Word: mecha
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Walk Man Inventor: Yoshiyuki Sankai, University of Tsukuba Availability: Near future, $14,000-$19,000 To Learn More: sanlab.kz.tsukuba.ac.jp Enter ... Mecha-Grandma! Japanese researchers have developed a robotic exoskeleton to help the elderly and disabled walk and even lift heavy objects like the jug of water above. It's called the Hybrid Assistive Limb, or HAL. (The inventor has obviously never seen 2001: A Space Odyssey.) Its brain is a computer (housed in a backpack) that learns to mimic the wearer's gait and posture; bioelectric sensors pick up signals transmitted from the brain to the muscles...
...farfetched to think a human can fall in love with a mecha? Multiplex audiences do just that whenever they surrender to the seductive contrivance of movie emotion. (Each tear you shed has been carefully programmed, folks...
...Monica, initially spooked by this shiny-faced, irrevocably pleasant simulacrum of a boy, comes to appreciate David's virtues; he has no flaws, except that he is not "orga" (organic) but "mecha" (mechanical)--and not Martin. From a closet she retrieves an old supertoy, a stuffed bear named Teddy, who becomes David's most faithful companion. Soon David is calling her Mommy. Bereft of her only natural child, she cradles this artificial one. Bathed in Nativity light, mother and child melt into a Pieta...
...unfortunate accidents persuade Monica to abandon David in a forest. Quick as a face slap, David and the audience are in a strange new world containing refugee robots with half-faces and a jaunty "love mecha" named Gigolo Joe (Law). In Kubrick's script, says Law, "Joe was much more aggressive, more twisted." Here he is, in Spielberg's word, David's "scoutmaster." (This was the section Kubrick could not solve and which Spielberg, in developing it, has softened. The Kubrick version would have been rated R; this film...
...characters off to war. Each of the 700-some characters has unique traits and powers, which are rated by points. Illusionist No-Face, for instance, is a magician who can instantly shift appearances. His 1,200 points of offensive strength are no match for the 1,400 of the Mecha-Falcon, but the magic man's 2,200 defensive points far outnumber the jet-powered bird...