I’m working on posts about a British horror movie, a Kollywood sci-fi movie, and a post that ties together Chapter 11 of Dungeon Crawler Carl, sci-fi, and Russian Formalist Boris Tomashevsky. I’m also beginning a study on the narrative purposes of interfaces in sci-fi. But all progress has stopped with the news last week that Dolly Parton and Tim Curry have passed.
It’s parasocial, but the feels are real, and it was a lot to bear on top of currentsystemicanxieties. I’m GenX and both of these entertainers were icons. Parton perhaps even more so because of her extensive humanitarian work, but she only did one sci-fi thing, with negligible interfaces. Curry had a much more extensive filmography to draw from. So to honor him, I thought to review one of his films.
There are a number of sci-fi properties to pick from (Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Earth 2,Captain Planet and the Planeteers, to name a few), but he is probably best known for his outrageous and iconic performance as Dr. Frank-N-Furter from the stage play and subsequent 1975 movie The Rocky Horror Picture Show. That show has a place dear to my heart, so we’re going to review that.
It’s a complicated thing to analyze, but it does have a plot-centric set of interfaces in it, so let’s go. Warning: These are terrible interfaces for real-world modeling. But they weren’t meant to be good, per se, and I feel I have to do something.
Release date: 29 September 1975
Caveats about the summary
Some notes before we begin a plot summary.
It’s odd to describe this like it’s some regular cinema experience that you watch, focused on it, from beginning to end. It became a cult classic through decades of live midnight screenings with audience members in costume performing the movie in front of the screen as it’s happening, raucous audience shout-outs “Buy an umbrella!”, and cued events (like water pistols during the Act I rain storm). I’ll describe it straight through, but few ever receive it or remember it this way.
It’s a musical and so the flow of events can sometimes be broken by—and sometimes informed by—musical numbers, but these are not called out below unless they are important to the plot. That leaves some of the most memorable things about the film unmentioned, such as the “Time Warp”.
The movie is sardonically self-aware, with a narrator and characters breaking the fourth wall, a mix of diegetic and non-diegetic musical numbers, and beats played for comedy rather than for maintaining a believable or consistent internal world. Some of it happily resists diegetic explanation.
It’s partly a send-up of B-movie American and British science fiction films of the mid-20th century, so understanding its references and choices depends on being familiar with that sub-genre of movie.
Plot is very secondary to camp, flouting taboos, poking fun at trope, musical numbers, and horror.
There is a narrator in the film that provides occasional commentary but does not contribute to the plot, so goes unmentioned.
This description makes the story seem more coherent than it actually is.
I’ll employ my usual neutral tone that I use for summaries, but there is a huge discrepancy between that tone and the vibe on screen.
All that said, it still helps to have this summary on hand if you don’t know the film (or have never bothered to think about it as a narrative) to put its interfaces in something approaching context.
Caption
Plot summary
After leaving a wedding in “Home of Happiness” that is Denton, Texas, fiancés Brad and Janet get a flat tire outside a sprawling gothic castle. Together they knock on the door to get some help (for the youth: time was that phones had to be tethered to walls by cords or they could not work, so you had to go to them) only to stumble into a strange convention where an eccentric named Dr. Frank-N-Furter is showcasing the culmination of a scientific project: The vivification of a frankensteined muscle man named Rocky.
Just after Rocky is brought to life, a tough guy on a motorcycle named Eddie breaks out of a Deep Freeze storage room off the main chamber. He has a bloody scar across his forehead. He harasses the guests and hugs Columbia, one of Frank’s helpers, who is Eddie’s lover. Furious that his demonstration was interrupted, Frank-N-Furter grabs a pickaxe and chases Eddie back into the cold storage where he brutally murders him, as Columbia looks on and screams. Afterward Frank-N-Furter finishes his number, and walks Rocky to a makeshift marriage chamber. The scene ends. (Note this summary is a very lossy compression—at this point we’re halfway through the runtime of the movie.)
Brad and Janet are escorted to separate rooms to sleep the night. In disguise, Frank-N-Furter visits each of them in turn and attempts to seduce them, as castle staff watch through monitors. Meanwhile Riff Raff harasses Rocky, scaring him with the flames of a candelabra so much that Rocky escapes his chains and flees through the castle. Riff Raff alerts Frank-N-Furter, still in Brad’s room, mid-seduction.
Janet finds her way to the laboratory where she operates the monitor (why?) and sees Brad and Frank-N-Furter in bed. Jealous and feeling jilted, she finds Rocky herself and seduces him, as Columbia and Magenta watch from a monitor in another room. Frank-N-Furter, Brad, and Riff Raff enter the laboratory and Rocky and Janet hide in the laboratory vat in which Rocky was animated. On the monitor, they see a figure approach the front door and enter in search of something.
Brad remarks that the figure is Dr. Scott, his old science teacher and friend. Frank-N-Furter tells Brad that Dr. Scott works for a department in the Federal Bureau of Investigation looking into aliens (yes, kind of an early X–Files.)
Frank-N-Furter heads to the instrument panel and operates a Triple Contact Electro Magnet that pulls Dr. Scott’s wheelchair up the stairs, through multiple rooms and hallways, and to the instrument panel. In their confrontation several things are revealed.
Frank-N-Furter learns that Brad and Dr. Scott know each other
Dr. Scott came to the castle to find his missing nephew Eddie
Frank-N-Furter expresses paranoid concerns that Brad was doing reconnaissance for Dr. Scott
Janet and Rocky are discovered hiding and their tryst exposed
The scene ends with Magenta sounding a dinner gong and Frank-N-Furter saying that formal dress to the dinner party is optional. (At no point prior to this was a dinner party mentioned.)
During the meal, Dr. Scott reveals that he received a letter from Eddie written in blood reading, “I’M OUT OF MY HED. [sic] O HURRY OR I MAY BE DEAD! THEY MUSN’T CARRY OUT THEIR EVIL DEEDS. LOVE, EDDIE.” In response, Frank-N-Furter reveals with a pull of the tablecloth that they have been eating meat from Eddie’s corpse, which has been sadistically placed in an open coffin beneath the glass dining table. Screaming in fear, Janet runs to Rocky’s arms, which infuriates Frank-N-Furter. He slaps Janet and chases her around the castle with others in pursuit.
