An old man rants about imaginary clothing
Okay, I’m back here on my oft-abandoned soapbox of a blog. And it’s because of something frivolous, (big surprise!) but as a fan of comic books, movies and comic book movies; I feel I can keep my peace no longer.
The textures have got to stop.
EXHIBIT A: Big Blue..um, Dark Blue?
There’s a new Superman movie coming: Man of Steel, directed by Zack (“you know you loved Watchmen, you hypocrite”) Snyder. My love for his take on the unfilmable graphic novel aside, what the hell has happened to Superman? More specifically, what has happened to the long underwear?
Dark and Gritty...yet shiny..wait, this is Superman, right? Bastion of Hope and Justice, and all that?
Did Supes encounter an enemy with a desaturation gun, and fight him in a tar pit? And that cape is beginning to remind me of Spawn-it seems a little unwieldy. Maybe superstrength makes it easy to lug around. Or..oh, god, I dare not even think it: what if it’s CGI?
...maybe they're just rehearsing? That's it, (uneasy chuckle belying shaking hands) it's just rehearsal-they wouldn't give Superman a CG prehensile cape!
What happened here with all this butterfly wing filigree stuff? And bracers? Does an invulnerable superhero need armor? I always thought the term “shield” to describe the chest emblem referred to the shape, not the function. Maybe Kryptonian fashion was sort of like Asgardian, all warlike and stuff. But weren’t they, by most accounts, a race of scientists who had socially evolved past warfare? And how did Ma Kent get patterns from Krypton in the first place? Did they send a catalog along with their only son?
(I’m starting to foam up a little…better try to focus on one rant at a time-sorry, folks)At least they ditched the red briefs, huh? Now we won’t be distracted by Superman’s crotch at all. (Did you just look at the picture again?) Especially since they got rid of the belt also, making him look like he’s ready to compete in some sort of S&M luge event. And, again..the textures have completely crept into the costume now, so the suit looks like it was made from the skins of wild alien blue basketballs.
Unlike our own domestic species, which are raised in farms.
I’m not entirely blaming Mr. Snyder (I really did love Watchmen, and I really am a hypocrite-both irrelevant here). Like lots of evil things, it started subtly, with the old “new” Superman, portrayed by Brandon Routh in Superman Returns, courtesy of Bryan Singer. I loved his take on the Xmen’s outfits (including the requisite postmodern joke about yellow and blue spandex-”haha, you see what he did there?”, as I elbow an uninterested stranger in the dark cinema). However, with the Superman project, we started the dangerous drift towards wtf territory.
Tall, proud, and only slightly dark and shiny. The chest emblem looks like it could deflect bullets without kryptonian powers backing it up. But at least the suit still seems to be fabric of some kind.
Since Singer was obviously such a huge fan of the Richard Donner 70′s Superman movies, you have to wonder whether this subtle shift was due to other pressures besides taste..perhaps there is a small army of evil fashion ninjas who terrorize Hollywood directors into making things more…fabulous?
"Okay, I'll put little scales all over the shield and change the cape to leather-just please don't hurt my family!"
With or without Ninjonistas, I must implore (not for the first time, or last-even in this article) that film producers/directors/costume designers, and generally anyone with input: please back up off the griptape on the superheroes’ costumes. It’s impractical in the so-called real(istic) world: superheroes being easier to grapple can’t be good for fighting villains, not to mention that brightly colored costumes serve much better symbolically and to help those in need recognize which flying guy they should try to run towards rather than away from. And in the traditional comic book universe point of view, can you imagine having to draw all that detail in every panel? Books are late enough as it is.
What exactly is wrong with this, anyway?:
Not-so-subtle patriotic propaganda notwithstanding, I mean.
Hey kids! Try scrolling up from here to watch Superman’s outfit get dirty!
