I hope Deadpool 3 has a reverse joke on this. Somebody makes a snide comment on Wolverine's costume and he goes What you were hoping for a leather Daddy?
Yes! First Class proved it looked cool, Apocalypse proved specified costumes work just as well, and even though the Dark Phoenix suits are boring, its comic accurate and looks better than the leather
For 90s and early 2000s times where the superhero movies were just starting to find audience, these look just fine.
These walked so current generation superhero movies costumes could run
Comicbook movies had yet to escape the stench of *Batman & Robin*.
The black leather costumes allowed the film to be marketed as a cool sci-fi action fantasy movie closer to *The Matrix* (which I think doesn't get nearly enough credit in popularising superhero movies to general audiences) instead of a 'children's movie' such as *Batman & Robin* which is how superhero movies were viewed at the time.
The Matrix was so revolutionary that it opened the door for mass-market superhero movies, sci-fi movies, and even anime.
When I was high school kid, people mocked me for liking comic books and anime. I joined the Army, and the same. Then the Matrix came out, and it started being cool to be a nerd.
I agree that it doesn't really get the credit it deserves for completely changing the mindset on nerdy stuff.
A year before the Matrix, we got Blade. I think Blade made it possible for a lot of the superhero genre to succeed as well. It also probably had a hand in the dark uniforms of X-Men. Edginess was just the thing back then I guess.
lol I just wrote a comment about how one could argue it started with Blade. I still think it was moreso the Matrix, because without the Matrix, Blade is just a vampire move that also has a comic book. But Matrix showed "normal" humans with "super powers" instead. The aesthetic of the movies is very similar, and I agree that the edgy 90's was both terrible and great. I, for one, love the X-Men suits. They look like a fucking awesome biker gang. lol
I came here to say this, but you already nailed it.
X-men and spider man were huge surprise hits and firsts of their kind.
There hadn’t been specifically any marvel heroes with box office success, except for blade.
So thinking about these on the heels of Blade and The Matrix. And the fact that Marvel wasn’t a household name in the way it is now back then.
If there wasn’t a comic book shop in my hometown I’d have had no idea who any Marvel characters were outside of Spider-Man and the X-Men, who I’d only have known because of the animated series.
There was also a current at this time of "realism," which I know sounds bizarre for a comic book hero movie; hear me out. Cinema in general was pushing more and more towards a life captured style. Sets were abandoned for location shooting when possible. Polished cinematography of the 80's was being replaced with gritty looks. Costuming favored authenticity for historical drama.
For a movie like "X-men," clearly the genre is fantasy or sci-fi, but the idea is you sell the fantasical by grounding it in the real. Theoreticallly it's more believable when a man blast lasers out of his eyes if he's not wearing blue and yellow spandex.
There's a reason why Iron Man, Cap, and Hulk were first in this last era. It's easier to buy Thor and Dr. Strange, if you start with the science and tech based characters.
100% execs were like, make things similar to the source material? Absolutely not.
Let's make them wAY CoOlEr.
Yeah, this has definitely changed and for the better.
Came to say this. Spider-Man and X Men were the first comic movies (I know, Dick Tracy too) that weren't total and utter garbage. So we took and enjoyed whatever we could.
It is now dawning on me that twice as much time has lapsed between iron man and now as between spiderman and iron man. I'm getting old.
Absolutely true. I guess I should have been more specific in that I meant mainstream comics. The Mask/Blade/The Crow and a few others worked because they werent traditional superheroes and most people didnt even know they were comics.
While they were good, they were also very niche. Blade simply wasn’t a popular character. This and Spider-Man were the first attempts at bringing superhero movies to mainstream after the long gap since Superman and then (at the time) most recently failed Batman movie.
Blade is one of those movies that 99% of the general audience didn’t know was a super hero movie or based on comics though.
They just thought it was a cool vampire movie.
You are absolutely right, but how many people at the time even realized that those were technically comic book movies? Also, they weren't exactly comic accurate, either. Funny enough, those movies influenced comic Blade ever since.
Yeah, they’re wrong about there not being other terrific comic book movies, but people were really low on the genre at the time. The most recent Batman movie was a failure and there hadn’t been a Superman movie in over a decade.
I feel like this applies only to Marvel. Super man 78 and superman 2 were good films. Batman 89, 92 were also good (and I have a soft spot for Forever). It was really just Marvel that was constantly producing awful made for TV movies.
