SMORGASBORG #4: Exoskeletons part C

GI JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA

A MOMENT FOR GI JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA

Only a moment? Yes, that's it. Otherwise I'll go on and on about Stephen Sommers and how much I love The Mummy and Van Helsing. (I know three people who are going to stop visiting this blog after reading that sentence, but there it is: I love Sommers for his mind.)

And what a mind! That guy never fails to put at least two kinesthetically satisfying action sequences in his films. Watching GI Joe as a choreographer, I respond to the way the action is timed, plotted, and filmed. As a pathology teacher, and as someone who watches a doctor on TV, I can appreciate the way the Parisian chase scene would be physically impossible to survive, even with those exoskeletal suits the Joes were wearing. Does this ruin my enjoyment of the film? Absolutely not! I don't watch Stephen Sommers films for their realism.

The exoskeletal suits

Why couldn't the Joes endure an action-packed high speed romp through Paris in those suits? Well, I'm going to put this as specifically as possible while trying to stay sensitive to readers who want to enjoy this very enjoyable sequence in theaters near them. Those exoskeletal suits encase one head to toe, are reinforced everywhere, give the wearer supplemental visual interface with their environment, and enhance physical speed, power, and coordination. Plus they have guns build into the sleeves! The wearer of such a suit is one kick-ass cyborgian lobster.

But no matter how tough the suit is, the contents of the suit (meaning the person inside) are comparatively delicate. Even though a skull is pretty tough, the brain inside it is liquidy and fragile. It can slosh. When it does, the connective tissue holding your brain and its blood vessels in place can tear. That causes intracranial bleeding and injury. It's kind of like having a stroke. This type of injury is called a contrecoup injury.(1) Perfectly named if aquired during a ballistic Parisian chase scene.

Guess where that head is going

How do you slosh your brain? Get your body flying around the streets of Paris at the speed of traffic, and then stop suddenly. If you don't have access to an exoskeletal suit, get in a car and put on your seatbelt, or get on a motorcycle and put on your helmet. Kick up some speed, and drive right into a brick wall. It works practically every time(2).

Okay, I got sidetracked. Next time we'll do practical applications of the suit for paralysis.

1. Remember Terminator Salvation: Spoiler Alert #2? I also write about contrecoup there, if your curious.

2. Coup and contrecoup injuries can happen from a blow to the head, or through sudden deceleration. Either way, compressive forces act on one side of the brain, while shearing forces act on the other. Sometimes these injuries can be mild, but they can also cause coma, or death. For an excellent resource about traumatic brain injury, visit emedicine.medscape.com.

TERMINATOR SALVATION - Spoiler Alert #2

TWO CORTICES? Or is it cortexes...?

Apparently the cyborg, Marcus (the dreamiest cyborg yet!), has been given a "hybrid nervous system" as well as a metallic skeleton. According to dialogue, Marcus has a human cortex and a machine cortex in his brain. The cortex of the cerebrum is the outer, gray part. The cortex interprets and processes the sensory information coming into the brain, controls voluntary movements and functions in intellectual and emotional processing, including memory.

The cortex is called the cortex because it's the outermost part. Your adrenal glands have cortices, too. Guess where they are? Yup, they are the outer shell of the gland. So the conversation distracted me for a moment because I was trying to imagine how a brain has two outer casings. I wondered if they meant the extra "cortex" was labeled that way as a functional structure instead of an extra cap around Marcus' brain. Once I decided that was the case, I could keep moving with the film(1). The question remains as to whether the "control chip" placed at the back of Marcus' head is this second cortex.

Lobes of the Cerebrum

It does make sense that Marcus would have enhanced processing and voluntary motor control. Later, after I saw half his face taken off, I realized that he must have a metal skull. This would certainly help protect his brain from injury although injury from brain sloshing(2) would still be an issue. Perhaps the machines had invested Marcus' brain with so many fine, mesh-like wires that it would hold it in place during agitation. Let's face it: skipping across water like a stone, as Marcus does in the movie, would shake a non-augmented person's brain into a liquid bloody pulp. I get distracted by trivia like this. I think it's a sign I need to get out more...

An illustration of a contrecoup injury scenario. No big surprise, I found it on a site for a attorney's office.

FLAME RESISTANT HAIR

Has anyone noticed how characters in movies can survive the flaming backlash from an explosion with all their hair? It's maddening. Most people can't even get their locks within 6 inches of a candle flame. And yet 98%(3) of all movie characters retain their hair in the presence of fireballs.

Marcus (Sam Worthington) and Blair (Moon Bloodgood) have fire proof hair.

MACHINES DON'T WORRY ABOUT SAFETY STANDARDS

The girl, Star (Jadagrace), discovers a tray containing a number of nuclear fuel cells for the T800 series. I don't imagine that the machines have the same intolerance for radioactivity in the workplace as do people. Shouldn't someone pull that kid's pretty face away from a nuclear fuel cell before her skin bubbles away, or she's set up for cancer at an early age? Instead everyone goes over to stick their own faces next to the radiation, too. If John Connor is about to be a father, he better start thinking like one.

Star And The Gang

Next time, the big defibrillation scene!

1. I really had to resolve this issue! This is sooo important to my enjoyment of the film.

2. One of the (understandable) major oversights movies make is that a person can sustain a fatal brain injury even if their skull is intact. Acceleration/deceleration injuries can happen from violent shaking, striking the head, or if the head strikes something. The brain's axons and its blood vessels can get torn, leading to direct destruction, and damage from bleeding and swelling. A contrecoup injury means that the brain is damaged at the point of impact as well as the area opposite the point of impact. This happens because the brain is very liquidy and will "slosh" in the skull if forces permit.

3. These statistics cannot be verified because I made them up.