Marvel Cinematic Universe, Phase Three and BEYOOOOONND

[zslane]

Sure, that might have been one of Janet's early prototypes or something. It still looks better than Hope's.

[Pattern Ghost]

I kind of expected the black costume with such a dire, dour and grim name as Hope.

 

Wait.

 

Never mind.

[Pattern Ghost]

I think the Teen Titans cartoon had a good approach: They had the normal, brightly-colored costumes that could color change to darker stealth mode. That'd be cool to see in a movie. You could get some more color in and still pay lip service to practicality when stealth is needed.

[Old Man]

I'd offer the suggestion that there's no real way to know if more colorful, distinctive, and specific designs work in a movie or not since nobody is trying to do it now.

 

Perhaps there's a reason for that.  At minimum, it's hard to argue the more muted costumes are hurting revenues.  If I were producing one of these quarter-billion-dollar movies I wouldn't be taking chances on costume coloration either.  From this page, for instance:

 

 

 

 

Granted these are the three worst examples, but to be honest the superhero costume palette is relatively far down on my list of criticisms compared to bad writing or Batman branding bad guys.

[Greywind]

Those 3 are based off their Ultimate looks.

[Lord Liaden]

Elizabeth Olsen stated in interviews she was quite relieved her Avengers costume did not have to look like what the Scarlet Witch wears in the comics. OTOH Anthony Mackie says he was disappointed he didn't get red and white spandex.

 

But I have to say, IMHO Jeremy Renner looks remarkably the same in both outfits. I think it's his standard facial expression that carries through.

[mrinku]

Hulk is bright. Vision is more muted than in the comics, but still has red skin, green suit and yellow cape. Dr Strange is a good match for his comic costume. Ant-Man himself is pretty much right, despite Wasp being the triggger for this discussion. On the other hand, black with some yellow highlights works nicely for Yellow Jacket in the first film.

 

Some costumes just look silly in real life (Hawkeye and Scarlet Witch look silly in the comics). Iron Man probably works the best IMHO, but he's not wearing skintight threads. Some costumes go straight to cinema with little to no change, especially if they start dark (Batman, Black Widow, Punisher).

 

Muting Superman was a mistake, though.

[Greywind]

Comics Wanda is one of my favorites

[Bazza]

That Hope's costume is not bright...stings a bit.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Perhaps there's a reason for that.  At minimum, it's hard to argue the more muted costumes are hurting revenues.

 

 

Nobody knows, since nobody is trying it.  Its obvious that moving to a different medium means some changes, but it doesn't mean they absolutely must abandon all previous materials and in the process destroy marketing and branding of the characters.  Maybe they'd make more from merchandising and sales from actual costumes instead of dark leather outfit number 9832?

 

I think its worth at least attempting to give the comic book costumes a shot in the movies, to see how they test and play out in a scene or two.  I mean just presuming "this will be crap and I know best because I made Raising Caine part VI: return of Caine's mom" is silly.  People wear all sorts of ludicrous outfits in movies, for sci fi, fantasy, historical dramas, etc.  They work because they are just treated as part of the setting and assumed to work.

 

But that's not going to happen, because leather and rubber has been deemed the only option other than iron man's suit.  Oh, and the patterned mystery cloth Spider-Man somehow sews up at home.

[bigdamnhero]

The dark costume = serious is probably a remnant of "The Batman Effect".

Reinforced by "The X-Men Effect."

 

to be honest the superhero costume palette is relatively far down on my list of criticisms compared to bad writing or Batman branding bad guys.

Amen. Maybe I should be posting this in the "Destroy Your Geek Cred" thread, but I really couldn't care less how faithful their outfits are. Just give me a good movie.

 

Also, I think we fans don't tend to realize just how freakin' goofy many classic comic book costumes look to people who haven't grown up with them.

 

Muting Superman was a mistake, though.

Agreed. Tho it did match his personality and the overall tone of the movies. Unfortunately.

[Lord Liaden]

Wonder Woman's movie costume -- the Patty Jenkins edition, that is -- is very much the exception to that trend. It's a fair approximation of her comic outfit, bare shoulders and all, although a bit more armor-ish; and Jenkins went for the bright colors. And one of the compliments for the film I've heard from people most often is how striking those colors are, how they make Wonder Woman a shining visual symbol of courage and hope, especially contrasted with the drab Belgian battlefield.

 

Thor Ragnarok may turn out to be an even bigger change of course. Many of the character outfits shown in the trailers look almost neon-bright.

[IndianaJoe3]

That Hope's costume is not bright...stings a bit.

 

[zslane]

Aside from that comics-based Scarlet Witch costume, which looks awesome on Elizabeth Olsen I might add, the problem with the others is not that they were colorful, but that they were poorly designed in all other respects. Those colorful takes on Hawkeye and Falcon look like someone spent all of five minutes putting together live-action prototypes.

 

Look, most of the time comics illustrations aren't providing a sense of the actual fabrics and materials used in the manufacture of the costumes. We really don't have any idea what the material of Captain America's shirt really looks or feels like based on comics illustrations. But for movies, real materials have to be selected and put in front of a camera. Select the wrong material, with the wrong thickness and flexibility profile, and it will just look ridiculous. More effort has to be put into it than we see in those examples (again, not counting the Scarlet Witch one which looks perfect to my eyes).

