9/Headscratchers

• Is it just me, or would everyone have been better off if 9 hadn't woken up? From the moment he wakes up, people start dying. His entire contribution to the plot is getting people killed. Sure, they try to handwave it with the whole "he had to wake up to release the micro-organisms" (I didn't even know what those green raindrops were supposed to be until I went on Wikipedia), except for the fact that said handwave is bullshit. The war machines simply could not have exterminated all the bacteria on Earth without burning its atmosphere away, not to mention the trillions upon trillions of insects and protists, who are only slightly easier to kill.
  • Well, that last part is Willing Suspension of Disbelief's duty: for the purpose of analyzing this movie, consider the Machines did exterminate all life on Earth. It's the premise of the movie. Now, would everyone's life be better without him? We don't know how many mecha tigers are around hunting, and only 7 even bothered fighting them. I think it'd be only a matter of time until they broke into the church and eliminated the rest of the stitchpunks.
    • Even if I were to accept the handwave, everyone still would have survived longer if 9 stayed asleep. We were explicitly told there was only one mecha-tiger thing, and 7 was actively hunting it and killed it pretty handily.
• 'Kay, so the Fabrication Machine is an AI, and presumably has an internal power source, and the stitchpunks are homunculi, powered by the shards of The Scientist's human soul, but what powers all the beasts that the Fabrication Machine makes?
  • ...Alchemy. That's all I can think of, considering every other machine-beast was killed without a power source being revealed. Also, they could as well keep on working instead of "die". chopping off the head of the Cat Beast shouldn't stop it, unless it had a central processing or power unit in it, and it apparently didn't(as the head itself didn't keep alive after being cut).Thus it's not far fetched to suppose they just are "alive".
• Each being a different piece of the Scientists's soul, it's not hard to see why they are all different. It still bugs me, though, that 3 and 4 are Single-Minded Twins and 7 is female. Actually, 7 bugs me most, how come?
  • Well, every man has a feminine side and every woman has a masculine side. Isn't actually all that shocking. The twins... maybe they were just made at the same time? Or it has to do with them being gloves.
    • Oh, they're gloves! Yeah, I guess that explains a lot. ^^ 7 still bugs me, though, because she seems distinctively female. If that's the case, then none of the other 8 have "feminine sides", which I guess they still do...
      • What I meant was that she is the Scientists femininity. Every man is feminine in some way, even if it is very small, so 7 is the distinct female part of his soul, even if she doesn't act feminine. Every stitchpunk is a part of the scientist, but each is now their own person so... it gets confusing. Though in the Russian version, with a completely changed story, she is still part of his soul but was modeled after his WIFE. So...
        • Ooh! I have an explanation for that last one! Soul mates. The "he/she had her/his heart and vice versa" sort, not the "made for each other" sort..
    • 7 sort of bugged me as well, until I realized that the only thing really female about her was her voice. 9s voice was just pulled out of a broken doll (he wasn't "born" with it), so 7s might have been just as random.... thats right: 7 might be a dude.
      • Wow, that turns Fridge Logic into Fridge Brilliance. Now all the stuff about 5 and 2 makes sense. Weird.
    • You guys are bugging me. Have you never heard of the Jungian anima? Is it really that unbelievable that a person might have aspects of themselves that are of a different gender? Also, technically none of the dolls have junk, so it's not like any of them are physically male or female. In which case none of them are dudes.
      • Don't get me wrong, I'm quite open for the multiple gender aspects of one's soul, but the assigning of voices had only 7 with a female one, and it's quite conspicuous that all the femininity would go to one place at once. Now, the previous troper might be right about the voice boxes, and it's quite probable that none of them have any sort of gender at all.
• Two points: why was there a beast machine already before the Machine was revived, and why didn't the Machine invest more on more Beasts instead of doing those little spidery things?
  • My interpretation was that the beast machine was built before the Fabrication Machine went offline, as to investing in the spider things the Fabrication Machine was nailed down at the time perhaps it did not have access to anymore cat skeletons?
  • Also, the Beast wasn't actually all that tough. When 7 finally stepped up and fought it, she pretty much killed it in a single blow. Some of Mr. Fab's later creations were much tougher. I assume the only reason the Beast hadn't been defeated already was 1's stubborn refusal to do anything besides hide and wait.