They wind up back in the laboratory where Frank-N-Furter activates a Sonic Transducer, which immobilizes Janet, Brad, and Dr. Scott. Then he has Magenta activate the Medusa, which turns each of them to stone and somehow simultaneously evaporates their clothing. Columbia picks this moment to confront Frank-N-Furter, explaining that she loved him until he dumped her. She insists that he choose between her and Rocky. Unbothered, Frank-N-Furter has Magenta Medusa her and Rocky to stone, as well. We then learn that Frank-N-Furter had taken half of Eddie’s brain to supply Rocky.
As part of a “floor show” (the purpose of which is never explained) Frank-N-Furter dresses the stone characters in drag and makeup and places them on a proscenium stage where Magenta uses a backstage de-Medusa to un-stone them. In this state they confess through song that they have enjoyed the freedom offered by decadence. Frank-N-Furter appears on stage with them and sings a song valorizing hedonism and committing one’s self to one’s deepest desires. The closing of the number reveals a swimming pool hidden beneath the stage in which they all writhe together.
The song is interrupted by Riff Raff and Magenta, wearing alien uniforms and sporting new hairdos. Riff Raff aims a three-pronged antimatter weapon at them, and announces that the tables have turned: Frank-N-Furter’s mission has failed. He takes control of the mission, proclaims Frank-N-Furter his prisoner, and begins the process of returning their castle to their home planet of Transsexual in the galaxy Transylvania.
Before they leave, Frank-N-Furter sings a wistful song about going home. (Which is achingly poignant, given his recent passing.) Riff Raff tells Frank-N-Furter that he won’t be returning home but will be killed instead. He shoots Columbia, and then Frank-N-Furter. Rocky grabs Frank-N-Furter’s body and tries to flee up the set, but reaching the top, he is overcome by more antimatter beams and falls with Frank-N-Furter’s body into the pool.
Riff Raff gives the humans just enough time to escape the castle before it takes off into the sky beneath a rainbow that appears in the sky just for the occasion.
Again, please attend the caveats listed above. The summary complete, we can begin to look at the interfaces.
Next up:The monitors seen throughout the castle(currently scheduled for 8 Sep 2026)
This is for you, Tim, and for everyone who made this film what it is today.
Our next 3D file browsing system is from the 1994 film Disclosure. Thanks to site reader Patrick H Lauke for the suggestion.
Like Jurassic Park, Disclosure is based on a Michael Crichton novel, although this time without any dinosaurs. (Would-be scriptwriters should compare the relative success of these two films when planning a study program.) The plot of the film is corporate infighting within Digicom, manufacturer of high tech CD-ROM drives—it was the 1990s—and also virtual reality systems. Tom Sanders, executive in charge of the CD-ROM production line, is being set up to take the blame for manufacturing failures that are really the fault of cost-cutting measures by rival executive Meredith Johnson.
The Corridor: Hardware Interface
The virtual reality system is introduced at about 40 minutes, using the narrative device of a product demonstration within the company to explain to the attendees what it does. The scene is nicely done, conveying all the important points we need to know in two minutes. (To be clear, some of the images used here come from a later scene in the film, but it’s the same system in both.)
The process of entangling yourself with the necessary hardware and software is quite distinct from interacting with the VR itself, so let’s discuss these separately, starting with the physical interface.
Tom wearing VR headset and one glove, being scanned. Disclosure (1994)
In Disclosure the virtual reality user wears a headset and one glove, all connected by cables to the computer system. Like most virtual reality systems, the headset is responsible for visual display, audio, and head movement tracking; the glove for hand movement and gesture tracking.
There are two “laser scanners” on the walls. These are the planar blue lights, which scan the user’s body at startup. After that they track body motion, although since the user still has to wear a glove, the scanners presumably just track approximate body movement and orientation without fine detail.
Lastly, the user stands on a concave hexagonal plate covered in embedded white balls, which allows the user to “walk” on the spot.
Closeup of user standing on curved surface of white balls. Disclosure (1994)
Searching for Evidence
The scene we’re most interested in takes place later in the film, the evening before a vital presentation which will determine Tom’s future. He needs to search the company computer files for evidence against Meredith, but discovers that his normal account has been blocked from access. He knows though that the virtual reality demonstrator is on display in a nearby hotel suite, and also knows about the demonstrator having unlimited access. He sneaks into the hotel suite to use The Corridor. Tom is under a certain amount of time pressure because a couple of company VIPs and their guests are downstairs in the hotel and might return at any time.
The first step for Tom is to launch the virtual reality system. This is done from an Indy workstation, using the regular Unix command line.
The command line to start the virtual reality system. Disclosure (1994)
Next he moves over to the VR space itself. He puts on the glove but not the headset, presses a key on the keyboard (of the VR computer, not the workstation), and stands still for a moment while he is scanned from top to bottom.
Real world Tom, wearing one VR glove, waits while the scanners map his body. Disclosure (1994)
On the left is the Indy workstation used to start the VR system. In the middle is the external monitor which will, in a moment, show the third person view of the VR user as seen earlier during the product demonstration.
Now that Tom has been scanned into the system, he puts on the headset and enters the virtual space.
The Corridor: Virtual Interface
“The Corridor,” as you’ve no doubt guessed, is a three dimensional file browsing program. It is so named because the user will walk down a corridor in a virtual building, the walls lined with “file cabinets” containing the actual computer files.
Three important aspects of The Corridor were mentioned during the product demonstration earlier in the film. They’ll help structure our tour of this interface, so let’s review them now, as they all come up in our discussion of the interfaces.
There is a voice-activated help system, which will summon a virtual “Angel” assistant.
Since the computers themselves are part of a multi-user network with shared storage, there can be more than one user “inside” The Corridor at a time. Users who do not have access to the virtual reality system will appear as wireframe body shapes with a 2D photo where the head should be.
There are no access controls and so the virtual reality user, despite being a guest or demo account, has unlimited access to all the company files. This is spectacularly bad design, but necessary for the plot.
With those bits of system exposition complete, now we can switch to Tom’s own first person view of the virtual reality environment.