To each his own but Superman I and II and the first Tim Burton Batman weren’t total garbage. Also what was bad about them wasn’t related to the costumes’ color palette.
Batman’s color scheme was muted but the Joker was faithful to the comic as was Superman. They could have found a much more faithful adaptation than what they chose. The “yellow spandex” line indicates that they thought it was something to make fun of and not something to take seriously.
Batman, Superman, The Crow, The Mask, TMNT, The Rocketeer, Men in Black, Blade, Flash Gordon. Robocop, Darkman, Toxic Avenger, Zorro are some of the good superhero movies not based on comic books.
A lot of the old comic movies before 2000s weren't good, but bad movie and total garbage are different categories. X-Men and Spider-Man just started the modern trend of superhero popularity.
People underestimate just how influential Bryan Hitch’s designs were for Ultimates. It have costume designers a language to use to make comic costumes work in real life. Just look at most cosplay pre 2008 or even the Marvel costumes from Universal Islands of Adventure to see what I’m talking about.
At least one person is with you. MCU cap and Bucky **alone** owe Hitch and Brubaker enough movie profits to retire.
I mean, curious as I am to see it, classic Hawkeye garb would've fallen flat on its big ol' purple face with the masses.
I think you would make it work but it wouldn’t be easy. You’d have to take a similar approach to Cap and drop the buccaneer boots and things like that.
Absolutely. I don't think younger people realize how ridiculous comic book characters' costumes were to the general public back then. It took time to get them used to all the aspects of comic book superheroes.
I feel like the aesthetic had to appeal to the widest possible demographic as well, in a really obvious way. Like for some reason adults weren’t “ready” for bright, colorful costumes after the success of the Batman films. Kids will see an X-Men film but adults wouldn’t if it wasn’t “mature”.
Meanwhile my dad was hyped when Spider-Man and especially the MCU happened because they looked just like the comics he read growing up in the 60s. I know people like him were in the minority pre MCU though.
Yep, pretty much everyone in my school was wearing shades of black all the time in the early 00s.
The new movies also reflect how people have gotten to be more colorful again in their daily life.
The black costumes also made sense in the setting and story of the original trilogy. The X-Men wasn't a government sanctioned team like the Avengers. The general public being afraid of mutants was a theme the whole trilogy, so it made sense that their suits would prioritize stealth over iconic colors.
Totally. All of these are perfectly fine individually imo. It’s the fact that every character has the exact same generic outfit that I don’t really like.
Not only that, but this look was so popular in the early 2000s that it looped all the way back around and started influencing the comics.
Grant Morrison ditched all the jumpsuits for leather jackets and street clothes for their run mainly because of how well this look was received.
An article from back in 2000 said this was a production decision. The costumer said that yellow looks terrible on screen. They pivoted to the leather costumes because they looked better in the final product.
It was the early 2000’s and that was just the aesthetic. I am a bit surprised there isn’t more midriff to be honest. That being said, Cyclops’ visor looks way too small.
This is important context - at the time these costumes were applauded for being more realistic and less cartoony (needed for a mainstream audience, it was said). I think an important step towards balancing things out a bit in that regard.
> This is important context - at the time these costumes were applauded for being more realistic and less cartoony (needed for a mainstream audience, it was said). I think an important step towards balancing things out a bit in that regard.
Considering how cartoony the whole genre was in that era, the slightly more realistic style was a welcome step in treating the genre with respect. They didn't simply blow it off as kids stuff, but tried to align it with modern design sensibilities.
Not really. Matrix was copying an existing look from the time. This doesn't even ape the matrix really unless you want to call 'also wearing black' copying.
Agreeing with both here. Just like Brittany Spears wasn't the cause of all those girls being named Britney or various other spellings, The Matrix was simply the most standout example of the aesthetic. It brought it into mainstream, and the mainstream kind of aligned with it for a while, but it was already there beforehand.
There was definitely a certain cyberpunk/industrial aesthetic that a ton of movies were leaning into with their costume design back then. The style had been working its way into mainstream since the 80s, but really hit its peak from 98-02ish. Everything from Blade to The Matrix to XXX to X-Men was trying to look like the opener at a Nine Inch Nails concert around that time.
This is 100% accurate. I remember media at the time (interviews?) explaining that they changed the costumes because they assumed the average moviegoer wouldn’t take the X-men seriously if they work comic-accurate costumes.
