Category Archives: ~Fritzes 2023

Fritzes 2024 Winners

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So I missed synchronizing the Fritzes with the Oscars. By like, a lot. A lot a lot. That hype curve has come and gone. (In my defense, it’s been an intensely busy year.) I don’t think providing nominees and then waiting to reveal winners makes sense now, so I’ll just talk about them. It was another year where there weren’t a lot of noteworthy speculative interfaces, from an interaction design point of view. This is true enough that I didn’t have enough candidates to fill out my usual three categories of Believable, Narrative, and Overall. So, I’m just going to do a round-up of some of the best interfaces as I saw them, and at the end, name an absolute favorite.

The Kitchen

In a dystopian London, the rich have eliminated all public housing but one last block known as The Kitchen. Izi and Benji live there and are drawn together by the death of Benji’s mother, who turns out to be one of Izi’s romantic partners from the past. The film is full of technology, but the one part that really struck me was the Life After Life service where Izi works and where Benji’s mom’s funeral happens. It’s reminiscent of the Soylent Green suicide service, but much better done, better conceived. The film has a sci-fi setting, but don’t expect easy answers and Marvel-esque plot here. This film about relationships amid struggle and ends quite ambiguously.

The funerary interfaces are mostly translucent cyans with pinstripe dividing lines to organize everything. In the non-funerary the cyan is replaced with bits of saturated red. Everything funerary and non- feels as if it has the same art direction, which lends to reading the interfaces extradiegetically, but maybe that’s part of the point?

Pod Generation

This dark movie considers what happens if we gestated babies in technological wombs called pods.  The interactions with the pod are all some corporate version of intuitive, as if Apple had designed them. (Though the swipe-down to reveal is exactly backwards. Wouldn’t an eyelid or window shade metaphor be more natural? Maybe they were going for an oven metaphor, like bun in the oven? But cooking a child implications? No, it’s just wrong.)

The design is largely an exaggeration of Apple’s understated aesthetic, except for the insane, giant floral eyeball that is the AI therapist. I love how much it reads like a weirdcore titan and the characters are nonplussed, telegraphing how much the citizens of this world have normalized to inhumanity. I have to give a major ding to the iPad interface by which parents take care of their fetuses, as its art direction is a mismatch to everything else in the film and seems quite rudimentary, like a Flash app circa 1998.

Before I get to the best interfaces of the year, let’s take a moment to appreciate two trends I saw emerging in 2023. That of hyperminimalist interfaces and of interface-related comedy.

Hyperminimalist interfaces

This year I noticed that many movies are telling stories with very minimal interfaces. As in, you can barely call them designed since they’re so very minimalist. This feels like a deliberate contrast to the overwhelming spectacle that permeates, say, the MCU. They certainly reduce the thing down to just the cause and effect that are important to the story. Following are some examples that illustrate this hyperminimalism.

Fingernails—fingernail-tester.
No One Will Save You—observation pod.
57 Seconds—time ring.
Landscape with Invisible Hand—translation device (there on the desk under the alien’s hand)

This could be a cost-saving tactic, but per the default New Criticism stance of this blog, we’ll take it as a design choice and note it’s trending.

Shout-out: Interface Comedy

I want to give a special shout-out to interface-related comedy over the past year.

Smoking Causes Coughing

The first comes from the French gonzo horror sci-fi Smoking Causes Coughing. In a nested story told by a barracuda that is on a grill being cooked, Tony is the harried manager of a log-processing plant whose day is ruined by her nephew’s somehow becoming stuck in an industrial wood shredder. Over the scene she attempts to reverse the motor, failing each time, partly owing to the unlabeled interface and bad documentation. It’s admittedly not sci-fi, just in a sci-fi film, and a very gory, very hilarious bit of interface humor in an schizoid film.