    • The Beast was a good Hunter, and was only one. Maybe 9 of them would go much better. Then again, the Seamstress sure made up for any lack of more Beasts.
  • The DVD commentary explains it: 7 didn't kill the Beast sooner, because she was trying to figure out what it was searching the ruins for. (The Source cog.) The Fabrication Machine created the Beast in a last-ditch attempt to find the Source, and didn't have the energy left to make more minions until it absorbed 2's soul-fragment.
• If the Source was the only thing preventing the Machine from working, does it mean somehow the Machine was turned off by the Scientist before the start of the movie? Or there were actually two Sources for the Scientist to make the 9 stitchpunks before the War was over?
  • I thought, but I'm not sure, that the Machine went to sleep when there were no humans left to kill.
    • The Scientist mentioned the remnants of the Rebellion massing for a final assault on his facebook. There is also a large hole in the Factory's roof, possibly from an artillery shell, and the Machine is buried under a lot of rubble. My guess is that the Rebellion's last stand was a success, and brought down the Machine in a Heroic Sacrifice.
• Why did the Scientist die after making 9? Is there anything stating the soul can only be divided in nine, no more no less?
  • It's probably not so much that as he had given each of them one-ninth of his soul, so he only had that much of it left to give.
    • So they aren't horcruxes after all? ;)
      • Nah, he died. I think the whole point of horcruxes is not dying, eh? ;P
• Alright, so at the end of the movie (Just before the final funeral), they had the plans to build more of the stitchpunks, so why didn't they rebuild all the ones that died and just activate the power source and let them claim the new bodies? I mean, a funeral really only makes sense if their soul is unrecoverable.
  • Apparently, it is. Life was raining again, but even if it was pure soul (instead of microbes, as I think it was), their sould was now parted and they would not be the same stitchpeople again.
• So, when 9 gets his special hologram suicide note from the doctor detailing the creation of the machine, he explains that the machine was created using part of his own soul, however, it was only his intelligence, and thus the machine had no "heart" and was easily corrupted. It seemed to me that the absorbing of the other... um... soul puppets (?) was simply an attempt to reunify the soul and create a viable living being again. This is hinted at when the machine is trapped on the bridge and 9 wont allow the others to kill it. But a few scenes later, they kill it anyway and suck out all the souls of the soul puppets and send them into heaven... but what about the soul of the machine?!
  • From what I understood, that was exactly the point: it had no soul, just mind. That's why the scientist had to give his own to the puppets. Thus, there was no soul on the machine.
    • But, if it were to absorb the soul-pieces, wouldn't it create a "complete soul" thus giving the machine a heart of sorts? And then wouldn't this fix all the problems that the machine had?
      • Not quite. The machine used the soul-pieces as a power source, not as a soul. If it did, it wouldn't have developed mercy after the first soul-piece. Obviously it didn't. Also, 9 wouldn't allow them to destroy the machine because then the souls would be gone forever. When they finally killed it, they did it by removing the soul-pieces, not by destroying it.
• Why do 3 and 4 seem the most childlike when they're the oldest after 1 and 2?
  • They each represent a different part of the scientist's personality. Also, it's not clear how much time passed between each stitchpunk's creation, so they might only be a few days (or hours) older.
    • So it's just a coincidence that the first two stitchpunks to be created are the ones that act like old men?
      • They were the first to be infused with an old man's soul, so maybe the oldness is stronger on them.
  • The way I saw it, 3 and 4 matured the least for their age after 5, and probably 6, because they went through the least. All they did was catalogue information, they didn't interact with the others. 1 was already old-ish, and 2, since they were probably supposed to be leaders and were the closest to the scientist in temperament. 5 was (possibly overly) cautious, and didn't mature much beyond his inventiveness until 7 and 9 brought him out of his shell and gave him more confidence against the orders of 1. 6 was closest to 3 and 4, not doing much (as far as I could tell) that the information that turned into his Madness Mantra didn't compel. 7 was the most outgoing, and (after 2, probably) the most mature. 8 seemed like the youngest, really, aside from 9 at the beginning of the film, if quite jerkish. To me, 3 and 4 seemed more timelessly curious than they did young. The only youth was their size and their agile, sudden movements, which is more a process of their bodies, which are small and seem to have been be the least exposed to the general environment (and thus least worn) of the first eight.