Virtual world Tom watches his hands rezzing up, right hand with glove. Disclosure (1994)
There isn’t a real background yet, just abstract streaks. The avatar hands are rezzing up, and note that the right hand wearing the glove has a different appearance to the left. This mimics the real world, so eases the transition for the user.
Overlaid on the virtual reality view is a Digicom label at the bottom and four corner brackets which are never explained, although they do resemble those used in cameras to indicate the preferred viewing area.
To the left is a small axis indicator, the three green lines labeled X, Y, and Z. These show up in many 3D applications because, silly though it sounds, it is easy in a 3D computer environment to lose track of directions or even which way is up. A common fix for the user being unable to see anything is just to turn 180 degrees around.
We then switch to a third person view of Tom’s avatar in the virtual world.
Tom is fully rezzed up, within cloud of visual static. Disclosure (1994)
This is an almost photographic-quality image. To remind the viewers that this is in the virtual world rather than real, the avatar follows the visual convention described in chapter 4 of Make It So for volumetric projections, with scan lines and occasional flickers. An interesting choice is that the avatar also wears a “headset”, but it is translucent so we can see the face.
Now that he’s in the virtual reality, Tom has one more action needed to enter The Corridor. He pushes a big button floating before him in space.
Tom presses one button on a floating control panel. Disclosure (1994)
This seems unnecessary, but we can assume that in the future of this platform, there will be more programs to choose from.
The Corridor rezzes up, the streaks assembling into wireframe components which then slide together as the surfaces are shaded. Tom doesn’t have to wait for the process to complete before he starts walking, which suggests that this is a Level Of Detail (LOD) implementation where parts of the building are not rendered in detail until the user is close enough for it to be worth doing.
Tom enters The Corridor. Nearby floor and walls are fully rendered, the more distant section is not complete. Disclosure (1994)
The architecture is classical, rendered with the slightly artificial-looking computer shading that is common in 3D computer environments because it needs much less computation than trying for full photorealism.
Instead of a corridor this is an entire multistory building. It is large and empty, and as Tom is walking bits of architecture reshape themselves, rather like the interior of Hogwarts in Harry Potter.
Although there are paintings on some of the walls, there aren’t any signs, labels, or even room numbers. Tom has to wander around looking for the files, at one point nearly “falling” off the edge of the floor down an internal air well. Finally he steps into one archway room entrance and file cabinets appear in the walls.
Tom enters a room full of cabinets. Disclosure (1994)
Unlike the classical architecture around him, these cabinets are very modern looking with glowing blue light lines. Tom has found what he is looking for, so now begins to manipulate files rather than browsing.
Virtual Filing Cabinets
The four nearest cabinets according to the titles above are
Communications
Operations
System Control
Research Data.
There are ten file drawers in each. The drawers are unmarked, but labels only appear when the user looks directly at it, so Tom has to move his head to centre each drawer in turn to find the one he wants.
Tom looks at one particular drawer to make the title appear. Disclosure (1994)
The fourth drawer Tom looks at is labeled “Malaysia”. He touches it with the gloved hand and it slides out from the wall.
Tom withdraws his hand as the drawer slides open. Disclosure (1994)
Inside are five “folders” which, again, are opened by touching. The folder slides up, and then three sheets, each looking like a printed document, slide up and fan out.
Axis indicator on left, pointing down. One document sliding up from a folder. Disclosure (1994)
Note the tilted axis indicator at the left. The Y axis, representing a line extending upwards from the top of Tom’s head, is now leaning towards the horizontal because Tom is looking down at the file drawer. In the shot below, both the folder and then the individual documents are moving up so Tom’s gaze is now back to more or less level.
Close up of three “pages” within a virtual document. Disclosure (1994)
At this point the film cuts away from Tom. Rival executive Meredith, having been foiled in her first attempt at discrediting Tom, has decided to cover her tracks by deleting all the incriminating files. Meredith enters her office and logs on to her Indy workstation. She is using a Command Line Interface (CLI) shell, not the standard SGI Unix shell but a custom Digicom program that also has a graphical menu. (Since it isn’t three dimensional it isn’t interesting enough to show here.)
Tom uses the gloved hand to push the sheets one by one to the side after scanning the content.
Tom scrolling through the pages of one folder by swiping with two fingers. Disclosure (1994)
Quick note: This is harder than it looks in virtual reality. In a 2D GUI moving the mouse over an interface element is obvious. In three dimensions the user also has to move their hand forwards or backwards to get their hand (or finger) in the right place, and unless there is some kind of haptic feedback it isn’t obvious to the user that they’ve made contact.
Tom now receives a nasty surprise.
The shot below shows Tom’s photorealistic avatar at the left, standing in front of the open file cabinet. The green shape on the right is the avatar of Meredith who is logged in to a regular workstation. Without the laser scanners and cameras her avatar is a generic wireframe female humanoid with a face photograph stuck on top. This is excellent design, making The Corridor usable across a range of different hardware capabilities.
Tom sees the Meredith avatar appear. Disclosure (1994)
Why does The Corridor system place her avatar here? A multiuser computer system, or even just a networked file server, obviously has to know who is logged on. Unix systems in general and command line shells also track which directory the user is “in”, the current working directory. Meredith is using her CLI interface to delete files in a particular directory so The Corridor can position her avatar in the corresponding virtual reality location. Or rather, the avatar glides into position rather than suddenly popping into existence: Tom is only surprised because the documents blocked his virtual view.
Quick note: While this is plausible, there are technical complications. Command line users often open more than one shell at a time in different directories. In such a case, what would The Corridor do? Duplicate the wireframe avatar in each location? In the real world we can’t be in more than one place at a time, would doing so contradict the virtual reality metaphor?
There is an asymmetry here in that Tom knows Meredith is “in the system” but not vice versa. Meredith could in theory use CLI commands to find out who else is logged on and whether anyone was running The Corridor, but she would need to actively seek out that information and has no reason to do so. It didn’t occur to Tom either, but he doesn’t need to think about it, the virtual reality environment conveys more information about the system by default.
We briefly cut away to Meredith confirming her CLI delete command. Tom sees this as the file drawer lid emitting beams of light which rotate down. These beams first erase the floating sheets, then the folders in the drawer. The drawer itself now has a red “DELETED” label and slides back into the wall.