Guardians of the Galaxy 3

The second is Guardians of the Galaxy 3. About a fifth of the way into the movie, the team spacewalks from the Milano to the surface of Orgocorp to infiltrate it. Once on the surface, Peter, who still pines for alternate-timeline Gamora, tries to strike up a private conversation with her. The suits have a forearm interface featuring a single row of colored stay-state buttons that roughly match the colors of the spacesuits they’re wearing. Quill presses the blue one and tries in vain to rekindle the spark between him and Gamora in a private conversation. But then a minute into the conversation, Mantis cuts in…

  • Mantis
  • Peter you know this is an open line, right?
  • Peter
  • What?
  • Mantis
  • We’re listening to everything you’re saying.
  • Drax
  • And it is painful.
  • Quill
  • And you’re just telling me now‽
  • Nebula
  • We were hoping it would stop on its own.
  • Peter
  • But I switched it over to private!
  • Mantis
  • What color button did you push?
  • Peter
  • Blue! For the blue suit!
  • Drax
  • Oh no.
  • Nebula
  • Blue is the open line for everyone.
  • Mantis
  • Orange is for blue.
  • Peter
  • What‽
  • Mantis
  • Black is for orange. Yellow is for green. Green is for red. And red is for yellow.
  • Drax
  • No, yellow is for yellow. Green is for red. Red is for green.
  • Mantis
  • I don’t think so.
  • Drax
  • Try it then.
  • Mantis (screaming)
  • HELLO!
  • Peter writhes in pain
  • Mantis
  • You were right.
  • Peter
  • How the hell and I supposed to know all of that?
  • Drax
  • Seems intuitive.

The Marvels

A third comedy bit happens in The Marvels, when Kamala Khan is nerding out over Monica Rambeau’s translucent S.H.I.E.L.D. tablet. She says…

  • Khan
  • Is this the new iPad? I haven’t seen it yet.
  • Rambeau
  • I wish.
  • Khan
  • Wait, if this is all top secret information, why is it on a clear case?

Rambeau has no answer, but there are, in fact, some answers.

Anyway, I want to give a shout-out to the writers for demonstrating with these comedy bits some self-awareness and good-natured self-owning of tropes. I see you and appreciate you. You are so valid.

Best Interfaces of 2023

But my favorite interfaces of 2023 come from Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. The interfaces throughout are highly stylized (so might be tough to perform the detailed analysis, which is this site’s bread-and-butter) but play the plot points perfectly.

In Across the Spider-Verse, while dealing difficulties with his home life and chasing down a new supervillain called The Spot, Miles Morales learns about The Society. The Society is a group of (thousands? Tens of thousands? of) Spider-people of every stripe and sort from across the Multiverse, whose overriding mission is to protect “canon” events in each universe that, no matter how painful, they believe are necessary to keep the fabric of reality from unraveling. It’s full of awesome interfaces.

Lyla is the general artificial intelligence that has a persistent volumetric avatar. She’s sassy and disagreeable and stylish and never runs, just teleports.

The wrist interfaces—called the Multiversal Gizmo—worn by members of The Society all present highly-contextual information with most-likely actions presented as buttons, and, as needed, volumetric alerts. Also note that Miguel’s Gizmo is longer, signaling his higher status within The Society.

Of special note is volumetric display that Spider Gwen uses to reconstruct the events at the Alchemax laboratory. The interface is so smart, telegraphs its complex functioning quickly and effectively, and describes a use that builds on conceivable but far-future applications of inference. The little dial that pops up allowing her to control time of the playback reminds me of Eye of Agamatto (though sadly I didn’t see evidence of the important speculative time-control details I’d provided in that analysis). The in-situ volumetric reconstruction reminds me of some of the speculative interfaces I’d proposed in the review of Deckard’s photo inspector from Blade Runner, and so was a big thrill to see.

All of the interfaces have style, are believable for the diegesis, and contribute to the narrative with efficiency. Congratulations to the team crafting these interfaces, and if you haven’t seen it yet, what are you waiting for? Go see it. It’s in a lot of places and the interfaces are awesome. (For full disclosure, I get no kickback from these referral links.)

Fritzes 2023 Winners

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The Fritzes award honors the best interfaces in a full-length motion picture in the past year. Interfaces play a special role in our movie-going experience, and are a craft all their own that does not otherwise receive focused recognition. Awards are given for Best Believable, Best Narrative, Audience Choices, and Best Interfaces (overall).

As we know, 2022 marked the third year of the COVID pandemic, but people just seemed to want to move on, venturing back into cinema en mass. Studios reportedly had tight protocols that still let them get big casts and crews onto sets and big movies made again. Surprisingly, the only category to not “fill up” with candidates features two animated films, which could have been made all remotely.

Best Believable

These movies’ interfaces adhere to solid HCI principles and believable interactions. They engage us in the story world by being convincing. The nominees for Best Believable were Belle and Apollo 10 1/2.

The winner of the Best Believable award for 2023 is Belle.

