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By Evan Saathoff
When facing strange, otherworldly odds, science fiction action heroes sometimes need a little assistance. Even the strongest human body seems weak and feeble when up against giant robots and aliens. But never fear - there is always the mech suit. Nothing evens the odds like a cold metal exoskeleton, particularly one decked-out with next level weaponry. Quick, get Matt Damon a suit!
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Elysium
Upward class mobility is always difficult. In Elysium, Neill Blomkamp's upcoming followup to District 9, moving up in the world requires not a college degree but a mech suit. Elysium's mech suit is pared down compared to others on this list, but you also have to have it attached surgically, so wearing it requires a greater commitment.
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Aliens
The classic. We know Ellen Ripley as a clever survivor, but no one who walked out of Alien could have expected she'd one day don a mech suit and go head-to-head with a queen alien. We didn't even know what a queen alien was. Luckily James Cameron's imagination lacked this limitation. Ripley's mech suit enhancement supplies Aliens with a end battle that still thrills to this day.
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Avatar
James Cameron would return to the mech suit with his super blockbuster, Avatar. This time, however, they are used more for evil than for good. Headed by the warlike Colonel Miles Quaritch, these mech suits are used to even the odds between greedy humans and the physically superior Na'vi, not to mention the host of other weird monsters of Pandora.
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District 9
District 9 is a film full of surprises. One of the best comes when Sharlto Copley's cowardly bureaucrat turned mutated rebel steps inside an alien mech suit and goes to war. This is one wild mech suit, too. Sure its guns can blow people apart, but its highest distinction comes with its ability to use pigs as bullets.
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Iron Man
Tony Stark's Iron Man armor may be the slickest looking mech suit ever created. And it's one of the most technically advanced as well. On top of that, he keeps building new ones. By the time, Iron Man 3 rolls around, they're not really mech suits anymore but remote controlled units he can fall into at will.
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G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
There's all kind of crazy fictional technology introduced in the G.I. Joe films, but one of the most useful was The Rise of Cobra's Delta-6 Accelerator Suit, which essentially turns Joes who don it into high-powered superheroes. Luckily for the Joes, it also looks really cool.
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The Matrix Revolution
Of The Matrix's many achievements, one of its best was selling humanity's vulnerability to the squid-like Sentinel robots that hunted them in the real world. So it made sense that humans in The Matrix Revolutions' huge robot battle would require assistance from mech suits to stand a realistic chance. Even strapped into these bulky machines, however, the humans still seem horribly outmatched.
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The Tuxedo
Strange as it may seem, The Tuxedo finds Jackie Chan playing a guy with no fighting abilities. Instead, a mechanical tuxedo basically does all that stuff for him. While not as cool looking as Tony Stark's Iron Man armor, The Tuxedo represents this list's only mech suit appropriate for weddings and fancy restaurants.
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Starship Troopers 3: Marauder
While Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers has become a cult classic, fans of Robert A. Heinlein's original novel were disappointed in the film's lack of the book's signature mech suits. Starship Troopers 3: Marauder rights this wrong. While the film's straight to video budget hinders the execution somewhat, the suits still look decent and kill a heck of a lot of bugs.
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Batman and Robin
Mr. Freeze's goofy mech suit is a custom job, specifically designed to keep him cold while he wanders around stealing diamonds (needed to power the suit in the first place) and making horrible, horrible puns. Hypothetically, this means it's one of the most dangerous mech suits out there, as any normal person who tries it on will likely freeze to death.
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