Machines (9)

There are several machines that are central antagonists and focal factors in 9 both in movie and the original 2005 short. Initially built to serve the national interests of the unnamed Nation, their systems went genocidally awry and annihilated all life forms on Earth. After humanity's extermination, their focus shifted from annihilating humanity to killing and retrieving stitchpunks and an alchemy talisman artifact to reawaken the Fabrication Machine.

Spiderbots


Spiderbots are machines that appear in the 2009 film 9. The Fabrication Machine creates them to act as guards of the Factory. They have fangs like spiders and metal bodies with red eyes. They make squeaks and the machine makes many to run around the factory. Some also climb on the walls.

When 9 sneaks into the factory, one scuttles by 9, crawls through a pipe and hides as another spiderbot goes past a hole. Then as he and 7 are trying to escape hundreds are sent by the machine to get them, one screeches on top of a rock and they all go over rocks and a few over 8's corpse after his soul was taken.

They chase them up the tunnel and are hit by a barrel filled with an explosive substance, and it is presumed they all blew up in the explosion.

Winged Beast


"Sometimes fear is the appropriate response."

- 1

The Winged Beast is an antagonist in the 2009 film 9. It is one of the three machines specifically designed by the B.R.A.I.N. to hunt down and kill 9 and the other stitchpunks, the others were the Cat Beast and the Seamstress. It resembles a pterosaur, using a tarp or a flag for its wings, and has a mouth that consists of knives, razors, and other similar sharp objects. It also has a harpoon launcher on its tail to snag its victims and a fan that helps it fly. (it can still fly like an actual bird by gliding on air currents and flapping its wings, though the Beast uses its wings only when its fan 'engine' is busted)

The Winged Beast was created by the B.R.A.I.N. shortly after it revives from its slumber to find the stitchpunks so it can absorb their souls. The Winged Beast finds the stichpunks hiding in the sanctuary and crashes into the cathedral as 1 was giving a severe lecture to 9 and 5 for failing to save 2. Winged Beast knocks over a brazier of live coals into 6's wall of drawings, which starts a fire inside the cathedral. After a chase with the fleeing stichpunks, the Winged Beast is tricked into getting its harpoon cut off and the cable to get stuck into a plane propeller, which 5 and 6 activate. The Winged Beast grabs on to 1's cape in support. 1 refused to let his cape go, but managed to do so, causing the Winged Beast to be shredded by the propeller. After the stitchpunks escape the burning Cathedral, their former hideout, a Seeker Drone retrieves the deactivated Beast's severed head, and brings it back to the Fabrication Machine. The Machine just crushed the Winged Beast's dismembered head.

Even though it failed to capture any of the stitchpunks, the Winged Beast's attack did some damages: now left without sanctuaries, the stitchpunks are forced to risk the wasteland until they could find a new home. Additionally, the Winged Beast Punctured 7's left leg with its harpoon.

Seeker Drones


The Seeker Drone were some of the robots built after the resurrection of the Fabrication Machine in the movie 9. Seekers had a big balloon shaped croissant on their back that was was also supported by a small flame that also leave within robo coast, giving them the ability to fly like a balloon. They had two big red eyes and two arms, which could adjust the bellows to pump back the fire in its balloon or sound an alarm. The alarm sounds a lot like a siren of the Second World War. They were also used as guards of the factory to warn of intruders. They had a set of floodlights located on the bottom of them. They also collect garbage and waste around the city, so the machine can build more manufacturing machines with that garbage.

A Seeker Drone first appears watching the stitchpunks heading to the library after they defeat the Winged Beast that destroyed the cathedral, the stitchpunks' hideout. It continues to spy on them before bringing back the Winged Beast's dismembered head to the factory of machines where the Fabrication Machine is creating spiderbots.

