Let's Talk Superhero Costumes in Film & TV Adaptations!

[Slimybug]

Hey, I wanted to start a discussion about this. Since the boom in the new millenium of superhero media, I feel like we've come a long way in creating superhero costumes that find a mixture of looking good and staying true to the comic. Let's face it, this can be a challenge, since a lot of the costumes people wear in the comics would look ludicrous in real life! I wanted to know if anyone had any thoughts as to improvements that can still be made and things they'd still like to see.

I remember being a young adolescent when the first X-Men movie came out. Back then, Superman and Batman were basically the only superheroes to make it to the screen. Christopher Reeve had looked passable in his costume, as had others on TV like Dean Cain after him. But it seemed, at least to me and the kids I talked to, like there was still an aversion to showing anyone in spandex suit, as it would look stupid. Hence, Batman had been continually put in black rubber, and the X-Men were now being put in black leather suits.

For those who were more learned on this history, sure enough, they had also placed The Flash in a rubber-esque costume for his shortlived TV series, and the one other time they put someone in a spandex suit, for the Spider-Man TV series, it looked stupid.


Then came the Spider-Man movie, which, to our perception (me and my 13-year-old friends) at the time, was a total game changer, because it showed that you COULD make a skintight suit that looked awesome onscreen. That's mainly because the Spider-Man suit was made from, as I recall hearing, a special fabric called milliskin. The latex webbing also helped it look cool, even if both those aspects made the notion of it being homemade quite unrealistic. We thought all superhero costumes were going to be totally comic-accurate from then on, and I even remember hoping that X-Men 2 would be inspired by this and feature the comics-accurate costumes. 16 years later, aside from a brief glimpse at the end of Apocalypse (not really skintight costumes either), we've stil yet to see that.

Since then, superhero costumes still try to lean in the direction of armor-esque, and only a handful are truly spandex-y and comics-accurate.

Captain America, for instance, briefly had one that looked like simple cloth in The Avengers, but they then went for a more padded/armored look. FTR, I'm pretty sure Brandon Routh's Superman costume was made from milliskin as well, and Andrew Garfield's at leaast loks the same, while Tom Holland's still looks great.

Batman wore all-out armor for the Dark Knight trilogy, but in the DC Films universe, for the first time, he actually wears his skintight grey costume, although it is more of a latex-like material, which is what Superman wears too. Even The Flash on TV has slowly transitioned through two other costumes to his most comics-accurate one yet, and it looks pretty good. I think it will look even better on Stephen Amell.

What do you guys think? What are some directions you'd still like for these costumes to go? And does anyone have any additional information about the movie costumes, like what material many of them are made from?

So, like I said, how

[The Darknight Detective]

What I will say for now is what may look good in a comic may not look so hot in reality.

[Jim Kelly]

I've only seen the Sam Raimi Spider-Man, which I liked well enough (even the third one), but what bugged me about that and some of the few MCU movies I've seen is that when they go to the super-hero in action it's clearly CGI and looks like animation which takes me out of the movie. And you'd think if the character is almost all animated then they could do something that's comics accurate.

I think the metallic elements that they add to Spidey's outfits (and those bracers that I see in clips from the new Spider-Man) is a bad idea. Why put metal on Spider-Man when he's a spider? Is this supposed to connect him with Iron Man? It's the same with the Flash (although I understand the reasoning why the Ezra Miller version has a junkyard suit), those kind of heroes should have sleek outfits because they have fluid movements. The metal is too weighty from a visual perspective.

And super-heroes shouldn't have relief sculptures sitting on their chests. Maybe, from a cinematography point of view, it's something that plays off the lighting, but how many people would want a T-shirt where the logo sits on top of their chest like a brick?

[byrd156]

What I will say for now is what may look good in a comic may not look so hot in reality.

They made the Monitor look good in Live-action, I think anything is possible in terms of costuming.