• Was I the only one that thought the Chancellor was more like Stalin than Hitler? I know that Hitler actually had the title Chancellor, but it just reminded me more of Soviet Russia and the Cold War.
  • Nope, I didn't even think of Hitler, it was more Stalin for me, too.
• The giant evil Robot is evil because it has intelligence but no souls. So when it eats the Souls of the Sackboys, shouldn't it have become good?
  • It becomes capable of good, but it remains on its chosen path because its a thinking being, with free will, and it wanted a complete soul. If it got all nine, maybe it would have become good- but it wasn't going to change its mind the moment guilt became a possibility; it had already gone too far to change its mind.
  • It used the souls as a power source. It does not gain any of their conscience.
• Who looked at the Fabrication Machine, after it apparently killed at least 2 soldiers, and said "Oh yeah this is an awesome idea, let's put it in charge of making an army of death machines, with no way to turn it off in case it goes rogue"? Do they have no sense of self-preservation or any paranoia? Is it just me or did that thing look absolutely evil before they stuffed it in the giant harness-thing?
  • That's the problem with making any artificial intelligence self-replicating. If we ever end up making Artificial Intelligence in Real Life, we'll hopefully have learned enough from Speculative Fiction to not put it into a Von Neumann machine. Also, in the alternate version of the machine, it just looked panicked instead of angry. I guess Viewers are Morons when it comes to interpreting the line of thought of a machine.
    • Among other things who looked at the idea for a machine that consumes human souls and uses black magic as a power source and not see a problem with it? That seems like a pretty big design flaw.
  • Guys, I don't think the problem is that it's capable of killing its masters, the problem is that that was just about the first thing it did, and they still thought "yes, let's give this machine that has ALREADY killed two of us a robot factory".
• At the end of the movie, how did the rain of soul cause the living bacteria? If it reanimated the dead bacteria in the atmosphere, like if the sackdolls were just mechanical contrivances that the soul gave life, whatever killed them should be still stopping them from anything more than squirming around and taking in more material. If it just... "became" tiny, living things, how did that happen? Even single-celled organisms are incredibly complex, self-replicating ones even more so. The possibilities would be narrowed down if we knew how the sackdolls worked, and therefore some of the limitations of the ensoulment, but... Really, the only way I can think of that would allow the tiny colonies of glowing microorganisms to reproduce and evolve into higher life, whether they are sentient like the sackdolls or not, is if the ensoulment "fixed" whatever was keeping organic things from living and jump-started them, but just gave a control system to inanimate objects or objects with motors.
  • Perhaps it didn't create the microorganisms, but rather eliminated the residue of the toxic gas, allowing torpid prokaryotes to revive and grow. It takes a lot to completely sterilize a planet down to the bacteria; they could've been aestivating all along, waiting for the environmental contamination to abate.
    • ...Not only is that an excellent explanation beyond any expected response, but it's also the first time I've ever considered Engaging Conversation over a comment about microbiology (partially thanks to being the troper who wrote the "spores in the Last Hope chest" guess over on WMG).
• Just what does the key around 6's neck open?
  • According to a deleted scene, the little projector-box in the Scientist's lab. If we don't count that as canon, it's probably just a bit of random junk he picked up somewhere.
• Why didn't the scientist send his soul in the clouds from the beginning, instead of putting it in dolls?
  • Honestly, would the thought have occurred to you? The afterlife is an unknown possibility, and even if we take into consideration the fact that he figured out a way to put pieces of his soul into vessels, there's a guarantee that they'll live on and do whatever the heck he wanted them to (after 1 is seen to be alive). Thinking of sending his soul up to heaven is the same as contemplating suicide, he wouldn't know what would happen afterwards.
  • Maybe he did. But then, how would he achieve that? He figured out how to put parts of his mind into machines, he wasn't able to shoot it like a laser into the sky or anything. Just put it into things and bring them to life.
