Before I go any further, If you have about 10 minutes, watch this amazing animated short on youtube.
Notice the credits. Take that number of people, then add to it the budget of a Focus Features film, then multiply it all by the push of Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov (director of Wanted), all of which then get an exponential marketing boost by the voice talents of Elijah Wood, John C. Reilly, Jennifer Connelly, Crispin Glover, Martin Landau and Christopher Plummer.
What does that equal? This trailer (after the jump), which is just the tip of the iceberg for 9, the movie...
Shane Acker, the original creator of 9, had his masterwork picked up for a fully-fledged movie--quite an amazing achievement for a short produced in the UCLA Animation Workshop.
The trailer begins with a slow survey of what set this animated short apart: amazing environmental detail. It's a similar idea behind the ruined landscape of Wall-E, but you can't say 9 ripped its concept from Wall-E as the original short was released in 2005, where it was up for an academy award in the animated short film category. And you have to admit, there's a lot more large-scale stuff in these environments than the eroded garbage in Wall-E. (That is not meant to be a dig at Wall-E! The landscape was literally eroded garbage.)
Of course, slow introspection with a Lorax warning won't sell movie tickets, and after a leisurely 45 seconds, Coheed and Cambria's, "Welcome Home" rips through the video and we get a "pulse-pounding" look at the rest of the movie through video cuts timed to the music's beat that would feel right at home on MTV, if MTV still played music videos.
The trailer does the job of throwing enough tidbits at the crowd to pique interest and make people wonder (at 1:20, there's a human--whether or not that's simply a flashback or there are humans in this story remains to be seen). Near the end of the trailer we get to see shots of the main characters, and they're all surprisingly cute for sack-cloth creatures. I can already hear the merchandise being run off in Chinese factories.
Unfortunately, thanks to the focus on action, we've got all of the clashes and little of the haunting poignancy that made the original 9 short truly stand out. What viewers who don't know the movie's history will see is just another blaring CG movie. It's unclear whether or not the movie will act as a prequel before 9 lost all of his friends, or if the short will simply be retconned and viewers will be given a more hopeful ending than the striking but lonely original ending. Luckily, Shane Acker is directing the movie, and with some help from Tim Burton one can hope that Shane's true vision comes out instead of a studio-fabricated piece of popcorn fluff. Though the editing of this trailer along standard-action-movie-preview lines has me nervous. I still hold out hope for this one, though!
9 opens on 09.09.09 (when else did you think it would open?)
Visit the Official Site. (No real extra content yet.)
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