Movies about Self destruct mechanism
Because I was so preoccupied with whether I could, I didn’t stop to think if I should…
5 min čtení
22. března 2019
Alien (1979) is one of my favourite films, partially because of Ron Cobb’s excellent “used future” production design.
The heavily industrial designs of the spaceship Nostromo contrast heavily with our modern sleek, silver-and-blue spacecraft aesthetic. It’s all physical dials, curvy CRT monitors and exposed pipework. Like an oil rig in space.
At the climax of the film, Ripley triggers the Nostromo’s self-destruct to rid herself of the titular menace. The process is deliberately convoluted and confusing, raising interesting design questions:
Let’s look at each step Ripley takes to scuttle the Nostromo:
First, hit a button marked “PRESS IN EMERGENCY” to release a cabinet cover, and pull the big red lever inside
This first step doesn’t seem to be part of the procedure itself samo o sobě, and is a little redundant given the additional lever-pulling right after. Best to get rid and get straight to the good stuff.
Unscrew a second nearby cover to reveal more big red levers, and pull them both.
These levers are just brilliant. Big, red, suitably dangerous-looking, and you need to pull them in the right order. Exactly what you want for a critical, destructive user action. Almost impossible to trigger accidentally. 10/10.
Open up a floor-mounted panel on the other side of the room, containing the “actual” emergency destruct controls.
Now we get into the weird stuff. I don’t think there’s any design reason for this panel to be:
- v podlaze
- on the other side of the room to where Ripley just was
This only makes sense if we assume that the Nostromo’s nuclear reactor is right underneath Ripley, and by operating this panel she’s directly touching the reactor, rather than using an explicitly “designed” interface abstracted away from the machinery it controls.
This also accounts for the fact that all these controls aren’t on the bridge where they clearly should be.
The text on the cover of the panel has a reasonably good typographic hierarchy (the word DANGER is appropriately, largest), but the instructions themselves, arguably the most important text on this cover, are tiny and shoved into one corner!
Spend precious seconds reading instructions, then press a sequence of buttons.
This keyboard violates practically every design rule there is. Seeing as there’s no hint of flexibility in the self-destruct process (the timings are printed out, after all), we’d be better off just getting rid of this keyboard entirely.
It is worth noting that Ripley doesn’t appear to provide any passwords or passcodes during this entire process, so theoretically anyone could give the Nostromo’s crew a very bad day indeed. This keyboard would be a sensible point for such authentication to occur.
Security for MU/TH/R, the ship’s computer, is similarly flimsy. Despite us being told several times that access to the computer’s interface room is tightly controlled, Captain Dallas and Ripley never seem to provide any authentication codes or similar to access the room.
Perhaps Weyland-Yutani is just very trusting when it comes to mission-critical systems, or maybe there’s some kind of hidden biometric identification we’re not seeing.
Screw four bolts into collapsible metal towers, pull them up and press a button on each one.
This is the strangest step, and it certainly violates the basic design rule of samozřejmost.
As Ripley interacts with each tower, it starts rising of its own accord out of the console. Roughly halfway through the process, MU/TH/R’s famous ten minute countdown starts and the game is on.
The biggest usability issue here is that it’s not clear to the user exactly when the self-destruct is “on” and “off”. This comes back to bite Ripley (hah) in a big way later on, when she tries in vain to cancel the self-destruct, missing the five minute window by seconds.
How does it measure up?
Although Nostromo’s self-destruct certainly makes accidental activation difficult, it falls short in key areas:
- Still easy for a bad actor to follow the procedure, since there’s no obvious security involved.
- The five minute grace period to cancel the self-destruct is basically meaningless, since the cancel operation itself takes a significant amount of time and there is no single moment at which we can say it’s “done”. Ripley si myslí, že she’s done it in time, but is mistaken.
- Several steps don’t make the process appreciably harder to trigger accidentally, but do add confusion, like the keyboard from hell and the lever to access the other levers.
Doing it better
A better-designed interface would:
- Be sensitive to the user’s immediate needs, and their wider social needs (“I need to destroy this ship, but I am frightened and rushing”)
- Make it easy to recover from errors (“I’ve changed my mind about destroying the ship!”)
- Be only as complicated as it needs to be to achieve the user’s goal
- Confirm user permissions (“I have the right to destroy the ship if I choose”)
Let’s take a moment to appreciate a much more sedate, user-friendly and secure self-destruct proceedure. Maybe if Weyland-Yutani had hired some UX designers…
The 10 Best Movies About Self-Destruction
Self-destruction as a theme in film can be presented in different ways. The three main ways filmmakers explore self-destruction seem to be: mental health, suicide, and addiction.
These three concepts are not groundbreaking; they share similarities, but the way a film portrays them can be wildly different. Here are 10 great films that depict self-destruction.
10. Half Nelson (2006)
Half Nelson is a great character study about self-destruction: it’s about a teacher (played by Ryan Gosling) struggling with a drug problem. This movie fits into the “addiction” sub-genre of self-destruction films.
However, what makes Half Nelson such a fascinating portrait of self-destruction is the fact that Gosling’s character isn’t necessarily a complete trainwreck of a person. He’s what some may call a “high-functioning” addict, making Half Nelson one of the more complex films about self-destruction.
