's Zero Punctuation show, despite some disagreements with your opinions(Didn't think transformers 2 was worst then Batman and Robin but bad none the less) on some films you review(Didn't think Transformers 2 was worst then Batman and Robin nor did I think it was Ultra bad just generic and a great loss of potential could have been a brilliant movie) I still enjoy watching them and enjoy listening to your professional opinion.

Anyways onto my opinion on this, I haven't actually seen the movie yet (Not out here in good old Britain just yet)I have seen the trailers and there pretty much the make or break of any movie as far as having me watch them goes. The trailers of this movie did give me the "hooo this is a watch" impression but not the whole "this is going to be a ground breaker" feel I got from District 9 or Watchmen, this looks like the type of movie I'le pay to see and will possibly buy the DVD but I won't hold it up as a holy grail of the genre. The trailers gave me the sense of been there done that but sure looks cools and I think I could do worse this year with the whole list of bad movies that have been out this year. Thank you for reading .

 

[SilverUchiha]

Hey. Huge anime/manga fan here and I actually agree with your point. Sure, Japanese animation has done SOME stuff before it was done here in America, but why should we give a rats ass about who did it first? I've seen some American based animes and non-anime cartoons. A lot of those are heads and shoulders above what Japan puts out in their thousands of different series. Sadly, they get completely underrated by the large fanbase of "Otakus" who will denote anything by America in terms of creativity and art because they're (GENERALLY) stuck too far up their own ass to notice the other good things aside from the few good things they like.

That being said, this movie looks like it could be pretty decent. I was iffy on it at first but I've actually heard good testimony from people on how they loved it.

 

[Abedeus]

NO MORE HEROES WAS AWSOME I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU SAY

I agree. "NMH" will probably be remembered as one of the defining games of this console generation.

It will be remembered as a Wii-defining game.

People without Wii couldn't care less about an action game where they force you to collect stuff for idiots, then a quick fight and start all over again. Like Assassin's Creed, but you must buy a Wii just to play it.

 

[MovieBob]

The characters are derivative and stereotypical, which oddly is something that Timmur Bekmambetov <a href=http://io9.com/5354084/timur-bekmambetov-9-is-about-your-coworkers>touted as a good thing about the movie.

The main problem is, shorts and features are entirely different animals. In a short, arch characters and a quickly-understood universe are positives. A feature needs more than that - even if it's just plot divergences - to hold interest and give things weight. It's a common beginner's error, especially in animation where it's so easy to lose the forest for the trees.

What would've helped, though, is if the character roster wasn't quite so cliche: OF COURSE the "hero" guy is the 'nondescript'-looking one, OF COURSE the tough guy is mute and vaugely "challenged," OF COURSE said tough guy is loyal to the old guy who is OF COURSE British and OF COURSE costumed to invoke negative associations with organized religion (usually Catholic or Orthodox Christianity), OF COURSE the seemingly-crazy one is actually holding the key to everything, OF COURSE the lone female is a "den-mother" Amazonian martial-arts master, OF COURSE the "tech guy" is unsure-waiting-to-prove-himself, OF COURSE there's a pair who speak a seperate language only to eachother, etc.

 

[Kojiro ftt]

Dammit, you just ruined my Friday. I was looking forward to this movie

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

I've been pushing this film since early this year [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/88631-Tim-Burtons-9-Sackboy-meets-Fallout], so I'm gonna have to go and see it anyway.

For once I hope MovieBob is wrong, especially as I've yet to see Gamer. (Can't not see Michael C Hall)

 

[randommaster]

Well, I'm kinda disappointed. It looked really quite cool, but if it's essentially the Crysis of the movie animation world, I may just wait till it comes out on video and give 'er a rent.

Sounds like this is more a Netflix candidate than a cinematic one. I'll probably give it a pass, and save my money to finally go see "Inglorious Basterds" instead.

Actually, if it's all about the animation, you should see it in theaters because it won't look nearly as good on a television.

The characters are derivative and stereotypical, which oddly is something that Timmur Bekmambetov <a href=http://io9.com/5354084/timur-bekmambetov-9-is-about-your-coworkers>touted as a good thing about the movie.

The main problem is, shorts and features are entirely different animals. In a short, arch characters and a quickly-understood universe are positives. A feature needs more than that - even if it's just plot divergences - to hold interest and give things weight. It's a common beginner's error, especially in animation where it's so easy to lose the forest for the trees.