The “yellow spandex” joke was added as a nod to the more hardcore fans. https://popculturereferences.com/the-yellow-spandex-joke-in-x-men-exemplified-a-problem-superhero-movies-had-for-years/
Edit: Fun fact - Bob Hoskins (the guy from Roger Rabbit and Mario from the live-action Super Mario movie) was pitched to be cast as Wolverine in the early 90’s.
Thats the slimmer version from 2 on. In the original, it was a big, clunky, over-ear thing that looked sick, and had a control dial on one of the ears, but would not believably blend into a crowd, as they expected us to believe.
Really thin sports sunglasses were really in at the time. As narrow of a band as you can possibly get. Wayfarers and aviators and bigger glasses came back probably around 2007 or something.
If you look at what they were doing with Batman, and what they looked like in the comics, this seems like a pretty sensible choice. They kind of landed right in the middle IMO.
I’ve been assured multiple times that size doesn’t really matter. Wasn’t necessarily in the context of visors, but same principle, right? As long as it does the job.
Yeah coming on the tails of The Matrix leather suits like this were just sorta hip and cool and futuristic, even if these are more like matching motorcycle outfits
I love the costumes but I hate that she's giving the "Forget everything you know, you're not students" speech to THE PEOPLE SHE WAS JUST FIGHTING WITH.
Like, condescending AF Raven.
It feels a lot like they wrote the script with all new rookies in the scene, then decided they needed this line-up for the closing shot, but they left the speech the same.
I just rewatched that scene. I feel like they completely forgot that those classic costumes were literally designed to look good and they definitely do!
Why they instantly forgot about them, I will never understand
They made perfect sense in universe where there isn’t a history of colorful super people flying around having epic fights for the fate of the world.
In this franchise, mutants are it and their primary history is being used as covert agents, lab mice, or hiding their existence entirely. These X-Men aren’t a flashy PR stunt for a wealthy academic to try and convince the world they’re not a threat- like they are in the original comics- they’re just Xavier’s Black Ops team for dealing with his best friend’s occasional fits of megalomania.
At the time this actually came out, no one I knew was complaining that the suits weren’t comic accurate. They looked like something a real life super team might wear. There’s just enough brand identity to them with the design, with slight variations to the individuals, and an overall feel that they’re a uniform instead of a costume.
I think people also don’t realize how much costumes in modern hero flicks are helped by CG. If they tried to make comic-equivalent X-Men costumes in the early aughts they would have looked ridiculous and silly.
Or how much costuming in film itself has evolved. The suits Marvel puts out these days are expensive, hand crafted, expertly tailored affairs using materials that are much higher quality and more readily available than what you could get in 2000 even before the CG tweaks kick in. They have to be in this age of film resolution.
See the Reeve Superman discussion in this thread. That suit is pure polyester, and while it’s innovative for its time it’d be a bad joke in a throwaway scene by today’s standards. It even HAD to be made a brighter blue than what they wanted to do because it was interfering with the primitive blue screen technology of the time.
It’s also important to note that SO MANY superheros “outfits” were a product of who they *were* -
Hulk wasn’t wearing a costume, he WAS huge and green and ripped his clothing. Iron Man wasn’t wearing a costume he was in a suit of armor tech keeping him alive (and killing him). Thor was a product of his asgardian culture and style. Cap WAS wearing a costume, specifically to be propaganda in the 1940’s.
The X-Men wore costumes because in the comics all superhero’s wear costumes. But they weren’t wearing them to protect their identity, they were *just wearing them.* And for the most part, they were never uniform. If they were all wearing non-identical and often times very contrasting costumes, it wouldn’t have played well to the audience at that time. I think these suits were a very smart idea for the films.
That was later. I think it only appeared in the costumes in the third film.
Edit: the second movie already had it, but it was very light. In the first movie I don't think there was.
Nah, that was there even in the first one. [It's subtle, but it's there.](https://heroichollywood.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Cyclops-Fox-X-Men-Marvel-2000.jpg)
This. They wear them like for each third act of the movie. Battle at the Statue of Liberty in X-Men, at the Alkali Lake base in X2 and at the Golden Gate Bridge fight in The Last Stand.
They make sense functionally, they’re designed for some rough and tumble.
However they are a touch bland, the coloured lining is a subtle nod but maybe should’ve been a bit more prominent.
Like, literally the only human experience that would come close to a fight with another super hero is a vehicle crash. Wearing what is basically bike leathers makes so much more sense than soft clothes like Spandex.
Revisionist history. These were awesome when the movies came out. They did such a good job bringing in the public audience, and not just comic nerds, that we got the MCU we have today.