Belle

If Belle rubs you the wrong way for turning the volume on the Ugly Guy, Hot Wife trope up to 11, well, that’s because it’s a modern retelling of the OG, Beauty and the Beast. It adds layers of connections between a virtual world called U and the real world of Suzu and her “nerd in the chair” friend Hiro.

The interfaces within U are not what this award is for. It’s the interface to U and all the primary-diegesis interfaces throughout. They’re well-designed and often improved versions of tech we know. Take special note of the lovely and subtle in-ear device that forms the “neural connection” that drops users into the virtual world.

Please keep in mind 7 seconds is all IP law usually allows.

Trigger warning before you check it out: verbal abuse and threats of physical violence towards young children. But it all turns out OK in the end, thanks to our plucky heroes. Catch the movie on Amazon Prime.

Honorable Mention

I want to take a special aside to note one surprisingly spectacular interface in a movie otherwise full of rather derivative ones. In the movie Warriors of Future [sic], most of the interfaces lazily mimic ones seen in other films, without adding anything of particular note. But then there is one scene in which Taylor and Huo Naiguang, two of the eponymous warriors, must escape a collapsing building while fleeing ferocious insectoid aliens. In their heads-up displays, they are given real-time, easy-to read augmented reality instructions on exactly what to do when to get them to safety. It’s fantastic and cinegenic and I just loved this moment. It wasn’t enough to save the film from the weight of the rest of its tropes, but I wanted to give the scene an honorable mention.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen augmented-reality assistant tech do this, and do this so well.

Best Narrative

These movies’ interfaces blow us away with wonderful visuals and the richness of their future vision. They engross us in the story world by being spectacular. The nominees for Best Narrative were The Adam Project, Big Bug, and Strawberry Mansion

The winner of the Best Narrative award for 2023 is Strawberry Mansion.

Strawberry Mansion

In 2035, dreams are required to be recorded so that aspects within can be taxed. James Preble is a dream tax assessor who is sent to the home of artist Arabella Isadora to audit her older-model VHS dream recordings and determine what she owes. Entering her dreams, he comes to know and fall in love the dream version of herself, while in the outside world, psychopathic, capitalist forces threaten him even as he nearly loses himself in the dreamtime.

The interfaces are lo-fi and really well done, shaping the dystopian and absurdist world where the lines between taxes and dreams and advertising are losing their meaning. Keep a special eye out for the wonderfully disgusting (especially for a vegetarian) Cap’n Kelly fast food ordering interface (is the sack-of-chicken character a mediated avatar or an AI?), and the lovely touches that connect Isadora’s helmet and her VCR.

Watch it on Prime Video or Vudu.

Audience Choices

This year I present many Audience Choices awards. Across social media, the readership was invited to vote for their favorite, and the results tallied. The results are below.

Best Low-Fi

Between Strawberry Mansion, Brian & Charles, and the spectacular and narratively challenging anti-colonial Neptune Frost, low-fi sci-fi interfaces made their own special splash in 2022. This tactic lets filmmakers compete against the big-budget films with charm instead of money, and sets the work stylistically apart. I would not be surprised to see more of this in the years to come.

Audiences selected Strawberry Mansion as their favorite, and just looking at this thing, it’s easy to see why.

Best HUD

There were lots of HUDs this year, with audiences choosing between seven: The Adam Project, Big Bug, Lightyear, M3gan, Strawberry Mansion, Wakanda Forever, and Warriors of Future. It was a three-way tie between M3gan, Wakanda Forever, and Warriors of Future, requiring me to cast a tie-breaking vote.

So, congratulations to M3gan as the winner, notably for the lack of any obvious FUIgetry, even if I wasn’t sure why some framing rectangles were placed where they were, and the science of affective interfaces has proven dubious at best. It was still great stuff.

Best Sand Table

Sand tables are an important tool for telegraphing character’s plans to the audience and keeping commanders in the action with the grunts. Audiences had their pick between Black Adam, Lightyear, or Warriors of Future.

Audiences picked Lightyear. Congrats!

Best Reticle

Reticles are often an opportunity for a little indulgent opulence wherever they appear. Some nice reticles were seen in Thor: Love and Thunder, Lightyear, and Warriors of Future.

Thor: Love and Thunder walks away with the win for the reticles seen as the Guardians of the Galaxy—with Thor’s help of course—battle against the Booskan scum early in the film.