What would've helped, though, is if the character roster wasn't quite so cliche: OF COURSE the "hero" guy is the 'nondescript'-looking one, OF COURSE the tough guy is mute and vaugely "challenged," OF COURSE said tough guy is loyal to the old guy who is OF COURSE British and OF COURSE costumed to invoke negative associations with organized religion (usually Catholic or Orthodox Christianity), OF COURSE the seemingly-crazy one is actually holding the key to everything, OF COURSE the lone female is a "den-mother" Amazonian martial-arts master, OF COURSE the "tech guy" is unsure-waiting-to-prove-himself, OF COURSE there's a pair who speak a separate language only to each other, etc.

You should have just saved some time and linked to TVTropes.

 

[historybuff]

I do hate those little elitist bastards. They make the rest of us look bad.


About the movie though--that's a shame because I was really looking forward to this one. It looked great. Maybe I'll catch it when it hits the dollar theater.

 

[Disembodied_Dave]

the slacker neighbor from Shin-Chan.

Yonro, I believe.

 

[Zagzag]

The most awesome thing about it was the release date: 9-9-09, which also happens to be my birthday.

 

[SPARTANIname]

The hell? It's not playing anywhere within 800 miles of me. Where'd you see it?

 

[Darzen]

remember this is 1 guys opinion so if you think the movie looks good see it.i saw it and if you pay COMPLETE attention you'll get the ending for the most part.so remember 1 guys opinion isn't 100 people's opinions go see it if you wnt if you don't don't.don't let this guy change your mind.

 

[Blanks]

It's like fallout knocked up little big planet and this movie is the spawn that was born

 

[Zedzero]

NO MORE HEROES WAS AWSOME I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU SAY

I agree. "NMH" will probably be remembered as one of the defining games of this console generation. That said, YOU try finding enough images that immediately and universally scream "obnoxious Japanophile" to a web-saavy audience that ISN'T part of someone's personal flickr account

It came down to Francis and Travis because I couldn't remember the name of the slacker neighbor from Shin-Chan. Though I'm just now realizing it would've been a nice place to drop a Chinpokomon bit. Ah, well...

-LOUD UNCONTOLLABLE COUGH- Excuse me! I pretty much forgot about that game. All it was was a dude carring a lightsaber and decapitating people whihc intern trigger very graphic bloodly messes, it was medicore at best.


OT: That's dissapointing to here that the stroy was unoriginal I think I'll wait for it to come on to VU.

 

[Pegghead]

Thank god someone else sees my point of view about lame, whitebred geeks who won't shut the fuck up about anime. I don't care about your Ichigos, or your Haruhis or ya Naruto.

 

[A random person]

Moviebob, as annoying as weeaboos may be, you probably shouldn't have gone on that rant. This is the Escapist, this thread will inevitably descend into anime bashing because of that.

Can't say much on the review, the movie never caught my interest to begin with.

 

[vultureX21]

I've appreciated very much the opinion of Moviebob in this series, especially the willingness to go against other critics (like the Star Trek review) that has generated real respect for his reviews in my mind. So, that brings me to this disagreement: Beowulf.

The animated version of Beowulf was atrocious in the same way that Troy was atrocious. It had nothing to do with the animation style, which was very cool and offered up a lot of possibilities for visual presentation of the story. These possibilities are never capitalized upon sadly and where the tale could have garnered some serious cred as an animated film (the dark, twisted settings in the poem) it falls unhappily flat.

But the worst problem is what I already alluded to.

Spoiler

Hollywood, please, recognize a great tale when you see it. The Iliad did NOT need a different ending that propelled Achilles inside the city, it was well crafted enough to survive Brad Pitt dying when he should. By the same token, Beowulf does not need to fuck Grendel's mother because she happens to have an Angelina Jolie costume with built in metallic gold heels. It totally destroyed the message of the poem, the crux of which is whether Beowulf is a hero or a monster, whether he is rightly prideful or sinfully so. You know what the film's message boiled down to? Greed. It wasn't even close to the same wavelength as the true story, it was appalling.

So while I do enjoy and appreciate the reviews on this point Moviebob I must disagree. Beowulf didn't suck because of it's visual style, it sucked because it murdered the core of one of the most brilliant works of literature ever.

And yes, I get that I sound like a pretentious scholar here, but I'm okay with it. Read Beowulf and some of the work written about it, it's worth the time.

 

[MrLumber]

I gotta say I really enjoyed 9, I even saw it two days in succession. Please don't misunderstand bob when he says the story is thin, it is not a bad story it's just there isn't a whole lot of it. This only detracts from the film if you don't take it for its merits, and wholly it's pretty great. Additionally all you people who are saying I'm going to wait for a rent, don't. Films like this need support, and you definitely won't enjoy it nearly as much as you would in the theater because it's a very cinematic piece.

 

[YYZed]

the line that really gave the final blow to this movie at the end was SPOILER: "He gave us his sooouuul!!!!

but that was a really good way of putting the movie its tricks you into thinking its going to be original and have a creative plotline but its just like everything else.