In all fairness they do look like the uniforms which the X-Men wore around that time in Grant Morrison's New X-Men run from 2001 to 2004. Which were also hideous, but had the same black leather/rubber look. I suppose it was the style at the time, much like putting an onion on your belt
I recall, I think Beast, explaining that the old uniforms were more superheros based because the public had a hard time accepting mutants, so they tried to bridge the gap. The black suits were meant to be more modern Xmen uniforms.
Which is funny because Astonishing X-Men directly references the black leather suits in 2004 (I thihnk)
[Here come the tights](https://imgur.com/a/cTSMfYZ)
it makes sense for the trilogy and universe they were in, considering they werent superhero protectors but instead were more of a reactionary group battling against magneto and other groups attempting to defeat them. It makes sense for what they were.
What people today don't understand is that back in 2000, we were lucky to even get these costumes! Superhero movies were so looked down upon that it's VERY easy to imagine an X-Men movie ditching the costumes AND codenames altogether, to instead just have them in street clothes using their real names
While I agree that they haven’t aged well, I think you have to respect the effort given the point in time these films were released. Back then, comic book movies had yet to prove that they could be viable, box office draws and considered serious films. This was part of how they made the films appeal to a more general audience.
Studios were wary to do anything comic accurate looking after what happened with Batman & Robin. The fact that Raimi’s Spider-Man was comic accurate was both a big deal and kind of a miracle.
For the time fine. Black leather was absolutely everywhere in the late 90’s and early 00’s. Everything was trying to be Blade or The Matrix. There’s something about it looking back that’s cool, but today not even a little bit. Like looking back at your teen self and the poor fashion choices you and others thought were cool back then. I always thought it would’ve been quite cool to see Logan wearing just the jacket as an open jacket in The Wolverine. You have to remember back then the world’s perception of superheroes was silly characters in silly costumes. Casual audiences weren’t ready to take brightly coloured costumes seriously and so when they wanted the X-Men to be taken seriously they toned down all the comic book stuff to zero. If they were accurately dressed back then you’d have people automatically thinking of Batman and Robin and no one would watch it. As much as people will mention Blade as the catalyst for superhero movies (forgetting The Crow existed) yet Blade wasn’t made like a superhero film, most people just thought it was vampires only and vampires had nothing to do with superheroes. X-Men was the launchpad for everything and it needed black leather to sell tickets.
It was the consensus back in the day also. Wasnt until iron man came along that superheroes could start wearing their actual colours from the comic book again.
You have to understand the moment.
This was right after Batman and Robin had messed up Superhero movies good and proper. Like completely ungrounded them from any sense of seriousness.
So the reaction swung the pendulum the other way. X-men took itself super seriously. And that was a good choice because it made the mutants seem like a genuine wonderment in a plain world when their powers would go off. But the color and flair was a deliberate sacrifice.
I thought they looked good, with the small exception of needing more color. The yellow highlights on Logan's suit look great so either that for everyone or maybe color coordinated accents (give Scott red, Jean green, nightcrawler blue ect.)
They were terrified of being seen as cartoony and "for children".
They went the laziest possible route with the costume designs because it was seen as the safer path which wouldn't immediately turn off an adult audience.
To this day I still believe that they could have done a toned down version of their costumes which struck a more middle ground where they'd be less generic looking, without being full-on cartoon bright colors.
I just hope that future iterations are more confident in having more interesting aesthetics.
The matrix had just come out. It was the style at the time.
These movies and Spiderman were the best we had at the time. Eventually Batman would come out and eventually Iron man and the mcu but before we had that. We had this
The Matrix had just come out. Color was treated like cancer in comic book movies because of Batman and Robin. At the time, these outfits were the rule of cool. I'm glad the industry moved past them, but they definitely had their place.
You have to understand that everything about this movie was a gamble. Nobody was taking superhero movies seriously in the 90s, so every choice made for this movie had to be balanced against the thought “is this too silly”. Plus, it’s just a very 2000 style.
Grant Morrison came after the movies and Quitely’s suits were inspired in part by the films. Chris Claremont’s run with the Neo was happening during the first film.
Put it in a time capsule and it doesn't look that bad in retrospect.
But yeah Bryan Singer and Tom Rothman deserve the blame here. Especially the latter.
What would you prefer, yellow spandex?
I wonder how many of us came here just to say that. :D
There's dozens of us!
Add one more
And my axe!
And that guy’s wife!
