I feel like it would be pretty bland and uninteresting without it. The golden spine makes it interesting. Presumably it might make sense after watching the movie.

I can't wait for people to freak out about the lack of historical accuracy, as they always do whenever they see anything at all in a movie set before 1850.

Yeah... I don't know what I'm looking at. Is that a hair braid that looks like a spine?

Saw a tiktok (grain of salt) saying Nolan originally hired experts in ancient Greek armor and fired them to go with a different look. We're about to see the most generic looking "greek" armor of all time.

I'm not a historian of ancient Greek armature, but if I were to fasten a bunch of horse hair to stand up like a Mohawk on top of a helmet chances are I would drill a bunch of holes of roughly .5 cm diameter systematically throughout hardwood base and stuff each hole as full of hairs as I possibly could. It would probably come out looking something like a shoe brush.

Of course, I have no idea how they were made; again, I'm not a historian. I just don't see what is so obviously machine made here. On the contrary, I would be surprised if this helmet wasn't in fact custom made by hand by the costume department. It would be very unlike Nolan to buy a mass produced Halloween costume from China.

No, I'd write them off based on the director.

Its a movie about a man stranded far away from home. Matt Damon was the logical choice of course.

I agree. A lot of the actors in this movie are the type that prevent me from fully immersing into this type of film because their faces are so recognizable.