Fashion Spotlight: Spidey's New Suit

This blog isn't as one dimensional as you may think. In my initial post I talked about movies, music, books, and television, but fashion is  another essential part of popular culture, everything revolves around trends, and nothing is trendier than fashion. In this initial post we will examine Spiderman's new look.

Before

After

Today it was announced that the new Spiderman reboot would return everyone's favorite wall-crawler to his roots by titling the film The Amazing Spiderman. The time to analyze whether or not this is a good decision will probably be subject for a later post but today let's focus on the other treat fans were given today, Andrew Garfield donning the full new Spidey-suit.

The most important part of any superhero, next to their name, is their costume. The costume is the physical embodiment of the alter-ego that which encapsulates all that they stand for, and what they are trying embody. It holds the logo with which they will be recognized. People always point to Batman's cape and cowl, but he's nothing without that big bat spread across his chest. The same goes for Spiderman. People know he's the guy with the spider in the middle of his chest, big eyes and webbing covering the rest of his suit. Marc Webb's redesigned Spidey-suit seems to keep all of these key elements while giving them slight alterations. Let's contrast with the previous Spidey-suit worn by Tobey Maguire in Sam Raimi's Spiderman films.

The first thing to look at is the much more modern look the new suit has. While Raimi went for a very classic Spiderman that clearly defined the red and blue elements of the costume, the new version blends the red and blue elements especially on the arms.

While we are looking at the arms, note specifically the black pieces of plastic his wrists. These are presumably Spiderman's webs shooters. One of the major criticisms of Raimi's films was how he decided that part of Peter Parker's mutation from being bit by a radioactive spider would allow him to shoot webs out of his wrists. This goes against the comics where Peter Parker invents a mechanical device and chemical that allows him to shoot webbing from his wrists. Webb seems to be going back to the source material and having his Peter Parker be the genius most fans recognize him to be.

Finally let's look at the eyes. this is the one part that does not necessarily concern me, but at least interests me. There seems to be a difference between the eyes on the new suit and old suit. The new suit seems to have eyes that are smaller, rounder, and have an odd golden glare to them. However looking back at old promo poster's for the first three Spiderman films, they all feature a Spiderman with "golden glare" eyes, even though they appear white in the films. So perhaps it's just a trick of the camera.

For now I'm on board with the new look, but what about you? Are you digging Spidey's new suit, or do you like the way Tobey wears it better? And what about that new title?