9

I never did used to be fond of sci-fi films, because they seemed too sophisticated and intelligent for me.  Thus when 9 was released in 2009, obviously I won't have paid any attention to it, not that I would have understood it anyway then.

Somehow, the lingering pandemic that simply refuses to go away, throwing up new variants or whatever the experts decided to name them, technology that used to be tolerated came right to the forefront, forcing people to interact on the virtual level, whether they like it or not.

With this backdrop, 9 now seem surprisingly relatable for me.  9 relates the story of a small ragdoll (9) who woke up after the destruction of mankind.  9 then searches for other ragdolls like him to understand the cause of the destruction of mankind.

The colour scheme of 9 veered towards duller and darker tones, and there was a frightening machine that sucked the souls of ragdolls.  Back in 2009, I would have thought this was absolute nonsense.  Ragdolls don't have souls and such frightening machines must have been the imagination of silly adults trying to frighten their children into going to bed early.

Yet now, as mankind hurtles towards artificial intelligence, machine learning and smart-everything, the scenario painted in 9 seems to resonate.  A scientist built a smart machine which then gained intelligence (sounds like machine learning, no?) and decided that humans are the weakest link (I hear this plenty of times, especially during seminars where speakers were expounding the virtures of their automated processes and system) and ought to be terminated.  Before the scientist was killed, he used alchemy to split his soul into 9 bits and infused them into 9 ragdolls (this part sounds like what Tom Riddle did, no?).

I found it a little difficult to follow the plot of 9, probably because I'm quite unused to such form of story-telling.  Nevertheless, it was a good introduction to the sci-fi world for me, and I now look forward to watching more sci-fi.