Costume Accuracy in Marvel Movies

By Shrey Sankalp

I recently gave you my take on the reason costume accuracy is important in comic book-based movies. Before we begin breaking down the accuracy of Marvel Comics costumes, I feel I should clarify something.

The Marvel in comics and the Marvel in movies is different – Marvel sold the rights to some of its characters towards the latter part of the century to various studios, with the Avengers and other ‘B-listers’ landing at Paramount (with the rights now being at Disney), Fantastic Four, X-Men and Daredevil landing at Fox (Daredevil and related characters are back at Marvel with Netflix) and Spider-Man going to Sony (which is again back at Marvel, although it’s a joint custody situation).

The Marvel we’re talking about here is the Disney and Netflix based Marvel Cinematic Universe.

With that out of the way, let’s do a quick rundown of the comic accuracy of the major players in the MCU!

The List: A Breakdown of Marvel Costumes 

The list is long but not nearly as long as it could be.  I did not cover every single character, but I promise, I did not miss any of the ones that you most care about.

1. 1. Iron Man
2. 
   
3. Good ol’ shellhead is the man responsible for kicking off the MCU as we see today, and there’s a lot to love about him, one of them his costume.
4. The costume isn’t strictly faithful to the comic books in terms of design or technology (let’s be real, Bleeding Edge or Extremis or S.K.I.N. Armors were never a realistic proposition), but the red and gold motif is present and the costume is very practical and mostly believable.
5. It may not be an exact replica, but it gets the job done rather well, all while being super-cool in the real world sense.
8. 2. Captain America
9. 
10. Translating a costume composed solely of the American flag on screen couldn’t have been an easy task (it does sound rather ridiculous on paper), but Marvel has done a mostly good job.
11. The costumes worn in The First Avenger, The Winter Soldier, Age of Ultron and Civil War, all carry the recognizable design traits, but adding details like armored padding and making the gloves and boots more “real world” makes the costume much more believable.
12. They tried going the plain spandex way in The Avengers and while it was very comic accurate, it also looked rather laughable and ‘$10 thrift store’ on screen, so the trade-off in terms of accuracy is very acceptable here.
13. Small details make all the difference!
15. 3. Thor
16. 
17. There’s no doubt about it – Thor has arguably the most comic accurate costume in the MCU.
18. When you watch the first Thor or The Avengers, you’ll find the costume is almost directly taken from the page, and if you’re like me, that’s a special treat!
19. The subsequent movies do shake things up a bit, but it’s all good, it’s still believable yet fantastic, grand yet practical and that’s all you need really.
20. One thing I couldn’t help but notice is how Thor doesn’t seem to be too fond of his winged helmet in the films, but hey, when you’ve got locks like Chris Hemsworth’s, I’m sure you’d wanna show them off too!
22. 4. Hawkeye
23. 
24. Oh Hawkeye, the perpetual laughing stock of the MCU.
25. Hawkeye isn’t the most relevant or useful character (or even somebody’s favorite) character in general, and there’s enough things to make fun of him for, thank god they didn’t go with the character’s signature costume from the comics because that would have been way, way, out there.
26. The costume isn’t even remotely faithful to the comic, but that’s hardly a bad thing here because all costumes work well in context of the films, so here’s an instance where practicality trumps comic accuracy.
31. 5. Black Widow
32. 
33. Black Widow’s costume is comic accurate, but that’s hardly an achievement seeing all her costume is a skin-tight black spandex/leather outfit with holsters and a baton at times.
34. But hey, you put Scarlett Johansson in it and ain’t nobody ever gonna complain.
39. 6. Hulk
40. 
41. Come on, a big green dude with torn purple pants?
42. There’s no way there’ll be any difficulty translating that from page to screen.
43. God bless CGI.
48. 7. Ant-Man
49. 
50. Everybody loves Paul Rudd, so it’s natural everybody would love Ant-Man.
51. That’s hardly the only thing to love about Ant-Man, though, because both his costumes were fairly sweet too.
52. Yes, they’re not comic accurate and as Scott Lang himself said, it does look like a biker suit with a somewhat odd helmet, but again, this is the same issue where translating the actual comic costume to screen would look rather odd, and the audiences we are, we demand some semblance of believability in unbelievable characters, so here’s another win for practicality over comic accuracy.
57. 8. War Machine
58. 
59. The case with War Machine’s costume is rather similar to that of Iron Man’s so no special comments here, just that it treads the line between real world believability and comic accuracy just as well as Iron Man’s costume.
60. Still, I feel the Iron Patriot was a huge, huge, misstep that should never be repeated.
61. You don’t make Iron Man rip off Captain America’s colors, people.
65. 9. Falcon
66. 
68. Falcon is one character whose costume is a stark departure from the comics, eschewing the loud and simply over the top design found in the comics for a very realistic paramilitary outfit that’s easy on the eye.
69. The only comic book accuracy you’ll find here is the usage of red color here and there in his costume!
74. 10. Vision
75. 
76. Vision’s costume is hands down the most comic book accurate costume in the entire MCU, there’s absolutely no doubt about it.
77. It’s very faithful to the original design, with just some additional textures here and there to make the costume more believable on screen.
82. 11. The Maximoff Twins
83. 
