By Drew Dietsch
| Published
Spider-Man: Brand New Day has begun production and fans are going gaga for the new suit revealed by star Tom Holland. Why is this take on the wall-crawler’s duds causing such a positive frenzy? Because it’s doing its best to replicate the costume design as presented in the most recognizable comic book art.
It doesn’t sound like a big deal but Spider-Man: Brand New Day getting this kind of reaction over its costume points towards a direction superhero cinema needs to embrace: giving audiences costumes that don’t look like overdesigned muck.
Keep It Simple, Stupid
Superhero costumes born in the realm of comics/illustration don’t often concern themselves with any reality other than their own. They are a style born of striking simplicity, able to cut a recognizable silhouette aided by a prominent color pattern. Even as far into the ‘90s with a gritty character like Spawn, you still saw the basic philosophy of superhero costume work at play.
It’s only the most annoying of fans that argue for costumes to feel as if they were replicable in our own world. Granted, part of that is due to movies like Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy and Iron Man establishing a far more realism-based approach toward superhero stories and costumes. While those were successful endeavors, they also led to a movement in superhero costumes where simplicity in aesthetic was not the core design philosophy.
Instead, everything started looking like flight suits and sci-fi armor as opposed to the straightforward approach that birthed the genre. But, there was also a practical reason behind this choice.
The Definition Problem
As filmmaking embraced higher and higher definition cameras, the superhero costume came under more visual scrutiny. The unadorned perfection of Christopher Reeve’s Superman would look like nothing more than pajamas in the eyes of modern audiences because it wouldn’t look “real.” At least, that was the thinking in Hollywood.
So, in an effort not to come across as “fake looking”, superhero costumes incorporated more and more lines into their designs, especially in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This is because all this segmentation in the costume would give it a deeper sense of definition and therefore “reality.”
What it actually did was turn some of the greatest superhero costumes of all time into techno-brain road maps that don’t convey the power of their source material. In an effort to craft definition, it ends up creating a style that is less effective. And it’s not just Marvel doing this as James Gunn’s Superman costume looks perfect… at a distance. The closer you get, the more of those definition lines you see that you wish you could erase.
Save Us, Spidey
I’m hoping the overwhelmingly positive response to the Spider-Man: Brand New Day costume signals a turn for Marvel. The Fantastic Four costumes were also refreshing but helped by their retro-future era and tone. Spider-Man being in a modern setting with such a straightforward costume gives me hope that we can see the same philosophy spread through superhero cinema.
I don’t need Superman or Batman to have an overly complicated design to their suits. Like I said, the Superman suit is perfect if you can somehow block out those definition lines. Redesign the costume for its next appearance and get rid of them! Let Batman just look like Batman without a whole bunch of sci-fi body armor stupidness. It’s a brand new day for superhero blockbusters and I hope Spidey is the start of a new approach to superhero costumes: going back to their roots.