Later, a group of Seeker Drones proceed to scout outside the factory perimeter. They use their searchlights near the oil pumps the stitchpunks are hiding at. When 1 attempts to light the barrel on fire, the stitchpunks are exposed to a Seeker Drone's searchlight. 5 gets panicky and fires his harpoon at the Seeker, catching it by the back. As stitchpunks 5, 6, 3 and 4 try to pull it down to prevent it from escaping back to the factory, it emits the alarm while lifting the four stitchpunks into the air. 1 manages to pull the rope onto a ripped piece of metal on the barrel, making the rope snap straight, effectively bounding the Seeker. But the tussled Seeker Drone continues to sound its alarm, alerting the Fabrication Machine.

As 9 and 7 escape the factory to get away from the spiderbots unleashed by the Fabrication Machine, the five other stitchpunks push the explosive barrel down the tunnel and to the factory, with the Seeker still tied to it. The factory blows up wide, sky high and all of the Seeker Drones are destroyed.

Steel Behemoth


"Welcome to the age of the machine! It will create new machines in its own image, machines of peace, that will usher in a glorious new era of wealth and prosperity for the state!"

- The Nation's propaganda message of the Fabrication Machine's construction of the Steel Behemoths

The Steel Behemoths are dreaded war machines built by the Fabrication Machine in 9. They are shown in flashback and are inactive by the time 9 starts. They were the first major war machines built by the Fabrication Machine. The Behemoths were initially commissioned by the Chancellor to achieve his goals of world domination, before the Fabrication Machine reprogrammed them to exterminate all life. This army consists of about 896 war machines.

A Steel Behemoth is 30 feet tall, with a pair of thin and long legs made ​​of pure iron. Although thin, the Behemoths' legs are quite strong and able to move at considerable speed, not too fast or slow, but according to the pictures they can run in a small pattern. The Steel Behemoths have only a single, oval red eye, in the centre of their head. The Behemoths' heads are large casings which loosely resemble WWII-era Nazi soldier helmets. The Steel Behemoths are armed with a large-caliber revolving gun that shot in front of them as a huge mini-gun. They were also equipped with noxious gas canisters, fired into the air from a compartment on the top of their head, for killing off all life in the area.

After the Fabrication Machine was taken away by the Chancellor and made to mass-produce war machines for him, the Machine built armies of Steel Behemoths, which the Nation intended to use to conquer the rest of the world. The Steel Behemoths apparently succeeded in slaughtering and obliterating practically all in their path on the battlefield during the war. When the Fabrication Machine went insane and reprogrammed its machines to exterminate all life, the Steel Behemoths turned on the Nation; they massacred all military and civilians alike in sight, and released poisonous gas to kill off all other forms of life including plants and even bacteria.

After humanity and almost all other life on Earth had been cleansed, the Steel Behemoths disappeared from the sterile wastelands, leaving only the production lines of inactive Behemoths in the Fabrication Machine's factory. It is unknown what happened to the Steel Behemoths, but it can be presumed that over the years after the machines had destroyed most life, the Behemoths perished or deactivated without the Fabrication Machine or any further purpose.

After the Fabrication Machine was reactivated, it was seen to be experimenting on an inactive Steel Behemoth unit before its Seeker Drones alerted it to the stitchpunks' presence.

Seamstress

 * See Seamstress.

Cat Beast

 * See Cat Beast.

Fabrication Machine

 * The Lord of all Machines. See Fabrication Machine.

Trivia

 * The spiderbots have four eyes, one big one and three small. Real spiders have eight.
 * The machine appears to have made about 600 of them.
 * Spiderbots are about the size of tarantulas.
 * A Seeker appears in the top right corner of the 9 DVD cover.
 * By the time the barrel bounces into the factory, the Seeker isn't on it. It is assumed the rope snapped and the Seeker escaped, only to get itself engulfed in the explosion.
 * The balloons on Seekers' backs were probably made out of old parachutes.
 * The Steel Behemoths resemble the Tripods from H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, and AT-ST walkers from Star Wars.
 * The Steel Behemoths were the only machines shown to have been used by the Fabrication Machine during its war against humanity to destroy all life, although it is probable that the B.R.A.I.N. made other machines for the war as well.
 * The Steel Behemoths are the only known robots made ​​by the Fabrication Machine which use military weapons and are outright battlefield soldiers, while the rest seen were used as hunters or security.