The blatantly aluminum "armor" sucked

Did they really think that aluminum could pass for steel onscreen? It has a completely different color than steel does. How are you supposed to suspend disbelief when something with so much screen time is blatantly fake? They might as well have made the "armor" out of cardboard or plastic painted with rattle-can silver.

Aluminum sheet would make for terrible armor, plus aluminum wasn't even officially discovered until the early 19th century. And even when it was discovered it was so difficult to isolate that it was more rare and valuable than gold. It wasn't until the late 19th century that a method of smelting it was discovered, which allowed it to become a commodity rather than a precious metal.