Best Big Red Warning

Big Red Warnings are important to show the audience that there’s an obstacle a character has just run into. Audiences had their pick of warnings from Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Lightyear, Thor: Love and Thunder, and Warriors of Future.

The winner is Lightyear, for any of the handful of red warnings throughout.

Best Interfaces

The movies nominated for Best Interfaces manage the extraordinary challenge of being believable and helping to paint a picture of the world of the story. They advance the state of the art in telling stories with speculative technology. The nominees for Best Narrative are The Batman, Black Adam, and Lightyear.

The winner of the Best Interfaces award for 2023 is Lightyear.

Lightyear

This movie tells the “real world” backstory of Buzz Lightyear, who audiences first met as the Quixotic, toyified version of the character in Toy Story. In the movie, Buzz makes a mistake that traps Star Command troops on a hostile planet. He tries to achieve faster-than-light travel that will help return everyone home, but returning from one particular mission he learns that Star Command has come under assault by a robot army under the leadership of the mysterious Zurg. With the help of a few plucky cadets and a robot cat named Sox, Buzz infiltrates Zurg’s ship, saves Star Command, and learns more about what makes a home.

Pixar has long been a powerhouse for awesome interface design, and the studio is in fine form here. The interfaces feel just real enough for immersion, and just narrative enough to signal plot points and do all that troublesome exposition about how stuff works in this world. Also Sox is hilarious, and a fine model for zoomorphic general AI. Oh—and on the way they also remembered to give their HUDs an augmented reality to identify currently-cloaked teammates. Really, nice job, Lightyear.

Catch Lightyear and appreciate its awesome interfaces on Disney Plus or amazon. And, hey, Pixar—I live right up the road. Have me over! 🙂

Congratulations to all the candidates and the winners. Thank you for helping advance the art and craft of speculative interfaces in cinema.

Is there something utterly fantastic that I missed? It’s possible. Let me know in the comments, I’d love to see what you’ve got.

Fritz 2023 Nominees

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It’s that time of year, when we look back at the sci-fi movies of the prior year to consider the challenges of on-screen interfaces and decide who did it best.

I admit a bit of frustration with the sci-fi movies in 2022. Many just didn’t need interfaces to tell their stories. Just no name a few that come to mind: Prey, Nope, Slash/Back, Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes, Next Exit. And many that did had interfaces that were just displays—and it’s hard to gauge the design if no character is using it. Of the rest, many looked very, very similar to stuff we’d seen before. Of course, that’s the way of cultural semiotics and the formalization of cinematic language, but for anyone looking at the body of work for progress—like, say, me—it can be frustrating.

Despite this, there were enough movies to mostly fill out nominees. The exception was Best Believable, for which there are only two.

See the trailers below, in alphabetical order for the category, and be sure and catch the shows so you can have opinions on them and cast an informed vote for the Audience Choice.

Note: There are some movies that might have been nominated but were only released in cinemas in 2022, and as of the time of this post do not have a home streaming option. Looking at you, Avatar: Way of Water. Those movies could not be included, and, as this award just relies on stuff I’ve seen, I may have missed some worthy stuff. Sorry about that, but one nerd does not an academy make.

Best Believable

These movies’ interfaces adhere to solid HCI principles and believable interactions. They engage us in the story world by being convincing. The nominees for Best Believable are Apollo 10 1/2 and Belle (with a focus on the main diegesis, not the virtual world).

Best Narrative

These movies’ interfaces blow us away with wonderful visuals and the richness of their future vision. They engross us in the story world by being spectacular. The nominees for Best Narrative are The Adam Project, Big Bug, and Strawberry Mansion.

Best Interfaces

The movies nominated for Best Interfaces manage the extraordinary challenge of being believable and helping to paint a picture of the world of the story. They advance the state of the art in telling stories with speculative technology. The nominees for Best Interfaces are The Batman, Black Adam, and Lightyear.

Audience Choices

This year I’m trying something new and offering up a whole slew of Audience Choice stuff: Best Lo-Fi interfaces, best Big Red Warning, best HUD, etc. This is partly a response to trope, but also an acknowledgement of trends.

See and vote for the Audience Choices at this Google Form:

https://forms.gle/NQSadzLHAfTHjGsAA

Dates

Winners will be announced near the end of March. I’ll lock Audience Choices on 12 March. I’ll probably share individual interfaces on Mastodon intermittently, which is where I moved the social media since the Muskification of Twitter. Happy, skeptical viewing.