Saturday 27 December 2014

Iron Man 3: the technology behind Tony Stark's suit

When it comes to both fashion and firepower, it's fair to say that Tony Stark is Marvel Universe's ultimate suited and booted Super Hero. And with Marvel’s Iron Man 3, his weaponised wardrobe gets an upgrade that's guaranteed to blow his enemies - and audiences - away.

From Iron Man through to Iron Man 2, and the blockbuster-demolishing mega-movie Marvel's Avengers Assemble, fans have seen Tony survive all manner of robotic, human and super-powered threats, but with Marvel’s Iron Man 3, he's set to face a combination of the three.

With more powerful villains comes the need for an even more powerful Iron Man armour, and the question of how you improve a suit that already boasted rockets, grenades, lasers, anti-tank missiles, hand repulsors, jetboot-propelled flight, its own in-flight AI butler, and a protective armoured exterior so sturdy it could withstand a hefty clobbering from the Chitauri, Thor's hammer and Captain America’s shield combined.

For Marvel’s Iron Man 3 director and action movie veteran Shane Black, the appeal of the mysterious Mark XLII comes less through its bombastic firepower, and more through its bleeding-edge technological evolution.

And while he wasn't able to divulge the full extent of the suit's spectacular new powers, Black's excited to explore the prehensile abilities first displayed in Marven's Avengers Assemble Loki-bashing climax.

"All I can say is that the Mark XLII is more responsive to Tony's needs and his body movements. It's also available to him in pieces, as opposed to the previous suits, which were sort of the equivalent of medical armour," says Black.

"My favourite piece of tech in the film would be the detachable multi-faceted suit, which responds to Tony seemingly telepathically. I think [fans] will enjoy the ways we've found to open up the suit so it's a little more than just an armour plate."

It's only fitting that as the tech has evolved, so has the design. Marvel’s Iron Man 3 will debut an array of never-before-seen suits, but it's the sleek, golden Mark XLII that was the main focus for Marvel’s Head of Visual Development, Ryan Meinerding.

"The inspiration for the Mark XLII comes from a few places. Shane and Marvel really wanted to create an iconically different Iron Man suit that the audience would still recognise as the Armoured Avenger," Meinerding says.

"In looking for a new aesthetic, we explored going back to Iron Man's comic roots as the Golden Avenger. Since most of the designs from previous movies have focused on having a relatively small proportion of gold, it opened up a lot of possibilities to start playing around with a lot more."

And it looks like both fans of the comic books and the movies are in for a treat, with an array of comic homages and subtle upgrades for keen-eyed fanboys and girls to spot along the way.

"For the Mark XLII, we looked back to Tony's second set of comic armour. In the early comics, Tony first wore a grey suit, then transitioned to a golden version. In the progressions of the Cinematic Universe, we felt like we could pay homage to this classic look," Meinerding reveals.

The visual evolution doesn't end with the suit design, either. Thanks to Marvel’s Iron Man 3's incredible action scenes and SFX trickery, Shane Black thinks it'll be hard to tell where the physical suits end and the CGI begins.

"We actually built two suits for the movie: the Mark XLII and the Iron Patriot suit. A lot of other armours that you see in the movie, some are models and some are CGI creations. It's up to you to decide if your eye can tell the difference," Black says.

Fittingly enough, the rapid-fire evolution from the Mark I to the Mark XLII has been as genius and adaptable as Stark's own character arc, with Meinerding noting the suit's progression from disparate, clunky life saver to organic, bio-synthetic war machine.

"The Mark I was meant to save his life in captivity, and was purposefully crude. The Mark II was Tony's first chance at refining the Iron Man, and he did so with the flight suit. The Mark IV was about trying to add a heroic sleekness, while the Mark V - the suitcase suit - is his portable emergency suit," he says.

"The heavily weaponised and armoured Mark VII is the Avengers suit, and is meant to be the armour designed for war. Finally, the Mark XLII can fly onto Tony in pieces, and he can control the pieces with his mind."

Excitingly, that seems to be only the beginning. With Tony's tantalising Extremis upgrade (the techno-biological threat at the heart of Marvel’s IRON MAN 3) guaranteed to offer all manner of dazzling developments, it's clear that even at over 40 incarnations in, Iron Man's potential is only just beginning.

Q&A with James Kakalios, physics professor at the University of Minnesota and the author of The Physics of Superheroes:

DT: How could a suit like Tony Stark’s work in real life? And could we create something like this with the tech that exists today?

JK: Exo-skeletons for strength enhancement, armor for defense, jet and hand thrusters for flight - all this technology exists today. what is lacking is a credible power source that one can carry with you that would energize the suit for more than a few minutes. The one aspect of Iron Man that puts it squarely in the realm of science fiction is the "arc reactor" which is the size of a hockey puck and generates the power equivalent to three nuclear power plants. If we knew how to make such devices, we wouldn't need superheroes!

DT: There’s been great advancement in wearable tech, e.g. Google Glass and various brain wave controllers in video-games. How different is the tech available today different to what might be used in Tony Stark’s suit?

JK: There have been remarkable advances (in the lab, so far) in brain/machine interfaces. When you think, you generate ionic currents in your brain. These currents induce electromagnetic waves, following the physics principles that enable radio and television transmissions. Unlike radio, however, the currents in your brain are roughly a billion times weaker than the radio waves surrounding you in the room right now (we know they are there, for if you turned on a radio set you would hear a signal). Devices placed on the head can detect these weak fields, amplify them, and then send them via wifi to a computer, where algorithms transform the fields into instructions. This way scientists have been able to steer a remote controlled toy helicopter, merely by thinking of where they would like to direct it.

Tony Stark's suit presumably uses a similar form of technology for control. We never hear Tony give a voice command to activate his jet boots, or pull a trigger to fire his repulsor rays. He simply thinks it, and the suit responds. Of course, such technology, as in the video clip, must be programmed and trained to correctly obey a given person's thoughts. Which is why Rhodey could not use any of Starks many suits, but could only work the Iron Patriot suit that had been calibrated for his mind. (Remember - they couldn't put it in a movie if it wasn't true!).

DT: Wearable tech is edging on becoming the next cool thing, how close are we to this and how would the tech that is embedded on you work and the functions of Stark’s suit?

JK: This is not so crazy. One can assume that Tony Stark was inserted under his skin small radio frequency transmitters that would send signals to the armor, letting it know which parts of his body it should adhere. He also could use the transmitters to signal the armor to attach to another person (such as Pepper Potts). The range of these transmitters is considerable - at least 800 miles as stated at one point in the film. Most radio stations cannot send their signals that far, and they have large power stations and tall transmitters. But never bet against Stark Technology - powered by arc reactor cells!

DT: How quick can today’s hardware tech respond to your movements – is it dissimilar to what we would see in Iron Man 3?

JK: Nothing happens in your brain at a frequency larger than a kiloHertz. Put another way - the shortest time that any information or signal could be processed in your brain is a millisecond - one thousandth of a second. If Tony Stark does indeed employ a cybernetic interface to control his suit, then it should be able to respond as fast when he operates it remotely as when he is wearing it.


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