Taking a page from big, live-action blockbusters like Star Trek and Transformers, the little indie animated movie 9 is introducing us to its characters by giving them all their own posters. Bits of the series have been floating around the web for a while, but now we have the whole collection, 1 through 9.
9, in case you haven't caught the dazzling trailer, is a CGI animated film set in a post-apocalyptic future, where puppets-- given life by a mysterious creator, and known only by numbers 1 through 9-- try to prevent the rise of the evil machines. Lending voices to the main characters are Elijah Wood, Jennifer Connelly, John C. Reilly and a host of others. Click on the sample posters below for the high-res versions in our preview gallery, and take a look at the list of character descriptions below, as well as the synopsis, to put a story next to all these gorgeous visuals.
Synopsis: A new era in animated storytelling begins on 9.9.09. Visionary filmmakers Tim Burton (The Corpse Bride, Charlie and The Chocolate Factory) and Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted, Nightwatch) join forces to produce wunderkind director Shane Acker’s distinctively original and thrilling tale. 9 stars Elijah Wood, John C. Reilly, Jennifer Connelly, Martin Landau, Christopher Plummer and Crispin Glover and features the music of Danny Elfman.
When 9 (The Lord of the Ring’s Elijah Wood) first comes to life, he finds himself in a post-apocalyptic world. All humans are gone, and it is only by chance that he discovers a small community of others like him taking refuge from fearsome machines that roam the earth intent on their extinction. Despite being the neophyte of the group, 9 convinces the others that hiding will do them no good. They must take the offensive if they are to survive, and they must discover why the machines want to destroy them in the first place. As they'll soon come to learn, the very future of civilization may depend on them.
1. Voiced by one of the world’s most respected actors, Christopher Plummer, 1 is the Scientist's first creation. As the elder, he is the self-declared leader of the group. He is clever and sly, but also domineering, quick-tempered, and threatened by the new arrival of 9, whose higher intellect leads him to question authority.
2. Voiced by Academy Award Winner Martin Landau, 2 is a kindly but now frail inventor and explorer who embodies the Scientist’s strong creative spirit. An inquisitive personality, 2 is fearless. Director Shane Acker affectionately describes him as a “salty old dog”.
3/4. Communicating visually, not verbally, 3 and 4 are the scholarly twins who voraciously catalogue everything they can see and find, recording and building a massive database for the group of the world that surrounds them and the history that led up to their creation.
5. Voiced by Academy Award nominee John C. Reilly, 5 is a caring, nuturing engineer – the loyal, big-hearted “common man” who always tries to play the peacemaker. He is also an apprentice of 2, with whom he shares a special bond.
6. 6, the group’s visionary is voiced by Crispin Glover. Although reclusive and eccentric, his bursts of artistic inspiration through drawings made from his pen nib hands may be keys to help his fellow stitchpunk beings navigate their darkest hours.
7. A brave and self-sufficient warrior, 7, voiced by Oscar winner Jennifer Connelly, is the group's sole female. A fiercely independent adventuress she has been out patrolling the wasteland. To survive, she has adapted, finding the bones of a deceased bird and crafting her signature skull helmet.
8. Armed with a giant kitchen cleaver and half a scissor blade, the none-too-bright muscle and enforcer of the group, 8, is created to help the others physically survive the dangerous post-apocalyptic world.
9. To voice the lead role of the newly born – and aborning hero -- 9, Acker couldn’t help but have in mind an actor who was so central to the film set he had worked on years earlier in New Zealand – The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King star Elijah Wood.