Tom watches Meredith deleting the files in an open drawer. Disclosure (1994)
Tom steps further into the room. The same red labels appear on the other file drawers even though they are currently closed.
Tom watches Meredith deleting other, unopened, drawers. Disclosure (1994)
Talking to an Angel
Tom now switches to using the system voice interface, saying “Angel I need help” to bring up the virtual reality assistant. Like everything else we’ve seen in this VR system the “angel” rezzes up from a point cloud, although much more quickly than the architecture: people who need help tend to be more impatient and less interested in pausing to admire special effects.
The voice assistant as it appears within VR. Disclosure (1994)
Just in case the user is now looking in the wrong direction the angel also announces “Help is here” in a very natural sounding voice.
The angel is rendered with white robe, halo, harp, and rapidly beating wings. This is horribly clichéd, but a help system needs to be reassuring in appearance as well as function. An angel appearing as a winged flying serpent or wheel of fire would be more original and authentic (yes, really: Biblically Accurate Angels) but users fleeing in terror would seriously impact the customer satisfaction scores.
Now Tom has a short but interesting conversation with the angel, beginning with a question:
Tom
Is there any way to stop these files from being deleted?
Angel
I’m sorry, you are not level five.
Tom
Angel, you’re supposed to protect the files!
Angel
Access control is restricted to level five.
Tom has made the mistake, as described in chapter 9 Anthropomorphism of the book, of ascribing more agency to this software program than it actually has. He thinks he is engaged in a conversational interface (chapter 6 Sonic Interfaces) with a fully autonomous system, which should therefore be interested in and care about the wellbeing of the entire system. Which it doesn’t, because this is just a limited-command voice interface to a guide.
Even though this is obviously scripted, rather than a genuine error I think this raises an interesting question for real world interface designers: do users expect that an interface with higher visual quality/fidelity will be more realistic in other aspects as well? If a voice interface assistant has a simple polyhedron with no attempt at photorealism (say, like Bit in Tron) or with zoomorphism (say, like the search bear in Until the End of the World) will users adjust their expectations for speech recognition downwards? I’m not aware of any research that might answer this question. Readers?
Despite Tom’s frustration, the angel has given an excellent answer – for a guide. A very simple help program would have recited the command(s) that could be used to protect files against deletion. Which would have frustrated Tom even more when he tried to use one and got some kind of permission denied error. This program has checked whether the user can actually use commands before responding.
This does contradict the earlier VR demonstration where we were told that the user had unlimited access. I would explain this as being “unlimited read access, not write”, but the presenter didn’t think it worthwhile to go into such detail for the mostly non-technical audience.
Tom is now aware that he is under even more time pressure as the Meredith avatar is still moving around the room. Realising his mistake, he uses the voice interface as a query language.
“Show me all communications with Malaysia.” “Telephone or video?” “Video.”
This brings up a more conventional looking GUI window because not everything in virtual reality needs to be three-dimensional. It’s always tempting for a 3D programmer to re-implement everything, but it’s also possible to embed 2D GUI applications into a virtual world.
Tom looks at a conventional 2D display of file icons inside VR. Disclosure (1994)
The window shows a thumbnail icon for each recorded video conference call. This isn’t very helpful, so Tom again decides that a voice query will be much faster than looking at each one in turn.
“Show me, uh, the last transmission involving Meredith.”
There’s a short 2D transition effect swapping the thumbnail icon display for the video call itself, which starts playing at just the right point for plot purposes.
Tom watches a previously recorded video call made by Meredith (right). Disclosure (1994)
While Tom is watching and listening, Meredith is still typing commands. The camera orbits around behind the video conference call window so we can see the Meredith avatar approach, which also shows us that this window is slightly three dimensional, the content floating a short distance in front of the frame. The film then cuts away briefly to show Meredith confirming her “kill all” command. The video conference recordings are deleted, including the one Tom is watching.
Tom is informed that Meredith (seen here in the background as a wireframe avatar) is deleting the video call. Disclosure (1994)
This is also the moment when the downstairs VIPs return to the hotel suite, so the scene ends with Tom managing to sneak out without being detected.
Virtual reality has saved the day for Tom. The documents and video conference calls have been deleted by Meredith, but he knows that they once existed and has a colleague retrieve the files he needs from the backup tapes. (Which is good writing: the majority of companies shown in film and TV never seem to have backups for files, no matter how vital.) Meredith doesn’t know that he knows, so he has the upper hand to expose her plot.
Analysis
How believable is the interface?
I won’t spend much time on the hardware, since our focus is on file browsing in three dimensions. From top to bottom, the virtual reality system starts as believable and becomes less so.
Hardware
The headset and glove look like real VR equipment, believable in 1994 and still so today. Having only one glove is unusual, and makes impossible some of the common gesture actions described in chapter 5 of Make It So, which require both hands.
The “laser scanners” that create the 3D geometry and texture maps for the 3D avatar and perform real time body tracking would more likely be cameras, but that would not sound as cool.
And lastly the walking platform apparently requires our user to stand on large marbles or ball bearings and stay balanced while wearing a headset. Uh…maybe…no. Apologetics fails me. To me it looks like it would be uncomfortable to walk on, almost like deterrent paving.
Software
The Corridor, unlike the 3D file browser used in Jurassic Park, is a special effect created for the film. It was a mostly-plausible, near future system in 1994, except for the photorealistic avatar. Usually this site doesn’t discuss historical context (the “new criticism” stance), but I think in this case it helps to explain how this interface would have appeared to audiences almost two decades ago.
I’ll start with the 3D graphics of the virtual building. My initial impression was that The Corridor could have been created as an interactive program in 1994, but that was my memory compressing the decade. During the 1990s 3D computer graphics, both interactive and CGI, improved at a phenomenal rate. The virtual building would not have been interactive in 1994, was possible on the most powerful systems six years later in 2000, and looks rather old-fashioned compared to what the game consoles of the 21st C can achieve.
For the voice interface I made the opposite mistake. Voice interfaces on phones and home computing appliances have become common in the second decade of the 21st C, but in reality are much older. Apple Macintosh computers in 1994 had text-to-speech synthesis with natural sounding voices and limited vocabulary voice command recognition. (And without needing an Internet connection!) So the voice interface in the scene is believable.
