The animation in 9 is fantastic, I will not argue that, but I will agree with you and say that story was lacking. I was sitting in theatres going, " the trailer made this sound so kick ass" I was expecting something a little bit mroe radical, a little more dark, and seemed to hold promise but it failed to deliver. There some parts that were really awesome, like the scenes with the mechanized skele-cat. Awesome, that was. And that metal-crow-of-death was also wicked awesome. And that Cobra-Doll-Lanternfish thing was damn creepy as well.
The most beautifully shot scene in the entire film was when 6 (?) sees the Giant-Soulsucking_computer coming up the hill and he's running to warn the others and its a dramatic scene and harrowing (is he gonna make it?) and yet you have a vinyl record of "Over the Rainbow" playing the background. That, was gorgeous filmmaking.
Personally, I didn't find the characters cliche as more, liiiiiiiike, undeveloped? Especially the main character 9. You dont get motivation, and there's at times like when I wanna go "why does anybody like you?! Where you go people die!" I found the twins adorable, especially their little shutter eyes and their curiosity but their also extremely shy, not to mention mute. Really interesting characters and you get such a sense of vulnerability from them.
And I never really picked up why creating nine dolls was important. I think he did it to retain a piece of humanity, as well as to act as guardians for the new life, probably to guard that key thing that nine stupidily stuck into a machine he didn't know about. Stupid kid. Why the computer had the capabiliy to suck the Dolls souls out I have no idea. Maybe it knew it was incomplete and made the modifications itself to gain a soul and become whole? Either that, or the final eraditcation of the human remnants.
And Im gonna take a guess and say that there's going to be very few human survivors, if any. The gas that is alluded to looks like it killed everything; plants, humans, and the like. It probably even contaminated the ground water. Im gonna say the eradication of the human species was complete. Think back, do you remember seeing any green in that film whatsoever? I don't. If a mere hardy weed can't survive I doubt us coddled human beings could much better. Im also gonna take a guess and say the war was world wide. I cant see robots picking a fight with just one nation; for some reason I can't imagine robots being racially partial about what humans they kill.
But there was a hint of hope for life. At the end you see the souls of some of the other Dolls go up into the sky, and then it rains, adn it cuts to a shot where you see a microscopic view of the raindrops where you can see microscopic organisms; they're glowing green, which indicated to me that the departed souls of the Dolls transferred itself into "life"
