io9
Some of the most awesome science fiction machines ever conceived for film, like the turbo-tank AT-ATs from Empire Strikes Back, were inspired by things the concept designers saw every day. You may already know that George Lucas was allegedly inspired to create the AT-ATs by these cargo lifters at the Port of Oakland — but did you know the T-1000 "liquid metal" Terminator was inspired by chocolate fudge? Find out which strangely ordinary items inspired eight of the coolest science fiction machines, and be humbled.
Robby the Robot, star of 1955 special effects blockbuster Forbidden Planet and later a main "charater" on the TV show Lost in Space, was the creation of legendary production designer Robert Kinoshita. Apparently one of his biggest inspirations for the globular humanoid bot was washing machine tubs. Kinoshita had worked on those before his career in the movies. The comparison sounds strange to us today, until you look back and see what washing machines looked like in the 1940s, when Kinoshita worked on them. This picture shows the odd similarities, with the bulbous roundness and strange silver knobs sticking out.
The HAL 9000 computer which famously refused to open the pod bay door in the 1969 movie 2001 was inspired by surveillance cameras which filmmaker Stanley Kubrick saw around London as CCTVs were being put in place. Author Arthur C. Clarke, who worked with Kubrick adapting his novel for the screen, confirms that HAL was inspired by "television cameras in cities" in an interview.
Here is a rather odd reverse-inspiration. The exoskeleton that Ripley used to fight big mama alien in Aliens is frequently mentioned by the designers for exoskeletons that might be used by soldiers or disabled people. Here you can see Ripley's cool device, and the exoskeleton for soldiers it inspired.
Since the special effects designers for Machine City in Matrix: Revolutions were located in San Francisco, it's probably no surprise that they based it in part on the San Francisco skyline. Effects designer Craig Hayes said in an interview that one of the first things he and his crew did was go out on the San Francisco Bay, about 8 miles from San Francisco, to see how the city would look from a distance. That gave them a sense of how to build Machine City from Neo's point of view as he zoomed into it.
Here you can see the hot fudge sundae that became the T-1000. Director and effects maven James Cameron said that when he was first conceiving of the liquid metal Terminator, he thought a lot in terms of texture. How should it ooze? How should the reflections look? In an interview, he admitted:
I wanted the effect of the T-1000 to look like a spoon going into hot fudge; it dimples down, then flows up over and closes. That's the look I wanted. You have to work with the viscosity in order to get that look just right.I like a guy who eats enough fudge that he wants to build a robot out of it.
When Steven Spielberg set out to make futuristic computers for Minority Report, he didn't mess around. He went straight to a research group at MIT, called the Tangible Media Group, which thinks up next-generation interfaces. The group told him that gesture-commands would be the wave of the future, and even showed him a bunch of prototypes — some of which are now in use, several years later. You can see an early gesture-controlled prototype here, on the left. And there's Tom Cruise doing his Minority Report gesture thing on the right.
And finally, there are the eXistenZ "metaflesh game pods," created by David Cronenberg for his dizzying movie about virtual reality games that plug right into your spinal column via a creepily biological bio-port installed (oh so Cronenberg style) right above your butt. Cronenberg has said a lot about how current technology is heading towards a merging with biology. So it's no surprise that his game pods look exactly like biological rehashings of late-1990s Playstation controllers that he would have seen every day while making this movie.
Picture of Port of Oakland by John L. Polos. Picture of fudge by Ms. Info. Picture of San Francisco skyline by Mike. Image spiffing by Stephanie Fox. Additional reporting by Nivair H. Gabriel.
Comments
I nominate the adjective "Cronenbergy" for inclusion in the next Oxford English Dictionary edition.
Everytime I see one of those Cargo lifters I pray that in the Transformers sequel someone chucks the energon spark of life cube (or whatever the heck it was) at one of them so it comes alive and effs up everyone.
One might also think that the walkers were inspired by the image from Syd Mead's influential US Steel portfolio.
[farm3.static.flickr.com]
@zeppelined: Seriously. Any game port that goes into your butt is hereafter known as Cronenbergy.
@Whitworthian: Holy crap that's beautiful.
@Whitworthian:
Could be a combination of both ...
I always found the sound design for sci-fi movies cool as well. Who knew that hitting a steel support cable with a metal wrench would make the perfect laser blast sound effect for Star Wars.
I'm not sure the Aliens reference is "rather odd." Imagination has long run ahead of real inventions, and inventors are often inspired by science fiction.
Are we going to describe it as "rather odd" that someone chose to invent a Time Machine, citing H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine" as an influence???
When do I get my friggin' time machine anyway? I thought it was discovered last year alread!
