What Is Humanity?

9 was an intriguing and exhilarating tale right until the end, where it dived off into a strange explanation that unfortunately didn’t quite live up to story that preceded it.

With interesting production design and a variety of characters, and frankly a killer trailer (I watched it over and over again just because the Coheed & Cambria song made it so freaking epic!) I was disappointed in a lackluster story and an unjustified ending.

While I understand the threat of over-dependence on technology and the danger of losing our souls in the process, to say that a man seeking to save humanity by leaving his soul in non-human beings just didn’t make sense. Unless being human simply constitutes our souls, then this argument works. It is necessary to accept this if one is to accept that by transferring this soul into nine puppet beings humanity is preserved. But can humanity be preserved if there are no humans? Does the soul need to be preserved in a human body to remain human? Can a man pay for his wrongs by giving himself up to destroy that which killed humanity? Why are these canvas people better at the job than the creator himself? Why must his soul be split into its various properties in order to save the world?

These are the questions the story raises and yet never satisfactorily answers. And the ending of the souls going into the sky and bringing water to the earth only complicates things further, for the scientist’s soul is now missing elements, they are forever lost and the soul is now incomplete. Once one of the puppet people is lost, isn’t humanity doomed anyway? Haven’t the machines won by destroying part of humanity and leaving only half a “man”?

This film started well but didn’t know how to finish and unfortunately its message was lost in inconsistent thinking. I would love to see the original short film and see if in a shorter time it better portrayed it’s thoughts in a manner that the transfer to a feature-length film lost.