14 DAY TRIAL // Whenever a new superhero movie (or TV show, as of late) comes out, fans of the original comic book story get together and heatedly discuss the changes made to the costume they had come to know from the source material.
Whatever a superhero wears is important for reasons that go beyond the aesthetics, and this means the team designing the costume has one hell of a task on their hands. The actors wearing them don’t have it easy either; just ask Ben Affleck.
The new Batsuit in “Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice”
Ben Affleck will appear in “Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice” in 2016, but he is also expected to make a cameo in “Suicide Squad” that same year. A version of his Batsuit is shown in the photo above: it’s the first official pic of him in character coming from director Zack Snyder’s social media accounts.
Clearly, Affleck’s Batsuit is very different from the three Christian Bale wore in Christopher Nolan’s trilogy “The Dark Knight,” and costume designer Michael Wilkinson tells Fashionista that this was the intention from the get-go.
In designing the Batsuit, he also had to make sure that the cowl allowed the character the freedom to turn his head around, which is something previous installments of it failed to do.
Even though it looks simplistic, the Batsuit is made up of many layers, which means that Affleck needs 25 minutes and a lot of help in order to pour himself in it.
“It does involve multiple costumers,” the designer says. “It’s not the sort of thing that I could just sit in Ben's trailer and he gets into it himself. It’s a six-handed operation.”
So basically, if Batman existed in real life and you would depend on his help to survive or escape some great harm, either he’d show up on time looking less impressive than Affleck does, or he would come so late that there would be no one to save.
Henry Cavill’s Superman suit is a “wonder of engineering”
In the same interview, Wilkinson also offers some juicy details about Henry Cavill’s Superman outfit in “Man of Steel,” the Superman reboot that Snyder directed.
The idea behind that one was to make it look as alien as possible, while having it be flexible and tough-looking at the same time.
It too involved many layers, because they had discovered that a regular bodysuit flattened Cavill’s muscular figure. So before the actual suit, he had to put on “a sculpted chrome muscle suit” that molded itself on his muscles. The outer layers comprised a “thin, sheer and 3D-printed chainmail-like blue mesh overlaid with foam-latex shapes,” and of course, the cape.
Cavill could get into his suit in 15 minutes, more or less without help. He was probably thrilled Snyder decided that his Superman wouldn’t be wearing those red knickers on top of it all, because that would have added another full minute to his prep time.
Both Cavill and Affleck will be showing off the brand new versions of the Superman and Batman suits in March 2016.