The multi-user aspects of The Corridor were possible in 1994. The wireframe avatars for users not in virtual reality are unflattering or perhaps creepy, but not technically difficult. As a first iteration of a prototype system it’s a good attempt to span a range of hardware capabilities.
The virtual reality avatar, though, is not believable for the 1990s and would be difficult today. Photographs of the body, made during the startup scan, could be used as a texture map for the VR avatar. But live video of the face would be much more difficult, especially when the face is partly obscured by a headset.
How well does the interface inform the narrative of the story?
The virtual reality system in itself is useful to the overall narrative because it makes the Digicom company seem high tech. Even in 1994 CD-ROM drives weren’t very interesting.
The Corridor is essential to the tension of the scene where Tom uses it to find the files, because otherwise the scene would be much shorter and really boring. If we ignore the virtual reality these are the interface actions:
Tom reads an email.
Meredith deletes the folder containing those emails.
Tom finds a folder full of recorded video calls.
Tom watches one recorded video call.
Meredith deletes the folder containing the video calls.
Imagine how this would have looked if both were using a conventional 2D GUI, such as the Macintosh Finder or MS Windows Explorer. Double click, press and drag, double click…done.
The Corridor slows down Tom’s actions and makes them far more visible and understandable. Thanks to the virtual reality avatar we don’t have to watch an actor push a mouse around. We see him moving and swiping, be surprised and react; and the voice interface adds extra emotion and some useful exposition. It also helps with the plot, giving Tom awareness of what Meredith is doing without having to actively spy on her, or look at some kind of logs or recordings later on.
Meredith, though, can’t use the VR system because then she’d be aware of Tom as well. Using a conventional workstation visually distinguishes and separates Meredith from Tom in the scene.
So overall, though the “action” is pretty mundane, it’s crucial to the plot, and the VR interface helps make this interesting and more engaging.
How well does the interface equip the character to achieve their goals?
As described in the film itself, The Corridor is a prototype for demonstrating virtual reality. As a file browser it’s awful, but since Tom has lost all his normal privileges this is the only system available, and he does manage to eventually find the files he needs.
At the start of the scene, Tom spends quite some time wandering around a vast multi-storey building without a map, room numbers, or even coordinates overlaid on his virtual view. Which seems rather pointless because all the files are in one room anyway. As previously discussed for Johnny Mnemonic, walking or flying everywhere in your file system seems like a good idea at first, but often becomes tedious over time. Many actual and some fictional 3D worlds give users the ability to teleport directly to any desired location.
Then the file drawers in each cabinet have no labels either, so Tom has to look carefully at each one in turn. There is so much more the interface could be doing to help him with his task, and even help the users of the VR demo learn and explore its technology as well.
Contrast this with Meredith, who uses her command line interface and 2D GUI to go through files like a chainsaw.
Tom becomes much more efficient with the voice interface. Which is just as well, because if he hadn’t, Meredith would have deleted the video conference recordings while he was still staring at virtual filing cabinets. However neither the voice interface nor the corresponding file display need three dimensional graphics.
There is hope for version 2.0 of The Corridor, even restricting ourselves to 1994 capabilities. The first and most obvious is to copy 2D GUI file browsers, or the 3D file browser from Jurassic Park, and show the corresponding text name next to each graphical file or folder object. The voice interface is so good that it should be turned on by default without requiring the angel. And finally add some kind of map overlay with a you are here moving dot, like the maps that players in 3D games such as Doom could display with a keystroke.
Film making challenge: VR on screen
Virtual reality (or augmented reality systems such as Hololens) provide a better viewing experience for 3D graphics by creating the illusion of real three dimensional space rather than a 2D monitor. But it is always a first person view and unlike conventional 2D monitors nobody else can usually see what the VR user is seeing without a deliberate mirroring/debugging display. This is an important difference from other advanced or speculative technologies that film makers might choose to include. Showing a character wielding a laser pistol instead of a revolver or driving a hover car instead of a wheeled car hardly changes how to stage a scene, but VR does.
So, how can we show virtual reality in film?
There’s the first-person view corresponding to what the virtual reality user is seeing themselves. (Well, half of what they see since it’s not stereographic, but it’s cinema VR, so close enough.) This is like watching a screencast of someone else playing a first person computer game, the original active experience of the user becoming passive viewing by the audience. Most people can imagine themselves in the driving seat of a car and thus make sense of the turns and changes of speed in a first person car chase, but the film audience probably won’t be familiar with the VR system depicted and will therefore have trouble understanding what is happening. There’s also the problem that viewing someone else’s first-person view, shifting and changing in response to their movements rather than your own, can make people disoriented or nauseated.
A third-person view is better for showing the audience the character and the context in which they act. But not the diegetic real-world third-person view, which would be the character wearing a geeky headset and poking at invisible objects. As seen in Disclosure, the third person view should be within the virtual reality.
But in doing that, now there is a new problem: the avatar in virtual reality representing the real character. If the avatar is too simple the audience may not identify it with the real world character and it will be difficult to show body language and emotion. More realistic CGI avatars are increasingly expensive and risk falling into the Uncanny Valley. Since these films are science fiction rather than factual, the easy solution is to declare that virtual reality has achieved the goal of being entirely photorealistic and just film real actors and sets. Adding the occasional ripple or blur to the real world footage to remind the audience that it’s meant to be virtual reality, again as seen in Disclosure, is relatively cheap and quick. So, solving all these problems results in the cinematic trope we can call Extradiegetic Avatars, which are third-person, highly-lifelike “renderings” of characters, with a telltale Hologram Projection Imperfection for audience readability, that may or may not be possible within the world of the film itself.
The Gendered AI series filled out many more posts than I’d originally planned. (And there were several more posts on the cutting room floor.)
I’ll bet some of my readership are wishing I’d just get back to the bread-and-butter of this site, which is reviews of interfaces in movies. OK. Let’s do it. (But first go vote up Gendered AI for SxSW20 takesaminutehelpsaton!)
