Robots saved many a sci-fi flick in 2013
Hollywood has some tried-andtested methods for livening up dull screenplays.
To add mystery, just have a bus pass in front of a character, who turns out to have vanished during the drive-by.
Need a comic sting? Have someone throw an item off-screen, and add the sound of an angry cat being hit by it.
The year 2013 had an all-purpose film fixer-upper, giant robots. They were everywhere. Occasionally they were the movie’s raison d’être. Without the monstrous Jaegers in Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim, humanity would have quickly become snack food for interdimensional invaders.
Iron Man 3 was also predicated on the man-in-the-giant-robot-suit concept, with Robert Downey Jr. reprising his role as Tony Stark.
The problem is that while the first Iron Man featured just two biomechanical suits — one for Stark and one for the villain — the sequels have started churning them out like a Ford assembly line.
Superheroes just can’t leave the robo-suits alone. In The Wolverine, Hugh Jackman must put up his dukes against the Silver Samurai, a self-propelled giant suit of armour that is also made of the fictional element adamantium. (And not silver?)
In Elysium, Matt Damon’s character has to have robo-appendages bolted to his rapidly decaying body in order to take on the evil powers that rule Earth. The resulting superstrength lets him take on the police force, which are — you guessed it — robocops.
Even animated stories couldn’t escape the wrath of giant robots last year. In Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2, the good guys win the day with the help of giant laser-shooting exo-suits.
The concept is not new. James Cameron had Sigourney Weaver step into an exo-suit to fight the extraterrestrial queen back in 1986 in Aliens.
And he dusted off the suit for 2009’s Avatar. They’ve also appeared in 2009’s G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, 1997’s Batman & Robin, and a few others.
But we seem to have reached a tipping point in which the giant robot is a given, a plot element to be argued against rather than for.
Look what 2014 has in store. February will see the release of RoboCop, a remake of the 1987 action movie in which the hero was, memorably: “Part Man. Part Machine. All Cop.”
June delivers the futuristic thriller Edge of Tomorrow, with Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt both delivering performances from within powered suits of armour.