Gadgets Galore
As we go through this class and watch sci-fi movies and shows, you have to think about just how the character got there. Whether it was a place they were born in, an alternate universe, an alien invasion, or simply the tools and gadgets that allowed them to get to that point.
I started to think about the last one, and what gadgets both supervillains and superheroes have! What is the gadget that they carry for a specific reason? What is the gadget that has a funny background? What is the gadget that reminds them of why they do it? What is the gadget that doesn’t make sense to you?
For me, that tool/gadget is Wonder Woman’s invisible jet!
Logically, I would argue that she wouldn’t need it because she can fly. However, in her early days in the comics, she couldn’t fly. Rather, she rode wind currents. Which is very funny to me because I remember learning that superman originally couldn’t fly. They gave him the ability to fly so it would be easier to animate him. Unless, the internet lied to me….
Anyways, going back to wonder woman’s earlier days.
Exactly why does she have it?
Besides not being able to fly in the earlier comics, originally it was so she wouldn’t be shot down when she traveled to ‘man’s world’. She tinkered with some of her mother’s old planes and wound up with the invisible jet. Wonder Woman is also able to summon it using her tiara!
In later comics, where she is able to fly, the origins of the plane changed. It no longer was the creative mind of Diana, but a crystal from another planet that could change its shape. Wonder woman came into possession of it because the original owners awarded it to her for saving them.
Though you don’t see much of her invisible jet now, there are a few cameos here and there. The most recent one being in the new Harley Quinn series! (If you’re a fan, I highly recommend it!)
What technology is similar to this that’s coming into our world?
The most recent technological thing I could think of that could possibly match Wonder Woman’s inviable jet was an invisible shield.
In this video, it shows you just how the glass works!
What gadget/ tool does your favorite carry around that just makes sense for that character? Or doesn’t? Be it a villain or a superhero?
A modern version of this might be the B2 Stealth bomber: https://youtu.be/ya8umwgtsLw, which apparently looks “like a bird!” to any radar instrument, even though “it’s a plane!”
I think this post is very cool to think about, and if we’re talking about gadgets, I will have to go with Iron Man. Some of this reasoning comes from Marvel being a super big franchise with the most entertaining movies, and the other comes from Iron Man is a superhero because of his gadget. The gadget in this instance is, of course, his suit.
Unlike Wonder Woman, Iron Man’s suit is necessary to him. Almost every time Iron Man faces conflict, his suit makes an appearance. For Iron Man, his suit and himself seem to be dependent upon one another. Iron Man needs to program, fix, and adjust the suit, and Iron Man needs the suit to protect and fight for him. I think everyone will agree that Iron Man’s suit is a gadget that makes sense for Iron Man.
Since this response was effortless, I thought I would think even deeper than his suit. I thought I would try to see if any other gadgets did not make sense for Iron Man. I thought about Jarvis as a possible gadget, but even if you consider Jarvis a gadget, it makes sense that Iron Man has him. Jarvis is Iron Man’s personal assistant that he programmed to perform tasks large and small. Jarvis also adds to Iron Man’s character without the suit, Tony Stark. With this in mind, I have to say that Iron Man has no useless gadgets, at least none I can think of.
The closest thing that I have found to Iron Man’s suit is a video starring Richard Browning. He imitates the Iron Man suit to the best of his ability, and it’s pretty cool. Follow the link below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F88yCaAweco
If I had the time, I would like to look into the reality of the gadgets that superheroes use. For example, Iron Man’s suit has lasers and performs much better than Richard Browning’s suit. Could Richard Browing ever perfect the technology he has right now to create Iron Man’s suit in real life? I would like to see it happen, so I will optimistically say that he can. As we all know, anything is possible.
” Could Richard Browing ever perfect the technology he has right now to create Iron Man’s suit in real life? ” This is exactly the kind of questions that good sci-fi tech inspires. for example, could multi-touch interfaces be as good as Minority Report? Could head-mounted AR displays be as good as Iron Mans’ HUD? Or even further, Star Trek’s universal translator has inspired scientists for generations to try to achieve multi-lingual automatic translation. Some fantasy tech seems magical, but some is _just_ close enough to reality that it helps communicate to the public the potential of certain research. A lot of stories about space travel also did this for NASA back in the day.