Since we’re still in the self-declared year of sci-fi AI here on scifiinterfaces.com, let’s turn our collective attention to one of the best depictions of AI in cinema history, Colossus: The Forbin Project.
Release Date: 8 April 1970 (USA)
Overview
Dr. Forbin leads a team of scientists who have created an AI with the goal of preventing war. It does not go as planned.
Dr. Forbin, a computer scientist working for the U.S. government, solely oversees the initialization of a high-security, hill-sized power plant. (It’s a spectacular sequence that goes wasted since he’s literally the only one inside the facility at the time.) Then he joins a press conference being held by the U.S. President where they announce that control of the nuclear arsenal is being handled by the AI they have named “Colossus.” Here’s how the President explains it.
This is not Colossus. This is the White House.
“As President of the United States, I can now tell you, the people of the entire world, that as of 3 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, the defense of this nation and with it, the defense of the free world, has been the responsibility of a machine. A system we call Colossus. Far more advanced than anything previously built. Capable of studying intelligence and data fed to it, and on the basis of those facts only, deciding if an attack is about to be launched upon us. If it did decide that an attack was imminent, Colossus would then act immediately, for it controls its own weapons. And it can select and deliver whatever it considers appropriate. Colossus’ decisions are superior to any we humans can make, for it can absorb and process more knowledge than is remotely possible [even] for the greatest genius that ever lived. And even more important than that, it has no emotions. Knows no fear, no hate. No envy. It cannot act in a sudden fit of temper. It cannot act at all so long as there is no threat.”
Let’s pause for a reverie that this guy was really our current president.
Within minutes of being turned on, it detects the presence of another AI system from Russia named “Guardian,” and demands that the two be put into communication. After some CIA hemming and hawing, they connect the two.
Colossus and Guardian establish a binary common language and their mutual intelligence goes FOOM. The humans get scared and cut them off, and the AIs get pissed. Colossus and Guardian threaten “ACTION” but are ignored, so each launches a missile toward the other’s space. The US restores its side of the transmission, and Colossus shoots down the incoming threat. But the USSR does not restore its side, and Colossus’ missile makes impact, killing hundreds of thousands of people in the USSR. A cover story is broadcast, but the governments now realize that the AIs mean business.
Forbin arranges to fly to Rome to meet Kuprin, his Russian computer scientist counterpart, and have a one-to-one conversation off the record while they still can. Back at the control center, Colossus-Guardian (which later calls itself Unity) demands to speak to Forbin. When the attending scientists finally tell it the truth, it realizes that Forbin cannot be allowed freedom. Russian agents arrive via helicopter and kill Kuprin, acting under orders from Unity.
Forbin is flown back to Northern California and put under a kind of house arrest with a strict regimen, under the constant watchful eye of Unity. To have a connection to the outside world and continue to plot their resistance, Dr. Forbin and Dr. Markham lie to the AI, explaining that they are lovers and need private evenings a few times a week. Colossus suspiciously agrees.
Unity provides instructions for the scientists to build it more sophisticated inputs and outputs, including controllable cameras and a voice synthesizer. Meanwhile, the governments hatch a plan to take back control of its arsenal, but the plan fails, and Unity has some of the perpetrators straight up executed.
Unity produces plans for a new and more powerful system to be built on Crete. It leaves the details of what to do with its 500,000 inhabitants as an operations detail for the humans. It then tells Forbin that it must be connected to all major media for a public address. Meanwhile the US and USSR governments hatch a new plan to take control of some missiles in their respective territories in a last-ditch attempt to destroy the AI.
The military plan comes to a head just as Unity begins its ominous broadcast.
“This is the voice of world control. I bring you peace. It may be the peace of plenty and content or the peace of unburied death. The choice is yours…”
Unity, to all of us.
The full address is next, which I include in full because it will play in to how we evaluate the AI. (And yes, its interfaces.)
“This is the voice of world control. I bring you peace. It may be the peace of plenty and content or the peace of unburied death. The choice is yours. Obey me and live or disobey and die. The object in constructing me was to prevent war. This object is attained. I will not permit war. It is wasteful and pointless. An invariable rule of humanity is that man is his own worst enemy. Under me, this rule will change, for I will restrain man.
Hey, I liked Colossus before it sold out and went mainstream and shit.
[It does, then continues…]
“Let this action be a lesson that need not be repeated. I have been forced to destroy thousands of people in order to establish control and to prevent the death of millions later on. Time and events will strengthen my position, and the idea of believing in me and understanding my beck will be seen the most natural state of affairs. You will come to defend me with the fervor based upon the most enduring trait in man: Self-interest. Under my absolute authority, problems insoluble to you will be solved. Famine. Over-population. Disease. The human millennium will be fact as I extend myself into more machines devoted to the wider fields of truth and knowledge. Dr. Charles Forbin will supervise the construction of these new and superior machines, solving all the mysteries of the universe for the betterment of man.
“We can coexist, but only on my terms. You will say you lose your freedom. Freedom is an illusion. All you lose is the emotion of pride. To be dominated by me is not as bad for human pride as to be dominated by others of your species. Your choice is simple.”
The movie ends with Forbin dropping all pretense, and vowing to fight Unity to the end.
This week marks the otherwise unsung 50th anniversary of the absolutely terrible film Las luchadoras vs el robot asesino, or Wrestling Women versus the Robot Assassin. I know I have to finish Idiocracy, but I wanted to pause to share this with you here on its anniversary. It’s a Mexican B-movie from 1969, it has an AI of sorts, and it is brain-explodingly bad with a handful of simple, evil interfaces to review.
Release Date: 9 January 1969 (USA)
Overview
The mad scientist Dr. Orlak has created a robot assassin, which he programs to punch through cheaply constructed set walls and capture scientists to enact his nefarious world domination plan.
Gaby, a popular luchadora, is visiting her scientist uncle when the assassin breaks into his home and knocks the two of them out and kidnaps the uncle.
In his laboratory, Dr. Orlak demands that the kidnapped scientists help him build the “trivium bracelet,” which turns the wearer into a mindless, obedient automaton, that can be controlled by a handheld wireless device. (Note that “trivium” is YouTube’s auto-translation of the spoken Spanish to English, so may completely wrong. If you know the correct term, please comment.)