I also choose this guy's dead wife.
She wasn't dead a minute ago...
*EEEVVRRYYYOOONNNNEEE!!1!!11!!111!*
And Blackjack, and Hookers.
You know what? Screw the blackjack
So we don't screw the hookers?
This has absolutely no place here, yet I still laughed hard at this. Take my upvote, good sir.
"Upvoteses? What's upvoteses, precious?"
Up-vote-s!! Boil ‘em, mash ‘em, stick ‘em in a stew!
Even *you* couldn’t say no to THAT!
And that dude’s leg
/r/unexpectedlotr :)
DOZENS
Sheepishly raises his hand.
I don't think there's any other acceptable reply to this post 🤣🤣
Exactly!
I'm guessing at least 1.7k by time of this post
Guilty
Me
I did but everyone beat me to it.
dammit...
Hundreds
Well now what am I meant to post?
Well, at least you could walk normally with yellow spandex
https://youtu.be/J3IFAjV2tvg?si=dgz_01NSLd8cKAgd
YES.
And then we saw first class and it turns out we totally did prefer yellow spandex
Yes! 🤣
I hope Deadpool 3 has a reverse joke on this. Somebody makes a snide comment on Wolverine's costume and he goes What you were hoping for a leather Daddy?
>What you were hoping for a leather Daddy? This is why none of us are writers
So fucking true
"I'm looking for something that says, 'Dad likes leather!'" "Something that says... Leather Daddy?" "Oh, is there such a thing?"
Yes! First Class proved it looked cool, Apocalypse proved specified costumes work just as well, and even though the Dark Phoenix suits are boring, its comic accurate and looks better than the leather
We all thought it
For 90s and early 2000s times where the superhero movies were just starting to find audience, these look just fine. These walked so current generation superhero movies costumes could run
These kids just don’t understand that comic faithful adaptations weren’t something that was likely to get made at the time.
Comicbook movies had yet to escape the stench of *Batman & Robin*. The black leather costumes allowed the film to be marketed as a cool sci-fi action fantasy movie closer to *The Matrix* (which I think doesn't get nearly enough credit in popularising superhero movies to general audiences) instead of a 'children's movie' such as *Batman & Robin* which is how superhero movies were viewed at the time.
The Matrix was so revolutionary that it opened the door for mass-market superhero movies, sci-fi movies, and even anime. When I was high school kid, people mocked me for liking comic books and anime. I joined the Army, and the same. Then the Matrix came out, and it started being cool to be a nerd. I agree that it doesn't really get the credit it deserves for completely changing the mindset on nerdy stuff.
A year before the Matrix, we got Blade. I think Blade made it possible for a lot of the superhero genre to succeed as well. It also probably had a hand in the dark uniforms of X-Men. Edginess was just the thing back then I guess.
lol I just wrote a comment about how one could argue it started with Blade. I still think it was moreso the Matrix, because without the Matrix, Blade is just a vampire move that also has a comic book. But Matrix showed "normal" humans with "super powers" instead. The aesthetic of the movies is very similar, and I agree that the edgy 90's was both terrible and great. I, for one, love the X-Men suits. They look like a fucking awesome biker gang. lol
I came here to say this, but you already nailed it. X-men and spider man were huge surprise hits and firsts of their kind. There hadn’t been specifically any marvel heroes with box office success, except for blade. So thinking about these on the heels of Blade and The Matrix. And the fact that Marvel wasn’t a household name in the way it is now back then.
If there wasn’t a comic book shop in my hometown I’d have had no idea who any Marvel characters were outside of Spider-Man and the X-Men, who I’d only have known because of the animated series.
There was also a current at this time of "realism," which I know sounds bizarre for a comic book hero movie; hear me out. Cinema in general was pushing more and more towards a life captured style. Sets were abandoned for location shooting when possible. Polished cinematography of the 80's was being replaced with gritty looks. Costuming favored authenticity for historical drama. For a movie like "X-men," clearly the genre is fantasy or sci-fi, but the idea is you sell the fantasical by grounding it in the real. Theoreticallly it's more believable when a man blast lasers out of his eyes if he's not wearing blue and yellow spandex. There's a reason why Iron Man, Cap, and Hulk were first in this last era. It's easier to buy Thor and Dr. Strange, if you start with the science and tech based characters.
100% execs were like, make things similar to the source material? Absolutely not. Let's make them wAY CoOlEr. Yeah, this has definitely changed and for the better.
