Our Weapons Will Be Boxy In The Future - Television Tropes & Idioms

Welcome to the future. It may come used or perhaps come standard with shiny towers and crystals, but when it come to warfare, there's one very good indication that your Space Marines aren't just Super Soldiers with assault rifles. They will instead wield something not unlike a large metallic brick.

Put simply, Our Weapons Will Be Boxy In The Future is the tendency for more "advanced" weapons in near-future and Sci Fi to be Handwaved as "more advanced" or made of exotic, lightweight materials and yet be large, clumsy, rectangular, boxy things much larger than modern-day arms. This is probably based on the fact that many modern weapons use molded plastics with rounded rectangular shapes and smooth curves. At the most exaggerated extent in fiction, guns resemble rectangular prisms and melee weapons tend towards square profiles and right angles.

The most recognizable of modern compact weapons (Steyr AUG, FN-90, G11) had been given final form during The Eighties, when boxy, plasticky shapes and textures were the norm in industrial design, so they may look a bit Zeerusty by the present day.

Often used in videogames, since boxy shapes are particularly easy to render.

On the Sliding Scale Of Shiny Versus Gritty, Our Weapons Will Be Boxy In The Future tends towards the latter, but not always. "Enlightened" civilizations may still keep their boxy arms around as a symbol of older times or as a realist answer of how they keep the peace. If the Enlightened civilization has an active military, expect these Space Elves to use vaguely iPod-shaped weapons.

Depending on how effective these weapons are in their respective setting, they may also be Cool Guns.

Production design note: a lot of the futuristic weapon props that are actually fired on-screen are by necessity real world guns put in plastic shells. This might go a long way to explain the origins of the trope.

Examples

Anime

While most (non-mecha) guns in Macross Frontier look more or less similar to modern weapons, the heavy rifles carried by EX-Gear troops definitely play this trope straight.
Mobile Suit Gundam 00 plays with this trope, occasionally playing it straight, with the likes of the Seravee's GN Bazookas, and even the mecha itself (being that mecha are weaponry, and all), but also completely averts this with the likes of the Ahead and Alvaaron, and falls somewhere in-between with the 00 Raiser, which has a mixture of square weaponry (GN Sword III's gun part) and sleek, pointy things.

Film

Aliens and Avatar, both directed by James Cameron, have some seriously boxy guns.
Starship Troopers.The Verhoeven movie gives us these wonderful gems.
- The third movie, Marauder, exaggerated the hell out of this. The guns handed out to the survivors of the shuttle crash are wider than the actors' arms, and from top to bottom are wider than their heads.
District 9 has a good example◊.
In Oblivion Jack Harper uses a bullpup rifle with a shiny white plastic casing◊, the double turrets on the drones have similar casings. Scav weapons are more stripped down and minimalistic.
In Iron Man 3 the "Iron Patriot" weapons platform exchanged a recognizable mini-gun for a big boxy stuff shooter in a Twenty Minutes In The Future setting.

Live-Action TV

Several of the phaser designs that The Federation uses on Star Trek (especially from TNG onward) fit this mold, most noticeably the phaser rifle◊.
In the Stargate Verse, the boxy FN P90 becomes the small arm of choice for the Stargate Program teams.

Manga

Averted by the Seburo Arms line of fictional guns used in the shared universe (including Ghost in the Shell) made by Shirow Masamune. Most of the guns actually look quite curvy, and some plain looks like a fictional version of FN P90.

Tabletop Game

Warhammer 40000: Even the lasgun used by the standard human soldiers of the Imperial Guard is hugely cumbersome◊. Notables include:
- The Imperium's Bolters, boxy,◊ huge weapons firing rocket-assisted armor-piercing explosive rounds. The shotgun is even more rectangular. Ogryn Ripper Guns need to be big and metallic, as they are designed to withstand their users wielding them as clubs.
- The Rhinoes. The Spess Mehreens hide in their Metal Bawkeses! The Cowards! The Fools!
- The Tau's Pulse Weaponry. About as boxy as it gets.◊ Definitely overlaps with Cool Guns, though. Tau weaponry is awesome.
- Averted with the Eldar. Most, if not all of their weapons have sleek, organic appearances in comparison to the other races.
Several weapons in Rifts, where the boxy barrel coverings are stated to contain heavy-duty cooling systems for laser and plasma weapons. Rifts tends to cover the whole spectrum; some examples, like most Wilks guns, look more like Nintendo Zappers and are quite sleek. Coalition weaponry, for the most part, also tends to resemble modern firearms.
Some of the advanced weapons in Shadowrun, especially the various Ares laser weapons. This can also depend on the artist, since the drawings of the guns are inconsistent from edition to edition and even different sourcebooks in the same edition.
Traveller features a blend of modern and futuristic-looking (the latter occasionally boxy) slug-throwers. And many laser weapons are even bulkier than 40K weapons, of course, weight is one of the balance factors for energy weapons in the game (laser rifles weigh twice as much as modern assault rifles).
In Battle Tech, a fair number of weapons a 'Mech uses are boxy, and many 'Mechs themselves are also box shaped. Probably taken to its extreme in the Yeoman◊, a 'Mech resembling three boxes on legs. There are some aversions, such as the pleasantly human-shaped Firestarter◊ and the vaguely insectoid Black Python◊.
Boxy and square is the design motif of small arms in the oppressive totalitarian future that is Feng Shui's 2056 A.D.. They're also more concealable than modern weapons. Go figure.