If they're talking about cityscapes how could they forget Edwin G. Burrows' Gotham series. Burrows created a series of concept art for futuristic cities. His work has inspired Sci-Fi Cities from Metropolis to Star Wars to it's most popular namesake, Gotham City in the Batman Universe.
It's a beautifully dark urban environment with multilayered buildings, skyways, elevated trains and airship docks.
His work has been posted online by the University that's currently holding it. Truly some awesome stuff.
Sorry, my mistake. I mixed up my architects. I was describing Hugh Ferriss not Burrows.
@darcymcgee: Actually what I thought was odd was that so many people referenced Aliens when building these exoskeletons. I thought the idea of robotic exoskeletons had been around a lot longer.
@RayCeeYa: We've featured Hugh Ferris before. [io9.com]
@Annalee Newitz: Cronenbuggery?
I think the SF one is a bit of a stretch.
When Minority Report came out, I remember reading about that conference that Spielberg convened for futurists. The gesture commands screen and the sick stick are very cool ideas. Apparently, they came up with tons of other ideas that actually didn't get used in the movie.
This post is made of awesome.
@tinshaker: Could be any glittery city, right? But apparently the concept designers did use SF as their model.
@darcymcgee: It was. But then someone went back and changed things so that it wasn't. Yeah, that's right -- your mind has been blown.
I can't believe you didn't include my favorite weird inspiration story. The Slave 1 (Boba Fett''s ship) was inspired by street lamps. I think of it all the time.
[en.wikipedia.org]
Robot was the main character. Robbie was in only two episodes of Lost in Space. He also appeared in an episode of Twilight Zone.
I've seem footage of that exoskeleton working; pretty cool stuff!
@maxsparber: I was about ready to say the same thing. I miss Robbie the Robot. Wouldn't it be great to see him pop up out of the blue on How I Met Your Mother or Big Love.
I think the coolest robot things are the ones without legs, head and all that human attitudes. Would be nice to have real fantasy, never seen possibilities like from Cronenberg. the more fantasy the more fun.
[sikantis.net]
@maxsparber: And the movie "Gremlins"
@extracrispy: Agree, this post is totally awesome--
HoneylessBud asks: Is it true that some squids have 6 tentacles?
@Midwesterner in NYC: When is I, Clone coming out?
What the hell good is an exoskeleton without the over-sized lobster claws? I hope DARPA kicks those inventors out on their asses. We don't want a glorified Segway, we want to become human Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots!
@Whyaduck: Legs are just part of it; arms are next.
@Whitworthian: I second Annalee's "holy crap that's beautiful"!
@Midwesterner in NYC: How I Met Your Mother is way more likely -- those characters have got real respect for nerds. Did anyone else squee when Marshall defended the Ewoks, or, um, was that just me?
@darcymcgee: If I ever build a time machine, I'm citing Doctor Emmett Brown.
@gunterk: Thank you for sharing. That is totally awesome. :D
@Whyaduck: If I ever build an exoskeleton, I'm going to have have hands for smaashing and drilling. Claws are so lame. If you can smash and drill, you don't need claws.
@Nivair: Funny story about De Lorean's from my past, but no time to tell it right now. I sort of thought the Austin Powers Time Travelling Beetle was pretty slick too.
@Frozen-Tex: No excuses. No gloves no loves.
@darcymcgee: And how are you going to hold down the things you'd like to smash and drill, hmm, wiseguy? It's not like they'll just sit still and wait for you to smash and drill them. So, maybe one big grippy claw on one arm, and a combination smashy/drilly bit on the other? Or 3 arms, one grippy, one smashy, one drilly? Suggestions on how to control the third arm requested...I'd be interested to see what io9 readers suggest, especially with regards to the drilly one.
Already this is so much better than that stuff the eggheads in Washington are trying to cram down our throats. Elitist bores all of 'em.
I see a new Terminator movie coming where T-1000s actually is a hot fudge sundae.
What you say about HAL 9000 being influenced by CCTV is wrong, at least with regards to the Clarke interview you link to.
The relevant quote from Clarke in that interview is this: "Stork: So you were influenced by big brother? Clarke: We're entering a world where HAL-type computers are watching us. They're installing television cameras in cities, particularly in high crime areas, which has caused a great deal of consternation but I'm all in favor of it."
"Influenced by Big Brother" -- not CCTV. If anything, HAL 9000 anticipated CCTV, as illustrated by Clarke's statement that "We're entering a world where HAL-type computers are watching us."
Nowhere in that interview does it say or even allude to Arthur C. Clarke confirming that HAL "was inspired by 'television cameras in cities'".