84. For better or for worse, the Maximoff Twins (also known as Quicksilver or Scarlet Witch) look nothing like their comic book counterparts. In case of Scarlet Witch, it’s understandable (let’s be realistic, that costume was never making it on screen) but Quicksilver’s is surprising, seeing that they cannot hide behind the ‘it’s the past!’ reasoning of Fox’s Quicksilver.
85. Still, you get some streaks of blue and red with both the twins, and that’s about as accurate as things get here.
90. 12. The Winter Soldier
91. 
92. Aside from a slight change in the mask (a good thing if you ask me, domino masks are about as useful as pineapple on a pizza) the overall look of Sgt. Bucky Barnes’ Soviet garb is lifted straight off of Ed Brubaker’s pages, and I can’t emphasize how great that is.
97. 13. Black Panther
98. 
99. Apparently someone rediscovered their love for comic book accuracy at Marvel of late because their costumes sure are getting more and more like the ones in comics.
100. Apart from Vision, Black Panther has the most faithfully recreated costume and the lines and texture added to it in the film makes it very, very believable while also being very, very accurate.
105. 14. Spider-Man
106. 
107. Of course your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man was gonna make the list.
108. He’s changed hands over the years, and while all of Maguire, Garfield and Holland’s version have remained true to the comic (minus the Black Symbiote suit and whatever Garfield’s basketball textured suit-1 in The Amazing Spider-Man was), it’s Holland and Marvel’s version that’s got the most love thanks to its movable eyes that give the costume a very old school comic book feel even if the costume features slight adjustments here and there.
109. Retro is certainly a good thing.
114. 15. Daredevil
115. 
116. Daredevil’s a complex subject, and we shall talk more about it someday, but for now, all you need to know is that there was a flop Ben Affleck version by Fox and there’s now a hit Charlie Cox version by Marvel, both of which have completely different attitudes towards comic accuracy.
117. The Affleck version is 100% faithful to the comic and as nice as it is, the red leather seems more Christian Grey than crime-fighter and it’s another instance where some practicality would have been appreciated.
118. The Netflix version didn’t suit up the hero until the finale of the first season, and let’s just say reactions were mixed. The all black ninja-like homemade outfit up until that point had worked out fine, but the radically different combat suit costume approach didn’t work for many fans as it was very different from the comics, almost to a point where it was unrecognizable.
119. So yes, on one hand, you have too accurate, and on the other hand, you have too divergent.
120. Life, I tell you.
125. 16. Elektra
126. 
127. Much like all costumes worn by female characters in comics, Elektra’s just wasn’t going to make the cut on screen, for reasons the MPAA will best explain.
128. Still, props to Fox for trying with Daredevil and Elektra and they did recreate the costume faithfully for the top half of the costume seen in the films.
129. Of course, Netflix wasn’t going for that, and chose a rather practical (and in my opinion, better) costume by going all black with a shade of red to cover her face.
130. Practicality and stealth do need to count for something when you’re a ninja assassin, even if that means comic book accuracy getting the boot.
135. 17. The Punisher
136. 
137. The Punisher’s costume is a simple one involving just an affinity for black, an optional trench coat and the requisite skull motif.
138. No wonder then, that all three adaptations – Thomas Jane, Ray Stevenson and Jon Bernthal – have supremely accurate costumes.
139. The only thing determining which one you like more is solely your preference for the actor donning the costume, but for me, it’s Jon Bernthal.
144. 18. Guardians of the Galaxy
145. 
146. It’d be a bit unfair to judge the Guardians on how comic book accurate their costumes are simply because the film itself takes generous, generous liberties from the comic book.
147. Still, if you must, Star-Lord is rather accurate, Gamora is sufficiently green, Drax is acceptable and you really can’t go wrong with a raccoon and a tree, so there!
152. 19. The Villains
153. 
154. This list doesn’t follow a ranking system, but if it did, even then the villains would be number 19.
155. Marvel simply doesn’t get the look of its villains as per the source material!
156. Loki is remarkably comic accurate (not that surprising, Thor is too), and villains in Sony’s Spider-Man franchise are mostly fine (I’m willing to excuse the two reimaginings of Green Goblin, there was no way the comic book look translated well on screen without looking like a parody), but in terms of the MCU, there’s just no accuracy.
157. Red Skull is perhaps the closest to comic book accuracy after Loki, but that’s simply due to his inherent appearance, not any special costume.
158. And even though Marvel is infamous for subpar villains, even the more impressive ones (apart from Loki, of course) such as Kilgrave and Zemo (I’m ignoring Fisk despite his competence because there’s no way you get a bald fat dude in a suit wrong) ignore their traditional looks.
159. At least Kilgrave retained his penchant for purple, Zemo as so different that he could have been an entirely new character altogether.

So there we have it!
I think we can safely conclude Marvel does fairly acceptably in the comic book accuracy department, with the exception of the villains.
I’d say they get a B+ for their efforts.
How does that stack up against competitors?
I will post an entry about costume accuracy in Fox-Marvel films within a few day to follow up this complex topic, so stay tuned.

By the way, check out how accurate actual Halloween superhero costumes are in contrast to the movies they are supposedly from.