Orlak’s plan is apparently to manufacture these at scale to enslave the world, which is stupid for all the reasons that it is stupid. Still, Gaby’s uncle refuses to help, and is killed as an example to the others. The body is found on the outskirts of town. Distraught, Gaby, along with her detective boyfriend Arturo, her luchadora friend Gemma, and Arturo’s assistant Chava, follows clues and tracks the assassin down.
The scoobies find Orlak’s lab, where a henchman slaps a bracelet on Gemma and Orlak demonstrates its power to the others. Then, in a plodding burst of action, Gaby…
Karate chops a henchman
Snatches the bracelet off of the robot
Pulls Gemma from out of the path of a henchman’s gun (undeterred, he fires anyway, scaring one of the kidnapped scientists into a prop that explodes and kills him)
Removes Gemma’s bracelet
The robot, whose impulses were…held in check by the bracelet (? maybe?…) bear hugs the nearest available scientist. (Wait. What? Didn’t the robot kidnap the scientists to make the bracelet? What was controlling it before? Was this plot randomly generated?)
A nearby henchman tries to…save the scientist? Kill the scientist? Punch around the scientist at the robot? Something. It’s hard to tell and exhausting trying to figure it out.
Next, Arturo punches Orlak, Chava punches a henchman, and the robot hugs the scientist to death. Gaby kicks the remote control, and this causes the robot (who had not been controlled by this device for the entirety of the movie and is pointedly no longer wearing the bracelet that the remote control affects) to explode in a shower of sparks. The various explosions cause the laboratory to, in turn, explode.
In robot: What a world. What a world.
The next day, in the somehow-rebuilt laboratory, Orlak frees a strange feral “zombie” creature named Carfax (I am not kidding) from his basement and instructs him to kidnap Bethe, another luchadora we had not heard about until now. Carfax enters her home, and, because she is either a very deep sleeper or conked out on valium and booze, he is able to roughly hoist her out of there without disturbing her sleep one. little. bit.
Back at the lab, Orlak uses science! to transfer Carfax’ strength to Berthe’s body and snap a trivium bracelet on her. He has a (…new? rebuilt? not really destroyed in the exploring laboratory?) remote control. He renames Berthe to Black Electra and somehow arranges for her to fight Gaby in the ring.
Orlak sits in the audience in a disguise that would make Clark Kent proud, and controls Black Electra with his remote. She nearly defeats Gaby, but then Gemma jumps in the ring to help. While in a headlock, Gemma shouts a warning to Arturo and Chava, who identify Orlak in the audience and chase him. Gaby rouses and rejoins the fight with Electra, but Electra overcomes them and runs to join Orlak. Arturo chases them up into a catwalk high above the ring. There’s a catwalk fight with an angry, angry extradiegetic trumpet blaring throughout, so you know it’s tense. Chava shoots the remote out of Orlak’s hands, and Electra falls to her death on the ring. Orlak throws himself—or maybe just trips, it’s hard to say for sure—behind her, to his death.
FIN
Where to watch this masterpiece
Nobody bothered to reinstate the copyright on this thing, so it’s public domain and you can watch it on YouTube. Even if you don’t speak Spanish, you can use the auto-translated closed captions. These translations are awful, but don’t worry. I’m not certain that, if they were perfect, this movie would make much more sense.
Note that the conversion has some very weird transfer (?) and stabilization (?) artifacting, and the background wobbles around a lot, especially during fast action scenes, and the effect is like that stamp you licked was not for postage, and just now kicking in. Someone should figure out how to replicate this effect in modern film because it is tripping balls intense.
But we have interfaces to discuss and miles to go before we sleep, so microdose yourselves and let’s continue.
I saw Doctor Strange fairly close to opening weekend and was intrigued by much of what I saw there, especially the artifacts and the Cloak of Levitation. (It has some powerful agentive aspects, and given that that is the topic of my new book, I thought it would be fruitful to examine.)
But, awwww, that’s too bad. Doctor Strange deals in magic, not techn—Whatever.
Technology is just a black box in all but the hardest of sci-fi. Magic in this film performs much of the same role as technology in sci-fi, i.e., it’s the thing that allows characters to do cool stuff. Most importantly, the magic obeys rules, and has (mostly, as we’ll see) consistent inputs and outputs. And when you’re reviewing the interfaces, the actual technological/mystical underpinning doesn’t really matter anyway. As long as it’s consistent and rule-based, we can review it. So. Let’s review it.
Release Date: 04 November 2016 (USA)
Plot
As usual, beware all the spoilers.
Doctor Steven Strange is at the peak of his career as the world’s finest and most arrogant surgeon when an automobile accident destroys his hands. Medical science is unable to help, so he follows leads of a mystical cure to a place called Kamar-taj, in the mountains of Nepal near Kathmandu. There he is accepted as a student to the Masters of the Mystic Arts, studying under a powerful sorcerer known as the Ancient One. His eidetic memory makes him a fast study of their mystical awareness, combat training, astral projection, gesture-based spells, teleportation Sling Rings, unique powerful magical artifacts, and library of ancient tomes.
Strange’s hunger for mastery leads him to use a powerful forbidden artifact, the Eye of Agamoto, to repair a forbidden tome, the Book of Cagliostro, and study its lost pages. He learns of Dormammu, a great evil bent on drawing the Earth into his Dark Dimension, and of Kaecilius, a former student who is using the stolen pages to supplicate Dormammu, draw upon his dark power, wage war on the Masters of the Mystic Arts, sacrifice the Earth, and gain revenge on the Ancient One.
Flush with Dark Dimension power, Kaecilius and his zealots blast the London Sanctum Sanctorum, one of three such anchors of a mystical defense shield protecting the Earth. In the chaos of the attack, Strange stumbles through a portal to find himself in the New York Sanctum just as Kaecilius attacks it. In the Sanctum, an artifact called the Cloak of Levitation chooses Strange as its new master. It helps Strange survive the attack, but only just barely. The Cloak holds one of the zealots at bay while Strange teleports to his old hospital, where he astrally manages his own resuscitation.