EXHIBIT B: The Amazing EXTREME Spider-Man
There’s a new Spider-man movie coming out, and while a lot of people are gabbing about Andrew Garfield-”Can a Brit be Peter Parker?”, “He’s too freakishly tall-it’s going to be DaddyLonglegs-Man!”, “Gwen Stacy is hot!”, and so on; I’ve only got eyes for the new costume. Sore, overworked, very sad eyes.
Here is what I’m talking about, and a very good example of my texture beefs:
Posture: check, hand positions: check, silver slippers: che....wait, what did you say?
He looks like some sort of 90′s Japanese fever-dream about combat skateboarding over lava flows. When I first saw this picture, I read some comments on the site where people were arguing that the “shoes” were just safety equipment for stuntmen, and the reflective surface was for cgi foot replacement. As crazy and dumb as that sounds, I still like that explanation better than these shoes being part of the new costume. I always pictured Spider-man as being lithe and agile, and wearing shoes seems kind of…well, clumsy and dumb.
Even in the Mangaverse-where he's a ninja, by the way.
And then, of course, there’s the crux of my angst-texture. This new costume has texture EVERYWHERE. The emblem on the chest is broken up into grooved pieces, making it a texture within the texture of the fabric (Aren’t icons more effective as simpler solid shapes, Design School? That’s what you always told me, anyway)…even the eyes have a grill texture now. He looks like a cheap Spider-man speaker for iPod that you might find in a knockoff shop, fresh from the Chinese shipping container.
Turn up the music! Those eye-speakers are too small!
And if you ask a person on the street who is probably not a Spider-man fan (although maybe they’ve seen the first set of movies), “What is the defining pattern in Spidey’s costume?”, and then chase them until they stop screaming to be left alone and agree to answer, they will likely say “Webs! Now leave me alone, for God’s sake!”. Makes some sort of twisted sense, right? A character based on a SPIDER theme might use WEBS in their costume, because logic is cooler than fashion. Now look at the chest/abdomen that picture above. Watch as the clean, figure-defining lines laid down in the Sixties by artists degenerate into something that you would probably find on an art deco window, or maybe a bmx track.
The gloves in particular are a good example of “let’s change the pattern around, because arbitrary chaos is more interesting!” And again, we’ve got major “basketballing” going on. While it could conceivably be argued that all the rubber grid on the suit makes it easier for him to stick to walls and such-I would counter that the first time he’s snagged from the air and bear-hugged by Rhino, or Venom..or hell, even the Vulture-he would regret all that friction. The texturing is so overwhelming even the toys are suffering from it with this suit:
My toy lost a fight with a cat. And I spilled paint on it. And it has platforms.
Again, it’s not purely the fault of the new film that this is happening (although I blame them, personally-I’m a complex person like that). It started the first time Spider-man graced the silver screen, with the three (really good, pretty good, and not at all good) Sam Raimi-directed Spider-man films. They gave us the “silver raised webbing look” that previously I had only seen in some ridiculous thing called “Spider-armor”.
Hit the disco lights! It's party time! ( this is still better than the new suit)
At least the first movie costume was somewhat respectful of the original intent, even if it did make it look like Spidey had been wrapped in wire and could never feel anything with all that rubber (that’s the worst, isn’t it guys?-obligatory penis joke). The choice of coloring the raised webbing grey-sliver always struck me as strange, too. It just over-emphasizes the whole thing, in my estimation. But I’ll take over-emphasized webbing on Spider-man any day over the slight reference to webs in the new outfit.
They're so...raised!
This was also when the texture started, possibly for all recent superhero outfits in films (by virtue of this being the first major blockbuster in the genre in recent years, I suppose). As much as I love Sam Raimi and the two Spider-man films he made (we shall not speak of The Other here), this first pebble falling down the hill has turned into the avalanche of detritus we have to wade through now to see people in colorful clothes beating on each other on the big screen.
Harbinger of doom..portent of evil times..and a sad mess of a movie.
So, as with Superman, I am forced to ask: What exactly is so horrible about this?:
That's right, web-wings. Still not as dumb as silver slippers.