Half Nelson also briefly explores the main character’s personal and home life to give us a better picture of what the root of his problem might be. And even with that information there aren’t any easy answers regarding why a person that seems to have it together doesn’t. That is partly what makes Half Nelson’s story of self-destruction so moving.
It’s a film about the constant mistakes people make in life, and the struggle to mature and move past that. The conclusion is also a great example of how to create a strong open-ending: the film does not suggest that Gosling’s character will have an easy resolution, or that his problem will be solved at all.
9. Královna Země (2015)
Alex Ross Perry’s follow-up to Listen Up Philip, another great film that also features self-destruction as a theme, was the surprising thriller Queen of Earth. In this film, Perry takes things a step further by giving his main character (played by Elisabeth Moss) a bigger hurdle to work with: her mental health is seen getting progressively worse throughout the course of the film.
This leads to disastrous consequences for not only the Elisabeth Moss’ character, but the people in her life. Queen of Earth has been compared to similar films about inner turmoil affecting other aspects of life, most notably: Persona, and Repulsion. Perry’s film is a masterpiece of tension.
Control tells the true story of Ian Curtis, the lead singer of Joy Division who ended his life tragically at the age of 23. Aside from the fact that Control is based on a real life figure, what makes it such a great film is how different it feels from other movies that attempt to be great biopics; it’s a gorgeously shot film that feels very respectful to its subject matter.
We never get the sense that Control was made to profit off a famous dead person that young people have become enamored with. It’s a powerful look at the toll mental and physical health can take on a person. Despite achieving success with Joy Division, Curtis suffered deeply from depression and epilepsy. Control shows us ailments do not discriminate; it doesn’t matter if you’re a poetic rockstar, we’re unfortunately all at the mercy of our health.
7. The Virgin Suicides (1999)
The Virgin Suicides is a great film about a group of five sisters who make a suicide pact, and a group of boys that become fascinated with them. Originally a great novel by Jeffrey Eugenides, the story loses none of its effect in Sofia Coppola’s adaptation.
In fact, it just might be one of the strongest examples of how to turn a dark novel into an appropriately moving work of film. It’s one of the few books published to actually benefit from a film adaptation. Coppola does a flawless job at taking teenage angst, a theme too easy to treat immaturely, and giving it the serious arthouse treatment.
6. Heaven Knows What (2014)
Heaven Knows What is not only a harrowing film about drug addiction, it’s also a unique look at the relationships drug addicts find themselves in with each other. From the very beginning this film lets you know it’s not playing around: if you’re not in the mood for something so rough, it will be a challenging watch.
Part of what makes this film so powerful is how it depicts a world right on the fringes of mainstream society, and how closely it follows those characters’ lives. It’s one of the rare films to get the portrayal of drug addicts right because it’s based on an unpublished memoir Arielle Holmes (who also stars in the film) wrote about her life experiences. Heaven Knows What is a film about self-destruction that never lets up.
As a side note, the Safdie brothers would go on to make one of the best films of 2017: Good Time. It shares the theme of self-destructive characters with Heaven Knows What (although Heaven Knows What may be the more intense film, depending on your tastes).
The most prominent feature of the wrist-gauntlet is that it has a self-destruct mechanism that a Predator can use as a last resort. When it feels that it’s close to death, it activates its control panel causing the self-destruct to count down. Predator symbols count down on the gauntlet before a huge explosion occurs destroying everything in the vicinity.
Predátor (1987)
As Dutch and the Jungle Hunter battle, Dutch outsmarts the Predator and crushes him with a huge log. As the Predator is close to death, he activates his self-destruct device. Dutch realises what’s about to happen and escapes. The subsequent blast is huge, destroying a massive area in the jungle. This is really the only time in all the films that a Predator successfully uses the self-destruct device to kill himself in the process. (We did see a Predator do it in the flashback sequence at the top of the pyramid in Alien VS Predator).
Predator 2 (1990)
City Hunter never got a chance to use the self-destruct device in Predator 2. After Harrigan escapes the meat locker, the Predator is in pursuit. The both fall off the ledge of the building and the Predator activates his self-destruct device. As the timer counts down, Harrigan manages to use the Smart Disc to sever the Predator’s arm, stopping the device from working. Interestingly, the self-destruct mechanism ceases to function however in Alien VS Predator, it is shown that it can be used as a remote explosive not connected to the Predator.
Vetřelec vs. Predátor (2004)
In Alien VS Predator, the self-destruct mechanism is used in the flash-back sequence when the three predators on top of pyramid are battling thousands of aliens and they have no other choice but to self-destruct. It’s much larger than the self-destruct used in the first film. The mechanism is also used at the end of the film when Scar takes off his self destruct device in the Egg Chamber and sets it to go off in a few minutes. Lex and Scar escape just in time and the device destroys everything and causes the surface to collapse.
Aliens vs Predator Requiem (2007)
In AvP Requiem, the Wolf Predator activates the self-destruct device on a dead Predator which destroys the Predator ship.
Predators (2010) & The Predator (2018)
It’s never used in Predators or The Predator but it’s assumed all the Predators have the self-destruct mechanism.
Classic Predator’s wrist gauntlet in Predators.
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