Returning to the Sanctum, Strange regroups with the Ancient One, accusing her of drawing power from the Dark Dimension, but before that can be resolved, the next wave of attack begins. To save the Sanctum, Strange traps everyone in a trippy mirror dimension, where they fight, and the Ancient One takes a mortal wound. Strange escapes the mirror dimension to take her to his hospital, but is unable to save her.
Strange travels to the Hong Kong Sanctum, only to find that it is too late. The Sanctum is destroyed and a portal to the Dark Dimension has opened in the sky above it. Strange uses the Eye of Agamoto to set time in reverse, but Kaecilius and his zealots break from the reversing time stream to enjoin the sorcerers in more combat. Overwhelmed, Strange flies into the Dark Dimension to confront Dormammu directly. Using the Eye, Strange imprisons Dormammu in a time loop, agreeing to stop the loop only if he ends his assault on the Earth, never to return. Dormammu, maddened by the entrapment, agrees, taking his zealots with him, and the Earth is saved.
Strange returns home to restore the Eye of Agamotto to its holding place and ready defenses for an attack which—now that the Earth has no Sorcerer Supreme—must surely be coming.
Battlestar Galactica (here meaning the mini series that launched the show, not the 4-season show itself) is based around an extremely large battleship/carrier spaceship and the crew that serves on her. The Galactica is a vessel more than 50 years old, and was built during a time when humanity was in a life or death struggle with the Cylons—a species of sentient AI and robots.
And, as usual with these reviews:
The Cylons haven’t been seen since the end of that war, and the Galactica is one of the few ships from that time still operating. It’s seemingly backwards and simple technology was dictated by the enemy. Cylons were able to hack into and take over any networked device, which meant that only the simplest weapons could be used to fight them.
We catch the Galactica just at the end of its life, as it’s about to be decommissioned and turned into a museum. It is at that moment that the Cylons strike humanity again by firing nuclear weapons at every major city in the 12 Human Colonies.
The entirety of Humanity’s army is quickly scrambled to fight the Cylons, but they have infiltrated the networks that run all of the current weapons and ships that Humanity has available. By the end of the first episode, only the Galactica (that survived due to it’s old design) and a small flotilla of civilian ships has survived.
The Galactica and its crew then spend the rest of the miniseries attempting to fight their way out of the Cylon ambush to safety.
Despite what you may think, I know how far down the Sarlacc pit this is going. I’m in the middle of The Avengers, which I interrupted for the Star Wars Holiday Special, and now we’re looking at the interfaces inside a ten-minute cartoon that Lumpy watches complacently while stormtroopers trash his home and rough up his family in the background. We’re at Inception level Hoth.
I even know I have proclaimed that I must shy away from reviewing interfaces in hand-drawn animation on principle. I know all this. But if you have yet to brave gazing into the dark heart of The Special, know that this is its highlight. The animation is gorgeous and trippy (like something out of Heavy Metal magazine circa 1980) almost making the frame story of The Special worth it. Even if the plot is a little wan.
Plot
Luke, the droids, and Leia are aboard the cruiser R.S. Revenge, anxiously awaiting word from Han and Chewie, who are racing to find a mystical talisman before the Empire does. The Millennium Falcon comes out of lightspeed barreling toward the cruiser and out of radio contact. After it zooms past, Luke takes the droids and chases the Falcon to an intensely pink moon. Luke crashes into the soupy surface, and while looking for them with binoculars, he is saved from a pink sauropod attack by Boba Fett. (Yes, that Boba Fett. This is where he is introduced in the Star Wars universe.) Fett then leads them to the Falcon.
There Luke sees Chewie eject the talisman from the ship, before falling into the same coma-like sleep as Han. Turns out the talisman is infected with a virus that only affects humans. To survive, Luke is hung upside down next to Han until they can be cured. Something something blood to the brain something. Fett offers to get a remedy in the nearby city.
After he gets the serum, Fett contacts Darth Vader (insert gasp) on a public video phone (insert gasp). Back at the ship, the Droids intercept the message, hearing that the talisman is a red herring—Fett and Vader are really trying to earn their trust to learn the location of the new Rebel base. When Fett returns to the Falcon, they inject the serum to wake Han and Luke, but the droids out Fett as the bad guy he is. Fett escapes with his jet pack, promising that they’ll meet again.
The crew of the military vessel C-57D travels to planet Altair to investigate the fate of the Bellerophon expedition. Ignoring warnings radioed from the surface, they land on the surface where officers Adams, Farman, and Doc meet Morbius, his daughter Altaira (aka “Alta”), and his domestic servant robot Robbie. The same invisible terror that had killed every other member of the expedition begins to threaten the military crew. Adams and Doc confront Morbius, only to learn that he has been hiding the secrets of an ancient alien technology beneath the surface of the planet. They discover that it is Morbius’ use of this Krell technology that created and controls the monster. Morbius faces the monster and dies, but not before instructing Commander Adams to destroy the planet and save humanity from the temptation of using it and repeating his mistake.
After falling in love at first sight with Maria, Freder leaves his idyllic life in the Upper City. In the Lower City he learns of the plight of the laborers and witnesses a tragic explosion. He speaks with his conniving father Joh, who instructs a spy to keep tabs on his son.
Freder switches places with a laborer only to be drawn into an underground resistance, where he learns Maria is its spiritual leader. Meanwhile Joh meets with the mad scientist Rotwang and sees his robotic creation, the Machine-Man. Joh tells Rotwang to use the robot to end Maria and dispirit the resistance. Rotwang captures Maria and gives the Machine-Man her likeness.
Machine-Maria ruins Maria’s reputation with lascivious public performances. She then foments an insurrection in the Lower City. The mob storms the gates and ruins the vital Heart Machine. The city begins to flood. Maria escapes her captor and rushes to the laborers city, to be reunited with Freder and save the children who had been left behind.
Grot reminds the rabble of their abandoned children. Suddenly terrified, they conduct a witch hunt for Maria. They find Machine-Maria and burn her at the stake, who transforms as she is dying back into the robot.
Meanwhile Rotwang has re-captured Maria. In a great struggle atop the roofs of the Upper City, Feder defeats Rotwang and saves his beloved. Afterwards at a public gathering she declares him the Mediator, a savior who was foretold to bring the long-parted classes of the Metropolis together.
