Tag Archives: environmental suit

Fritzes 2026: Best Narrative

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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.

Today we’ll be covering Best Narrative. These movies’ interfaces blow us away with evocative visuals and the richness of their future vision. They engross us in the story world by being spectacular.

The 2026 Award goes to: Elio

Pixar consistently puts great thought into their animated interfaces, and Elio is no different. The little wearable personal devices that help the different intergalactic species all share a space are so simple, and provide both a bit of worldbuilding as well as moments of comedy. The incomprehensibility of the alien spaceship controls are a plot-critical, candy-colored glowing hoot (and reminiscent of another Pixar short, Lifted.) I loved the lemniscate-shaped AI encyclopedia that Elio consults when preparing for his negotiations. We should be able to talk to Wikipedia and not just its articles. (Though I wish the entries were more than just text and an image.) Also this film has the only example I’ve seen where one character acts as an environmental suit for another character (not pictured, but you know the scene).

A cartoon boy with dark hair, a cheerful expression, and a visible purple mark around one eye, holding a glowing device in his hand, set against a colorful, abstract background with sparkling effects.
A young animated boy with a patch over one eye, looking surprised as he discovers a glowing object in his hand, with colorful lights and floating creatures in the background.
A young animated boy with a robotic arm and one eye covered, appearing surprised in a colorful, glowing environment.
A hand interacting with a futuristic, holographic interface displaying colorful graphs and shapes in a dark environment.
A digital illustration of a Wi-Fi signal represented by concentric blue arcs with red signal points radiating outward, set against a dark background.
A close-up of a hand pressing a glowing red triangle button on a futuristic control panel, surrounded by various colorful buttons and glowing shapes.
A young boy looks anxious while seated at a colorful control panel filled with glowing buttons and screens, surrounded by vibrant futuristic elements.
A young boy with short hair and an eye patch is sitting at a control panel filled with colorful, glowing buttons and wires, looking worried as he manipulates the tangled connections.
A young boy with a worried expression is sitting at a control panel filled with colorful, glowing interfaces and buttons, surrounded by futuristic, sci-fi elements.
A child in a colorful outfit with a determined expression points at a glowing, futuristic interface with vibrant lights.
A character in a decorative emerald cloak with stars holds a glowing pink orb close to their chest.
A young boy with a black eye is focused on a floating holographic screen displaying glowing text, while a small, friendly jelly-like creature hovers nearby in a vibrant, otherworldly setting filled with colorful light effects.
A child in colorful clothing stands in awe, gazing at a vibrant, glowing spiraling formation emitting colorful lights against a purple background.

Also check out: Mickey 17

It’s a dark world where the hoarding class has made the working class so desperate that some people have to agree to be cloned for critical tasks that are likely death sentences. The interfaces in Mickey 17 help sell that very world, and even the ways that some folks use that same tech to eke out a little naughty joy amongst the drudgery. (With echoes of a similarly flirty interface from Starship Troopers.)

A group of scientists in white lab coats are gathered around a table, observing a figure lying on an examination table in a high-tech laboratory. The room features futuristic medical equipment and a glowing cylindrical machine in the background.
Close-up of a person's arm wearing a futuristic device with two buttons marked '17' and '18', while two other individuals are positioned in the background, one gesturing with hands raised.
A control room filled with multiple computer screens displaying various data and surveillance images, with a person wearing headphones focused on the monitors.
An overhead view of a person in a light-colored jumpsuit, sitting on the ground with their hands clasped. They are partially surrounded by rope. The image has a camera recording interface overlay.
A person wearing a helmet and goggles stands in a snowy landscape, holding a device with wires and a small light.
Three characters in a dimly lit setting, with one standing and holding a weapon, while another looks at a screen displaying surveillance footage. A seated character appears distressed.
An overhead view of a tablet displaying a diagram of various positions labeled with their names, including 'Pocket Rocket,' 'On a Roll,' 'Baring the Baby,' 'Flying Ninja,' and 'Modern Dance.' A person's hand is holding a stylus, pointing at the screen.
A view through blinds of a hand pressed against the wall, with a blurred figure in the background interacting with a control panel in a sci-fi setting.
A hand reaches to adjust a metallic globe on a stand, with another similar globe beside it, set in a dimly lit bar environment.
A man lying on a medical examination table with a headset equipped with sensors on his head, while a person in a lab coat leans over him in a clinical environment.
A medical scene featuring a scientist in a lab coat observing a complex device with lights and a tube connected to a patient lying on a table.

Also check out: Fantastic Four: First Steps

Marvel was once a main-stay for interfaces to study, but they’ve pointed their camera increasingly away from interfaces of late. So I was delighted to see Fantastic Four: First Steps bring to life interfaces from Jack Kirby’s Silver Age Fantastic Four. I don’t know if it was CGI, but I swear the giant, spherical quadrilateral screens are actual giant CRTs right down to the blurriness and chromatic aberration. If that’s CGI, it’s great attention to the detail from the reference material. All the spherical displays!

A blue spherical device displaying a countdown timer set to 35 seconds, with a digital screen. The background includes blurred buildings and equipment.
A close-up of a vintage monitor screen displaying a radar-like graph with velocity and trajectory data, featuring a grid background and illuminated control buttons nearby.
Close-up view of a futuristic control panel displaying a warning about fuel levels, along with buttons and dials for operation.
A futuristic control panel with multiple screens displaying diagnostic information, including a low fuel alert and a skeletal diagram, suggesting a sci-fi setting.
A close-up view of a person's hands holding controls in front of a monitor displaying a blue grid and a 3D object representation, suggesting a virtual or space environment.
Interior view of a futuristic control room featuring two characters with rocky textured bodies, facing multiple screens displaying scientific data and blueprints.
A futuristic control room with red lighting, featuring two figures seated at high-tech consoles filled with screens and controls.
A futuristic control room with curved walls and multiple screens displaying data, featuring several people interacting with the technology.
A close-up of a retro monitor displaying urgent news about Earth in peril, featuring the text 'EARTH IN PERIL! DEVELOPING STORY' alongside a robotic figure in a sci-fi setting.
A person in a suit standing in front of large circular screens displaying various graphs and data visualizations in a futuristic control room.

The “big” award in the Fritzes is Best Interface, but to amp up the anticipation, let’s look at some of the idiosyncratic awards from 2025 first.

Next up: The best comedy-horror interface

Helmet transition

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The spherical helmet that Barbarella wears with her environmental suit can change from completely reflective to completely translucent. To do so she reaches with both hands and touches controls (never shown) on the back of the helmet to activate the transition. Over 40 seconds the reflectivity withdraws into the base of the helmet, revealing Barbarella’’s face through the glass.

Direct exposure to most of the electromagnetic spectrum is dangerous. To avoid Barbarella’s accidentally frying her own head in space, the suit must be designed against accidental activation. The strategy shown is called two-hand trip, which requires two hands to touch different controls at the same time to start the process. This is most often used in machines where you want hands out of the way of processes that could pinch or cut, but that aren’t dangerous after the process begins. In this case it’s less about mechanical danger than the risks with exposure.

Another strategy would be to use two-hand control, which would require constant contact during the transition. But since this transition is so slow (and presuming there is some undo mechanism that we never see) having this “two-hand trip” is not disastrous. If something or someone accidentally tripped it, she has more than enough time to recover.

On the other hand, 40 seconds is a long time for anyone to wait for things in the days of switchable glass. If your Barbarella was less dreamy-eyed & patient than this one, you might have to make a different tradeoff.

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