Hancock

I swear that the costume designer on Hancock just pulled Wolverine’s costume from the first X-Men movie out of mothballs, added a gold strip to it and it was Miller Time!  This costume is so completely uninspired that it seems like a genuine mistake.  There’s no color, there’s no concept, they don’t even use the eagle that they spend the entire movie hammering into our head as a visual motif. 

My biggest issue here is that this superhero was created solely for the movies.  There weren't 50 years of comic books that led up to this movie, we knew nothing about Hancock.  So why make his costume so mudane?  Why not make a splash?  Why not create some great iconography?

 

X-Men

I just want to start by saying that I do like this movie, and this has nothing to do with my feelings for the movie.  That said, what were they thinking?  Black leather?  Seriously?  I know, I know, yellow latex would not have worked in real life.  I get that, but we couldn’t get more than decking out these guys in black leather?

My problem is this: X-Men is one of the most popular comic book franchises in history.  They have been drawn and re-imagined by some of the best artists in the world.  Their costumes have been designed, and re-designed countless times.  There are literally thousands of pages of source material for the filmmakers to go back to and use as inspiration.  Yet, the filmmakers decided to go with the most pedestrian design possible, for not one, not two, but three movies.  Why on earth would they do this?

   

Superman Returns

I’ll admit, I’ve never been a huge fan of Superman’s costume.  DC costumes in general are a little old school for my taste.  I mean, what’s with the logo in the middle of everyone’s chest?  At what point does a superhero decide, “okay, so I want to save the world…what I need is a kick-ass logo that strikes fear in the hearts of men!”

Well, Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns took that simple suit and adds some really weird stuff to it.  The cape appears to be leather, the logo is raised plastic, and the belt buckle looks like it was made in China.  I always thought that Superman’s costume was supposed to be made from the cloth he was wrapped in.  So that means it was homemade, and this costume does not appear to be homemade.  I guess my real problem with the costume is that the filmmakers didn’t want to completely redo the original suit, but refused to add something new to it.  Its just flat, illogical, and sort of ill-fitting. 

 

The Punisher

How do you screw up the Punisher’s costume?  It’s a skull shirt and black pants.  Simple right?  Wrong!  When you translate that suit into real life you get a dude who likes he bought a Punisher costume online from Thailand.  See, you can’t just recreate comic book costumes in the real world, they sometimes look silly.  You need to make a few choices and tailor that costume to the reality the film is building.

Sure, The Punisher is a kinda silly movie, but the costume doesn’t even support the quasi-gritty world they were trying to create.  First of all, Frank Castle’s kid gives him the shirt.  That might be in the comic, but it’s a silly idea.  Second, the shirt is sort of big on Thomas Jane.  Jane isn’t a small guy by any stretch, but the shirt just sort of hangs off of him.  Look, I am not they needed to use the comic as gospel for the movie, but I think after the Dolph Lundgren Punisher, they tried too hard to bring the movie back to the comic book, and unfortunately the costume came with that.

Elektra

Elektra is a pretty simple concept for a character: sexy ninja.  Sure, Jennifer Garner is sexy, and she’s got some movies, but her costume doesn’t even come close to ninja. 

The comic-book Elektra was sleek and sexy, and her costume was designed to show off her legs, but also not get in her way when she does all her ninja stuff.  In the movie, what we got was a bare midriff, a completely functionless corset, and completely covered legs…okay, I’ll get off the legs thing.  Still though, this outfit is so non-functional, and lacks any real design cues from the original except for the color.

Catwoman

Every “worst” list needs to include Catwoman at some point, but there needs to be a special place set aside for the artist car accident that is the Catwoman costume.  Okay, let’s start with the mask, the huge ears, and silly almost helmet style, just doesn’t make a for sleek design.  Next, let’s talk top.  I am going to try to be delicate here, but Halle Berry is known for this part of her anatomy, and the costume designer was shameless in basically completely exposing those assets.  Let’s move onto the pants.  I couldn’t be a bigger proponent of leather pants, but whats the deal with those rips?

Catwoman is a cinematic tragedy on almost every level, but that costume should surely be singled out for ridicule.  Especially when you consider Tim Burton had a Catwoman in his movie just a few years ago that looked awesome, had a style to her suit, and was sexy as all get out.

The Phantom

Spandex.  Its both a blessing and a curse.  Okay, its mostly a curse, but it was especially a curse when it came to the film adaptation of The Phantom.  There were troubles with this movie from the beginning, after the movie passed from one director to another.  Finally, after Billy Zane won the role and the film went into preproduction they changed the suit drastically because Billy Zane was just too beefcake for the one they had designed.  And this is what they came up with.

When will costume designers learn that just adding texture to fabrics doesn’t modernize a costume?  The Phantom is an old school comic book and the suit has that feel, but the audience is made to stare at Billy Zane, who can’t hide anything in that suit, for 2 hours, and honestly it gets kind of uncomfortable.

Ghost Rider

Ghost Rider is one that was sort of doomed from the beginning.  It’s a biker with a flaming skull for a head.  In the books, it’s a little easier to believe, but rather than try to make this over-the-top concept work with more subtle and downplayed design around the rest of him, they went to the other extreme.  Every single place they could enhance Ghost Rider, they went overboard.  His jacket, his pants, his bike, its all over-designed.

I think it might have worked a lot better if they would have simply had a Nic Cage, flaming skull and all, in a simple biker’s jacket, some Levi’s, and a normal Harley.  I mean, not to be repetitive, but he’s a dude with a flaming skull for a head riding a flaming motorcycle around, why do you need to make him more interesting?

Batman & Robin

Nipples meet Batsuit.  I have written way too much about this movie, but I’ve never been given the chance to focus solely on the costumes.

First lets talk Batgirl.  Okay, so the Schumacher movies didn’t really stick with canon, but why not make Batgirl a home grown superhero with an equally home grown costume.  Also, I find it odd that Batgirl is the only one without nipples on her suit.

Next, lets talk Robin.  Again, he has nipples, and his suit is basically the Batsuit with some robin flare attached.  In the comics Robin isn’t particularly muscular, and while I understand Chris O’Donnell is sort of a hunk and all, why make him busting at the seams like this?

Alright, on to the main event, Batman.  Where do I even start with this suit?  So Tim Burton took the idea of the Batsuit and made it interesting and new.  By the time Batman & Robin rolled around Batman looked like a refugee from a steroid support group. 

If that wasn’t bad enough, by the end of the movie all three are in armored suits that look even more ridiculous.  Basically, a good idea was taken way, way, way too far, and what we have is a muscle bound, armor clad, nipple adorned, rubber suit with so many affectations you sort of miss the fact that there is a human underneath it all.

Steel

I feel bad making fun of Steel.  Its easy, and its not very satisfying, but its true.  Steel is just a mess of a movie, and that stretches to the costume design.  Steel, as many of you might know, was made popular during the Death of Superman series, as one of Superman’s four possible reincarnations.

This storyline was not continued in the movie, and Steel was re-imagined as an urban knight, with a low-tech suit of armor giving him superpowers.  Steel’s costume is a nightmare.  Jagged metal, little to no design, and very unrealistic.

...on another note...

Just to lighten this up, I want to quickly talk about one of the best bits of costume design out there.  It wasn’t money, or a great costume designer, it was just keeping it simple, and designing the costume around the tone of the movie rather than being flashy. 

Batman: DeadEnd is a simple little short film that brings Batman back to the basics.  If you haven’t seen, take a few minutes and see what a couple of friends and some great direction can get you…