• The Genius plan to destroy the Fabricator Machine's factory just seemed stupid. Roll a barrel of oil down and blow it up? Did nobody else think to, you know, bomb the living shit out of this factory if that is all it took to wipe out the machine army?
  • Well, it was a Indy Ploy. They didn't plan anything. They originally went to save 7 & 8, and came up with the plan there. Humans sure tried to bombard the place, but...
  • I'm more annoyed by how they argued about lighting the barrel UNTIL 9 said they were coming. So pushing a giant metal barrel filled with burning oil is bad until you can push it towards your comrades? How does that makes sense?
    • Easy. That means they now have time to get out before the big boom. You know EXACTLY where they are and how long it'll take them to get out. You can shout a warning, and time the drop to pass by them, since you have intel. If they're still deep inside, you'll more than likely blow them up, simply because they can't get out.
• So, all life on earth has been killed through toxic gases, and the only way they can think of bringing it back is by creating bacteria? Did the makers of this film forget about THE OCEAN, which covers most of the earth and has a ridiculous amount of life?
  • There are two possibilities here: either there's still life in the oceans and the movie is suffering from a bad case of not having sense of scale(it could have life everywhere else in the world except that non-descript country, for all we know); or there's no life in the oceans and the water is heavily poiosoned. Also, what's the difference? If there's no life on Earth, period, would you start life with pluricellular sea life instead of cyanobacteria? How would it survive?
• The scientist only died after creating 9. Shouldn't the other 8 remember something about him? 6, at least, seems to remember the First Room, so it stands to reason that the scientist would have been able to talk to the others and let them in on his plan for destroying the mahcine. I wish the film had played with the idea that he did tell all of them the plan, but, for their own reasons, they couldn't see it through-- 1 was too cowardly, 2 might have gotten bogged down in details, ect, until 9 came along and encouraged them.
  • They did know about him, but 9 was awakened 50 years after the Scientist died. The journals from the website explain that the Scientist interacted with the dolls regularly (5 was incredibly trusting when he was first made). It's possible, however, that he hadn't fully worked out a plan for destroying the machine while he was creating the dolls (he could have just wanted to create more people/wanted his soul to go somewhere else when he died) so they wouldn't know about the plan. Plus, it's implied the dolls didn't all know each other right off the bat - 7 yells something like "I found others!" in the flashback - so it's not like they had any sort of team from the get-go.
• This doesn't really so much bug me as makes me curious, but apparently, 9 didn't awaken for 50 years. Look at the Source when 9 picks it up. It has no dust on it, at all. It pretty much looks brand new. Is it a magical artifact thing from the Middle Ages or something (considering the alchemy book with the picture in it, and alchemy was popular in the Middle Ages)?
  • Dust knocked off when it fell to the desk? If it's that old, the scientist would probably put decent care into it.
• Close relation to headscratcher above; If Word of God says that 9 woke up 50 years after the war, how is it the Scientist's body has yet to completely decompose? He only made the dolls a couple months after the war ended, going by his journal.^[1]
  • Weren't all the microorganism destroyed? Wouldn't that drastically change decomposition,allowing the body to look much less decomposed?
    • But he seemed pretty contained from the gas that the machines sent out. If he was still alive after the war was over, there's gotta be something in his room to provoke decomposition.
• So, this just bugs me a bit in the Funeral Scene for 2, but.... hey, everybody? 7 AND 8 JUST GOT CAPTURED. I know everybody had their own little grief clouds to work through right then, but couldn't they have saved it until AFTER 7 and 8 were about to get their souls torn out of them? I mean, seriously, they take the time to find a nice piece of wood to put 2 on, lay him out appropriately and drift him off down the puddle and watch him the whole time, come on people, he'll still be dead when you get back! Then when they finally get around to going to the rescue, 9 gets there just in time to see 8 die.
• If the issue with the Fabricator was that it had no soul, what was the intended purpose of the Talisman slot on the front? Was it just decorative or what? What I mean to say is, why was the machine not having a soul was an issue when it was clearly designed to accept one? If the Scientist only realised his mistake after constructing it, why did he put a soul-accepting input there WHILE constructing it? Unless it was retrofitted, though how he did that is anyboy's guess.

1. ↑ Self correction, only 9 after the war ended. The rest sent out in a helmet.