Or this?:
Stylish, iconic...obviously not suitable for movies. I mean, nobody watches movies with ninja in them, right?
Or even:
Uh..okay, not this one.
Hey Kids! Scroll up from here to see Spidey become an X-games athlete!
EXHIBIT C: A disembodied head can’t use a ring!
Ryan Reynolds portrays the classic Green Lantern, Hal Jordan in the new movie. Although this movie had been much anticipated by yours truly due to my fondness for the character, especially when Hal was wearing the superscience jewelry, I found myself unable to enjoy or balk effectively due to the overwhelming problem I had with the costumes. Mainly, the fact that what I was watching was the ghostly floating heads of actors rather than characters, even poorly written or portrayed ones. See, in this film the Lanterns are either entirely CG (almost all of them) or human actors whose bodies have been replaced with CG suits (Hal Jordan, Sinestro, and Abin Sur-don’t worry if you don’t know these people, you can still play the home game). This was done, I assume, to make it easier to show the pulses of green energy flowing through what looks like the exposed musculature of the characters in these designs. And as much as some fans have expressed desire to eviscerate Reynolds for his portrayal, I do understand that CG is easier and less messy.
Look ma! No body!
So in this movie we have skinless muscle bodies, powered from within by a glowing green energy, with human heads precariously balancing on top. Seriously, in some parts of the movie Jordan swoops in for a landing and I swear his head lags behind a second, like the afterthought it is.
Like a handsome flesh balloon.
And as sexy and fit as Reynolds is, I’m not sure even his most fervent teenage girl fan contingent wants to see that kind of thing. Maybe in erotic horror fanfiction?
Hey ladies, this skin comes right off!
The mask also adds to this feeling, as it seems to be designed to sink the eyes deep into skull-like cheekbones. I thought Blackest Night was over already? (yeah, I know-only comic fans got that…but who else is really reading this anyway?)
This mask is inhibiting my peripheral vision.
Since there’s only one version of a film costume for Green Lantern, I can’t show a gradual progression into this madness. So we move directly into the comic book original comparison, and my small pitiful voice in the wilderness crying out.
What’s so wrong with this?:
Even watercolor and magic jewelry can't stop the awesomeness.
Hey, Kids! Stop scrolling back up now and listen to me talk to the Beast!
DEVIL’S ADVOCATE TIME:
D.A.: “So what if the movies are different from the books? The books aren’t even consistent themselves, are they?”
ME: “The point is that non-comics readers are seeing this stuff and associating it with the characters. And being unfamiliar with the comics, they will not be used to accepting variants of characters, which further entrenches their (misguided) view that, say-The Green Lantern has no skin or that Superman needs wrist protectors. It’s important to the spirit of the character that as clear a picture as possible is presented to new people so fandom can develop honestly. I’m assuming that these new images of the characters are being developed to appeal to a broader (aka. teenage) audience, rather than at the imagination or story development of the creators or contributing artists.”
D.A.: “Who are you to say what shape the character development should take?”
ME: “I’m a fan, one of the people who support these little endeavours. Despite the example of George Lucas, I believe that generally creators should have their vision honored. I will concede that comics are a collaborative process by default, and movies even more so, but films like Captain America and Thor should show that modern film versions of comic book characters can retain some or all of the costuming of the comic and still appeal to fans and new people. Which in Hollywood speak means more money.”
D.A.: “Aren’t you a little old to be yammering about comic book stuff on the internet? And aren’t there enough commentaries by sad lifelong fans polluting the data streams, inbetween eating Doritos and drinking Mountain Dew?”
ME: “Vade retro satana!”
D.A.: “Okay, okay….douche.”
So-agree/disagree, if you’ve read this far I have at least met my goal of getting this off my chest and possibly planting my cranky fanboy seed into your minds. As far as the comic book costume changes go, I feel somewhat at peace now.
oh, crap.