Video Games

As seen above, StarCraft. The Gauss Rifle used by the marines is somewhat of a BFG, but especially in its updated incarnation, is almost a perfect rectangle. It makes sense since Terran Power Armor is equally huge and isn't good at delicate hand movements. Oddly, however, the gauss rifle can be effectively wielded without wearing Powered Armor. Somewhat averted, however, with Ghost gauss rifles, which are much smaller and resemble much more large-bore modern assault rifles.
- The Thor is a walking cluster of boxes. The Siege Tank and the Battlecruiser are also boxier in the second installment, which is a bit baffling as the faction can produce streamlined designs like the Hellion, the Banshee, and the Diamondback.
Saints Row 2 has the AR-50 assault rifle, and while technically the game isn't set in the future, the weapon itself is a prototype developed by the Ultor Corporation.
Battlefield 2142: Despite being made of "advanced polymers", some of the weapons are outrageously boxy and larger than their modern-day counterparts. Examples: [1]◊ [2]◊ [3]◊ [4]◊. Interestingly, the unlocked weapons which are often more popular tend to more closely resemble real guns.
Doom's BFG9000 is bulky, boxy, and very BIG with many smaller boxy parts on it. There's also the Plasma Rifle, basically a boxy assault rifle-like weapon with an accordion barrel.
Perfect Dark. Some of the game's "modern" weapons fall under this trope. Extra credit to the Laptop Gun, which looks exactly like you'd expect it to.
Dystopia Inverts this by making the least advanced weapon, the Assault Rifle, look like a long box with a handle. However, it's played straight with the Bolt Gun.
Red Faction: Guerrilla does a good boxy gun. It does several good boxy guns. Boxiest would be the assault rifle, which looks like it hasn't been unpacked from the box it came in. [5]◊
Most of the weapons in Mass Effect 2 are this trope, particularly the krogan Claymore shotgun.
- Though averted in Mass Effect 3 with weapons from other alien cultures: the Quarian Arc Pistol, the Salarian Scorpion, the Asari Disciple shotgun, the geth pulse rifle, sniper rifle and plasma shotgun are all fairly sleek. Some human weapons are sleek too: the M-8 Avenger and N7 Valkyrie being prominent exceptions.
Iji: your held weapon and the weapons held by the enemies are all some form of black box. The ten different weapons you can pick up on the ground (which get "downloaded" into your black boxy gun) zig-zag and downplay the trope, especially the slender and filigree Cyclic Fusion Ignition System.
Fallout 3. By way of example, compare a conventional minigun to the futuristic "Gatling Laser," and judge for yourself which is the boxiest.
- The laser pistol and rifles in both games are basically rectangular boxes with a handle and trigger attached to the bottom. They don't even come with sights, by default.
Baroque has very boxy weapons, including a gun where the only round part would be the space between the shaft and the rest.
Due to an error in the update for Tower Madness (version 1.4), the graphic rendering for level 2 flamethrower turned into a giant box of doom.
Averted with Half-Life 2's Combine Overwatch Standard Issue Pulse Rife, aka the AR2. It looks high tech and futuristic, but isn't boxy. Despite its shiny appearance, it's used by the Bad Guys.
SiN Episodes: Emergence gives us the Magnum◊, Blade's default weapon. The front is so heavy and square that Blade even uses it as a melee weapon.
Deus Ex Human Revolution feature the boxy Sanction Flechette assault rifle, Widowmaker combat shotgun and Eraser sniper rifle. While the only boxy part of the standard Diamondback revolver is its cylinder, the Laser Sight and explosive round upgrades make the top and bottom of the barrel somewhat more boxy.
- Human Revolution's Widowmaker, Eraser, and Diamondback revolver make a cameo in Team Fortress 2 (the Longsword renamed the "Machina"). Since Team Fortress 2 (late 60s-70s) takes place 60 years before Human Revolution (2027), these weapons are easily the most futuristic in the former game, and are also unquestionably the most boxy when compared to the starting weapons.
Played straight and inverted and double subverted in Halo games. Human weapons, which are primarily kinetic, are boxy and practical. Covenant plasma weapons are curved, colorful, and ornate. Forerunner laser weapons are once again boxy, though also ornate.
Borderlands 2 has Tediore weapons, which look like square, grey lumps of plastic. Justified, since they are designed to be extremely cheap, disposable guns, making embellishments counterproductive.

Real Life/Truth in Television

The AA-12, more specifically the 2005 version.
The Kriss .45 is an experimental submachine gun that uses an innovative recoil system and unusual stock to make it a wonderful accurate and controllable weapon that is mostly square.
And its pistol brother the Kard◊ which looks like it was pulled from the pages of Judge Dredd.
The MAC-10 machine pistol.
The HK G11. It also uses caseless ammunition, making it rather futuristic. It didn't catch on and is no longer in production.
The P90 is basically a rectangle with holes and curves in the bottom to form the grip.
And, of course, the PHASR. It's a less-lethal laser weapon.
Then there's the Ares FMG, a boxy submachinegun that folds into an innocent looking metal box, and it's Russian counterpart the PP-90.
Cascade gun prototype developed by Metal Storm Limited is actually a box on a tripod.
The UTS-15 tactical shotgun
The Tiger I tank is pretty much a box with treads and a turret.
Steyr AUG averts this with a sleek, rounded shape. It is especially worth mentioning that contrary to this trope, it is often used on film when going for a futuristic-looking weapon.
The new SABRE 5.56mm upper for the MAC-10 (already literally a box with a smaller box on the bottom) makes it legitimately look like a gritty sci-fi box rifle.
Defense Distributed's 3-d printed handgun the "Liberator" is a plastic box on a pistol grip.