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The short Shane Acker built this feature from ran 11 minutes with not one line of dialogue and, by the Focus Features production notes, took him four and a half years. It was nominated for Animated Short Film at the 2006 Oscar ceremony, where the award went to The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation. The feature was produced by Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov. Animation started at Attitude Studio in Luxembourg, and when that did not work it moved to Starz Animation in Toronto, which is where the Canadian credit comes from. The biggest difference between short and feature is that the silence is gone. The short explained nothing; the feature assembles well known voices and adds a flashback stating outright why the world ended and where the machine came from. If that gap was what you liked, here it is filled. Acker calls it a dark urban post-apocalyptic fairy tale and says its texture came from Quay Brothers puppets. It was rated PG-13 in the United States for violence and scary images. A good fit if you treat the burlap, wire and metal staying tangible in every frame as the real promise. Not for you if the animation label puts a small child beside you; neither the design nor the machine fight is made for them.