We went to see 9

[elfs]

Omaha and I went to see 9, which is best described as post-apocalyptic quasi-mystic steampunk. The visuals are stunning but the plot is only so-so.

Not a spoiler, but if we discuss it, there will be: It's very obvious that, ten minutes before the end of the film, the studio wimped out and decided not to go with the original ending. The sudden shift in action, the loss of the story where the hero made a decision American audiences would have loathed, is very obvious, one that Omaha and I both noticed and were both disappointed by. It made a very big story into a very little one. Focus groups probably like the new one better, right?

Still, it's an amazing story up to that point, and even then it's tolerable. But it doesn't seem to have been the story. I'd like to ask Shane Acker if he was happy with what Pamela Pettler did to his original idea.

Comments

[tehrasha.livejournal.com]

Is it as messed up as the 'happy ending' version of Brazil ?

[elfs.livejournal.com]

If I'm right, the original was.

[omahas.livejournal.com]

Well, I wouldn't necessarily say that. There would have been a happy ending after all, but I just don't think that most American audiences would have been sophisticated enough to appreciate it.

[mg4h.livejournal.com]

So, I saw the movie, and I'm not seeing it from my memory of things. Would you like to put a spolierriffic tag on this and tell me outright where you think the plot changed? I'm guessing it's during the big knock-down drag-out fight, but aside from that I'm clueless.

Also, I don't suppose you've read up on the movie post-watching, have you? It seems (according to reports) that the movie was made very hands-off from traditional Hollywood methods. Sharlto Copley, playing Wikus is in his first Hollywood leading role. Also, according to this article, all the dialog Sharlto uses is improvised. All of it.

Having read that, I can't imagine that the ending was changed by the studio - if they weren't hardline over the bloody script, I can't seem them changing the end. Not like that.

??

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Uh, we're talking about two different films. Sharlto Copley was in District 9, which is an entirely different film from Shane Acker's animated film, 9.

But if you have seen 9, SPOILERS AHOY:

Here's how I think the film was going: we discovered that The Machine had developed this bizarre behavior where, with The Talisman installed, it was picking up the souls of The Nine one by one. After having absorbed Two, it became obsessed with getting the rest. It became more and more hysterical, desperate, and violent about doing so even as it picked up more and more of them.

In the film, this cycle was broken. The machine is destroyed and the souls of the five members of The Nine it had taken in are "freed."

In the film I imagine Acker wanted to make, toward the end Nine convinces some of his peers about the truth: that they all have to get into The Machine, that once they're all in there, they will make one coherent conscious soul capable of directing The Machine toward its original, peaceful goal. Some of The Nine (One, particularly) will have to be forced into that role. I imagine an ending where Seven and Nine go together, romantically linked in their final sacrifice.

An ending, with Nine as The Voice of the New Machine, tells us how The Machine returned to its original purpose and rebuilt the Earth from its apocalyptic state, would have finished the film right there.

The idea of forcibly sacrificing even manufactured but clearly self-aware creatures for "your" own ends-- after they've developed the free will to want otherwise-- would have been so devastating to box office value that the studio re-wrote the ending and demanded something much more traditional.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

Give this man a piggie!

From your description, if I were to watch this film (I really don't like movies), I'd probably see the very same mile-wide gaping plot hole. Your analysis sounds spot-on.

[mg4h.livejournal.com]

OhgodIamsoembarassednow.

I have got to stop trying to reply to things right before I go to bed, I have no brain.

I'll get back to you on that spoiler stuff after I actually watch 9, not District 9. Maybe Tuesday.

I'mgoingtogohidemyheadnow.

[(Anonymous)]

That seems like an exceptionally easy mistake to make -- but then I'm biased by the fact that until I read these comments I also thought that "District 9" was the movie being discussed...

[l33tminion]

I would agree with that, except that the ritual at the end of the movie mirrors the one at the end of the short film. While I did briefly expect an ending like the one you described (I was at least expecting the talisman to give the machine a soul, not cause it to explode), the actual ending wasn't the disappointment I expected it to be given your post.