Also, as far as I'm aware, there were no CCTV-style systems in place in the mid-to-late 60s. So I'd be interested to know where you got the information that HAL was "inspired by surveillance cameras which filmmaker Stanley Kubrick saw around London as CCTVs were being put in place".
@michaelportent: His nemesis? The human spoon...
awesome post annalee!
@MaxTwice: His alter-ego? Caramel sundae!
Is this supposed to be a joke? The AT-ATs were inspired by elephants, not those cranes. Those cranes didn't even exist when ESB was made.
MIT only played a bit part in the Minority Report interface, the bulk of it was created by Microsoft Research.
@The Brain: Actually, they did exist. Did you even bother to read the links? Every claim we make is backed up with evidence from primary sources.
Oh really?
"One commonly told story relates that George Lucas modeled the 'Imperial Walkers' of Star Wars movie fame after Oakland's container cranes."
Who is the primary source in that link? What is the "evidence" you're citing? Sounds more like an urban legend to me.
Here are some primary sources for you:
[www.alexwright.org]
Katherine Jones turns out to be one of the brainiac designers behind all those futurama interface concepts in Minority Report. After trading a few emails, Kat was kind enough to share some of her early prototype sketches with me, which she graciously allowed me to post here.
[www.emediawire.com]
nextMEDIA, secures Dale Herigstad, Chief Creative Officer of interactive agency, Schematic, to deliver a keynote address on Sunday, June 10, at the Fairmont Banff Springs in Banff, Canada.
As one of the consultants for the Steven Spielberg movie "Minority Report", Herigstad contributed to the concept of "gestural navigation", the hand gestures Tom Cruise's character uses to interface with his computer screen. Herigstad has incorporated similar concepts when helping design the Accenture Interactive Network on display in Chicago's O'hare and New York's John F. Kennedy airports.
[research.microsoft.com]
"In July of 1999 Microsoft entered into a exploratory relationship with Fox Studios for the upcoming production of Minority Report.... As an adjunct to that relationship, the design department for the production had a meeting with several groups at Microsoft to see if there were any design synergies. After reviewing our first pass of ideas, Fox chose to work with me as the lead outside research design consultant. I made several visits to the Fox lot in LA to meet with the production staff. We exchanged ideas and briefs and I eventually provided mockups of user interface design for the police helmet, outdoor kiosks, and conceptual virtual information spaces..."
George Lucas didn't even come up with the At-At, it was dreamt up by futurist Syd Mead:
[www.stopmotionanimation.com]
just came across some remarks that Syd Mead made about the walkers and their movements (as many of you probably know, the walkers were inspired by a Syd Mead design of the late 1960s). This remark appeared in Fantastic Films in 1982--interview by Blake Mitchell and James Ferguson.
MEAD: I designed the mechanical walking device in '66 or '67. At that time the Army had also built an experimental walking vehicle, an analog walking machine. I was doing a series for U.S. Steel and I thought that would make an excellent multi-terrain vehicle idea. But what I did was to put four traction motors on the feet, so that the feet could swivel. That's really much more flexible than just having big feet that clomp along at walking speed.
FF: Do you feel that the Star Wars crew did pretty well using this basic idea of yours?
MEAD: What irritated me a little bit, and it had to have been deliberately done for the audience, was that the walking vehicles were designed to be very animorphic, to look like mechanical animals... But the walking action was very convincing, especially the way the weight shifted.
FF: They were trying for an elephant type of look.
MEAD: Yes, like Hannible crossing the Hothian alps.
With your level of research and "primary sources" you could probably get a job at the New York Times.
I think the Aliens exoskeleton has its own ancestors. I recall seeing an old copy of "Popular Science" magazine from the 60's that had an exoskeleton in it. It was touted as a possible aid to stevedores and soldiers, if I recall correctly.
lucasfilm bought some tanks to "do-up" as land assault vehicles, then some guy brought in a magazine with a walking transporter and they decided to change direction and make the AT-AT's.George Lucas isn't james cameron (who came up with the t-800 and hunter killers himself), george's "inspiration" usually comes from several guys spending weeks on design work, for George to say "uh, that one, put bigger ears on it"
oops, more accurate version above me by The Brain"
Has anyone forgotten the fact that before Minority Report (2002), there was another movie that used hand gestures for this type of thing. Ex: Johnny Mnemonic (1995), and even before this... The Lawnmower Man (1992). So it might be some food for thought that the real inspiration for hand gestures is a lot older than pictured here. I cannot recall a movie before these, but I know someone else will.
I remembered Johnny Mnemonic, too! The sequence with Keanu using goggles and gloves to navigate through cyberspace almost made up for the omission of the Killing Floor.
@steeple: Yeah, I believe that.
@The Brain: Yup, my link shows that the Port of Oakland lifters existed b