 

But there is no reason Hawkeye's costume can't have some purple and blue tones, and there's no reason Falcon's costume can't have lots of bright red and white in it. Obviously with Falcon they went with the military angle on his character and his costume, so naturally it is going to be constructed from drab military (non-)colors. But they didn't have to go that way, and in fact I would argue that they very specifically went with the Ultimates look just so they didn't have to figure out how to make a red and white version look good. It was merely the path of least creative effort. Tech is always easier to design and make look KEWL (nowadays) than couture.

[Greywind]

 

 

[zslane]

The Ultimates books (the original ones) were a fun read, but the costume designs were pretty dull and uninteresting from a superhero perspective. I guess I find the whole "real people with super powers in a realistic world" experiment of very limited value/appeal, and it was explored to its full potential in the first Ultimates series. Everything else that was cobbled together for the Ultimates brand after that was (stylistically) redundant, at least for me.

 

I don't applaud Marvel for leveraging so heavily from the Ultimates for their MCU the way lots of other folks do. I understand the reasoning behind it, but I think that decision created too many aesthetic restrictions that denuded the epic, mythological component (and potential) of superhero storytelling.

[Lord Liaden]

 

 

 

 

Renner's first Avengers suit was clearly patterned after Ultimate Hawkeye. At least they put in some purple.

 

 

[Lord Liaden]

A cosplayer came up with a really sweet variation on classic Hawkeye duds:

 

 

[Greywind]

A cosplayer came up with a really sweet variation on classic Hawkeye duds:

 

Action figure.

[pinecone]

They should have him show up in the movies as the current Fury's dad.

OMG! and Pam Grier could be his mom! Dang! There's a whole movie in that cammio moment.

 

"I'm just saying these motherf###in politictions..." "You do Not use that language in My House!" "Sorry momma"

[mrinku]

It's worth pointing out that costumes designed during the 4-colour process era had much more limited options than these days, and that improvements in colour processes and paper quality has meant that many of the older designs just look odd. The look of the Ultimate universe had as much to do with that as with other factors IMHO.

 

Scott McCloud touched on the issue in Understanding Comics in 1993 (pp188-192 or so); since then what applied mainly to premium titles has become general. No one prints actual 4-colour process comics on newsprint anymore unless they're deliberately being retro.

[zslane]

Understood. Presumably the increased quality in paper publishing is mirrored by the increased quality of your basic film image today. But I don't feel that means we must give up bright colors and make everything look MILSPEC-approved just because we can capture more detail through a modern film lens.

 

 

Cap's costume in Winter Soldier is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. It is needlessly dark and completely mundane in its design. Take away the silver star and stripes and he looks like any number of paramilitary mooks you've seen in espionage thrillers since the first Bourne movie came out. There's nothing about it that reads "superhero". Of course, I think that's the point for Marvel; they want their movies to decode as slightly unconventional action movies, not as full-on superhero movies. While perfectly valid, it is nonetheless quite disappointing (for me).

[Lord Liaden]

I don't think Cap's Winter Soldier costume is the best example of the trend. The first mission we see Cap using it is a covert one, for which mostly dark colors make sense. That was probably what SHIELD used him for primarily. In fact I've heard Chris Evans refer to it in interviews as, "the stealth suit." At its climax WS makes quite the scene of returning Cap to his red-white-and-blue WW II uniform. Since that film his costumes have been much more colorful.

 

OTOH his suit in the first Avengers movie was full-on dayglo color, and most people agree it was his worst outfit yet. The colors weren't the only reason for that, but they certainly didn't help.

 

IMO the his color balance was just about right in Age of Ultron.

[Lord Liaden]

While we have had some shifts in costuming to dark and untilarian, we also have colorful Captain America, Iron Man, Ant Man, Spider-Man, Dr. Strange, Thor's red cape... I don't think it's been one-sided.

[zslane]

I don't think Cap's Winter Soldier costume is the best example of the trend. The first mission we see Cap using it is a covert one, for which mostly dark colors make sense.

 

They make sense on a realism basis, sure, but making sense on that level is a modern action movie priority, and not reflective of the aesthetic priorities that were in effect during most of Cap's 75-year existence. In other words, for most of Cap's comic book career, he would have worn his standard red-white-blue costume even on so-called "covert" missions. Departing from comic book traditions is a core philosophical mandate for most superhero movies of the 21st century, and "covert means dark" is as good an example of that as anything, in my view.

 

I simply hunger for superhero movies that reflect a more traditional superhero aesthetic. One where the writers and producers aren't constantly writing screenplays designed to justify dark, tech-oriented costumes.

 

Dr. Strange was a decent step in the right direction, but most folks at Marvel involved with that will go out of their way to explain how "out there" the movie was, and how it is unusual in its daring willingness to be Kirby-esque and, you know, CRAAAAAAAZY with the colors and wild visuals. Sure, Kirby could get kind of psychedelic in those comics now and then, but colorful costumes should not be regarded as some sort of walk on the wild side of movie production. It should be the norm for a superhero universe, even a cinematic one.

 

As I've said before, if bright colors are good enough for Spider-Man and (Christopher Reeves) Superman, they should be good enough for Captain America (at all times), Vision, Falcon, Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, etc. etc. as well.