Back Seat Producers

In a post-apocalyptic setting, the future for any sort of life rests in the hands of 9 little burlap bag-covered robotic creatures…

That’s all I’m going to say about a synopsis to the new animated movie 9 from director Shane Acker and producers Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov (I expect most reading this know who Tim Burton is, but for those who don’t know Timur Bekmambetov, he directed the movies Nightwatch and Daywatch and most recently directed Wanted) a very imaginative dark fable that was originally a short film and is now adapted to a feature, though a very short feature weighing in at about 80 minutes. For a video gamer, you might almost think of this as a Fallout 3 fairy tale.

It’s a really stunning looking film, with a terrific art style and given “life” with state of the art computer animation, that’s the really obvious side of things. It’s story though, asks you to bring something to the table on this, and I never think that’s a bad thing for a movie to do at all. I’ve been reading some of the comments for this on IMDB, and reading lots of complaints of plot holes, lack of character development and just not having everything explained to you, and I don’t know, but I just didn’t see that at all and didn’t feel the need to even question these things at it’s end. I thought there was enough there that you could fill in your own blanks as to what happened, the characters of the little robots are indeed somewhat two-dimensional, but there’s a good reason for this (and yet I thought they were still way more human than what you’d see in a Transformers or G.I. Joe), and I actually gave a damn about the little guys…

Sometimes I have to wonder that if 2001: A Space Odyssey came out today would it even stand a chance with that kind of mentality…

But still, I thought this was very good with very nice visuals, a lot of great ideas, and a very good vocal cast including Elijah Wood, John C. Reilly, Christopher Plummer, Martin Landau and Jennifer Connelly, all giving life to the little hopes for the future. It’s certainly nothing like what you’re used to seeing from most of today’s computer animated films and I give Shane Acker credit for not telling you absolutely every little detail to how this world came to be… it adds to the fable/fairy tale quality of the film and if you don’t mind filling in the blanks on your own a bit (and it doesn’t really take that much to do it).

I really enjoyed the hell out of it, and would just love to see more animated movies taking chances in these type of directions. For those that are parents looking to take their children to this, well 9 may not be the movie for them as it is very dark and disturbing in it’s own way, though at the theatre that I saw this at, there were some children there, and as I the credits rolled, from what I could hear in the background, they really enjoyed themselves… I know I did too…

In the near future, the biggest things around the world are two video games with a big twist: One is called Society (think of The Sims or Sony’s Life) and the other is Slayers (which is of course any combat game you can think of), the catch is that these games use real people as the avatars for the players playing the game- Slayers using sentenced prisoners and Society using those just in need of a paycheck. Slayers has a further catch though, with the avatar who can survive 30 games getting the chance to go free. Both are the creation of uber-genius Ken Castle, and now right as the star avatar of Slayers, Kable, is near his 30th victory, a terrorist group called Humanz is on the verge of exposing Ken Castle’s terrifying secret for the future…

That’s the premise of Gamer the new movie from the team Neveldine/Taylor (Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor) who previously gave us the [i]Crank[/i] movies. I didn’t much care for the first Crank movie (and thus didn’t see the second), but I think Gamer is a hell of a lot better, with lots of violent action, some very good science fiction ideas and a lot of biting satire. Last year, there was a movie, Death Race (which was a lot of fun) that was a re-make of the Roger Corman/Paul Bartel film Death Race 2000 and while it was fun, Gamer actually comes a lot closer to the satire that the original had going for it, while still keeping the thrills of the film.

Neveldine/Taylor’s visual and editing style makes Tony Scott look like a tired old man… I was put off by it in Crank but really think it works well for Gamer. And while there are holes one could see in some aspects of the storyline, I won’t necessarily think that they’re anything to different than what was seen recently in District 9, in other words, there’s enough there that you could write your own explanation if you want, though that’s not necessarily the purpose of the film. Even though at it’s core, it’s a high-adrenaline action film, there’s still some ideas at work here, and as a video-gamer my own self, lots of stuff to chew on. Neveldine/Taylor also wrote the script, and on the gaming end, I think they get a lot of it right, even if they are dealing in extremes.

The cast is pretty decent, headed up by Gerard Butler as Kable, they all handle this pretty earnestly, with the more satirical elements being handled by Kyra Sedgewick as a TV “reporter,” Michael C. Hall as Ken Castle, the creator of the games, and the young actors playing the various gamers controlling the avatars. Hall, who’s best known for the TV series Dexter really looks like he’s having a lot of fun here, playing Castle as, at least to me, like what you’d get if you crossed game developer Cliff Bleszinski with media mogul Ted Turner.

And technically, it really is a good-looking film, and it’s spastic editing style serves the purpose towards the satire of the film. It is extremely violent though, and if that thing turns you off, then you’re forewarned.

I had a real good time with it though, It’s action is very good, there’s some good ideas at work here (though not as entirely fleshed out as they could be) and what I thought lots of good media and gaming satire that’s seems right on the money, and for that, Gamer gets a big recommendation here…