Asphyxiation by Oxygen Hands| #movies

District 9 x21264549683

I watched it again tonight. There were so many superlative reviews of this movie, so I won’t even attempt such approach. Let’s talk about mecha design in this movie. There is just one machine but oh my was it beautiful.

The alien exoskeleton which Wikus “wears” has form which is an impressive fusion of mechanical and organic elements. There are straight and sharp angles, dimmed reflections of matted, scratched metal; and there are fluid forms resembling a cockroach, spider or a prawn. Intricate panels, rivets, armour and pistons; fantastic washed out blue/black and yellow camouflage; sparing amount of markings in alien language. And the arsenal is quite impressive too, of course.

It’s an amazing combination of a robot, an arachnid (chelicerae) or maybe rather decapoda (chelicerae might as well be gill, I’ve little idea about this stuff!), ape (long arms) and a few other things I probably can’t name even in Polish. Just look at its “nape”:

It looks like chitin segments, as seen on exoskeletons of arthropods. However the aspect of this mecha which got me choking, howling and possibly moaning a bit was this:

I’m not sure if I can say how much I love this. An integrated helmet/HUD with 3D display revolving around the user and displaying all sorts of information about the exoskeleton (yellow triangles in circles indicate damage, methinks), surroundings, targets and weapons’ status. I imagine all of it requires a brain completely different from human to be operated properly. With a much wider span of focus perhaps, or maybe a different set of receptors altogether. Human eye is not able to capture so many things happening around it on such a wide angle (at least 180°, I believe)

Maybe compound eyes and dorsal ocelli would make more sense. Which brings us back to the metaphor of an arachnid/decapoda again. I think it’s brilliant how this design merges forms of both nature and technology. If we compare this with recent Transformers, quality difference is crushing. In favor of the “prawn” of course. Transformers’ designs are so intricate and multi-faceted that they lose shape. Eye is unable to follow myriads of angles and textures, loses track and literally slides off the robots. They look like nano-mechanisms on the verge of a collapse. Designers clearly had no idea what to do but increase complexity. Which obviously doesn’t work.

Coming back to the inside of exoskeleton. The UI is as alien as it could/should be. Human (?) operating it doesn’t make it any less out of this world. He doesn’t look like he fully comprehends what he’s doing: his shooting and movement are chaotic and he clearly looks scared and overwhelmed. The way it is filmed — camera claustrophobically close to his face, moving frantically — only adds up to the overall impression. Impression of a fucking genius mecha design, which is so devastatingly rare these days.