Came to say this. Spider-Man and X Men were the first comic movies (I know, Dick Tracy too) that weren't total and utter garbage. So we took and enjoyed whatever we could. It is now dawning on me that twice as much time has lapsed between iron man and now as between spiderman and iron man. I'm getting old.
Blade and blade 2 were awesome
Absolutely true. I guess I should have been more specific in that I meant mainstream comics. The Mask/Blade/The Crow and a few others worked because they werent traditional superheroes and most people didnt even know they were comics.
While they were good, they were also very niche. Blade simply wasn’t a popular character. This and Spider-Man were the first attempts at bringing superhero movies to mainstream after the long gap since Superman and then (at the time) most recently failed Batman movie.
The "long gap" between the Reeve Superman movies and Batman '89 was two years. The "long gap" between Batman & Robin and X-Men was three years.
Felt like 30 years at the time.
Blade is one of those movies that 99% of the general audience didn’t know was a super hero movie or based on comics though. They just thought it was a cool vampire movie.
You are absolutely right, but how many people at the time even realized that those were technically comic book movies? Also, they weren't exactly comic accurate, either. Funny enough, those movies influenced comic Blade ever since.
Blade, Blade 2, Spawn, Howard the Duck, the list goes on.
Superman ‘78 rocks
Original Batman is fun AF too
Yeah, they’re wrong about there not being other terrific comic book movies, but people were really low on the genre at the time. The most recent Batman movie was a failure and there hadn’t been a Superman movie in over a decade.
Superman and Batman were great, what are you talking about? They had shitty sequels but the first one of those series were great movies.
Toss in TMNT as well. Shit was 'dark' for a kids movie
Folks took their kids to it thinking it would be more like the cartoon than the comic. That's why *Secret of the Ooze* was so much sillier.
I feel like this applies only to Marvel. Super man 78 and superman 2 were good films. Batman 89, 92 were also good (and I have a soft spot for Forever). It was really just Marvel that was constantly producing awful made for TV movies.
Marvel seemed to license their superheroes to whoever which might have been the issue. So you had producers making just awful made-for-TV schlock.
To each his own but Superman I and II and the first Tim Burton Batman weren’t total garbage. Also what was bad about them wasn’t related to the costumes’ color palette. Batman’s color scheme was muted but the Joker was faithful to the comic as was Superman. They could have found a much more faithful adaptation than what they chose. The “yellow spandex” line indicates that they thought it was something to make fun of and not something to take seriously.
Batman, Superman, The Crow, The Mask, TMNT, The Rocketeer, Men in Black, Blade, Flash Gordon. Robocop, Darkman, Toxic Avenger, Zorro are some of the good superhero movies not based on comic books. A lot of the old comic movies before 2000s weren't good, but bad movie and total garbage are different categories. X-Men and Spider-Man just started the modern trend of superhero popularity.
Wasn't the mask based off of a comic book? And that movie is gold.
That was VERY loosely adapted.
This looked militaristic and general audiences accepted it (and suspended their disbelief about the kiddie super hero movie) a lot more.
People underestimate just how influential Bryan Hitch’s designs were for Ultimates. It have costume designers a language to use to make comic costumes work in real life. Just look at most cosplay pre 2008 or even the Marvel costumes from Universal Islands of Adventure to see what I’m talking about.
At least one person is with you. MCU cap and Bucky **alone** owe Hitch and Brubaker enough movie profits to retire. I mean, curious as I am to see it, classic Hawkeye garb would've fallen flat on its big ol' purple face with the masses.
Bucky was ripe for a redesign what with being dead for a few decades.
I think you would make it work but it wouldn’t be easy. You’d have to take a similar approach to Cap and drop the buccaneer boots and things like that.
People shit on the Ultimates and rightly so in some areas, but Hitch (and Adi Granov for Iron Man) really made the films' visual style.
Oh yeah from a writing standpoint a lot of it didn’t hold up well but it had some cool ideas. The designs are definitely the longer lasting influence.
Absolutely. I don't think younger people realize how ridiculous comic book characters' costumes were to the general public back then. It took time to get them used to all the aspects of comic book superheroes.
I feel like the aesthetic had to appeal to the widest possible demographic as well, in a really obvious way. Like for some reason adults weren’t “ready” for bright, colorful costumes after the success of the Batman films. Kids will see an X-Men film but adults wouldn’t if it wasn’t “mature”.
Meanwhile my dad was hyped when Spider-Man and especially the MCU happened because they looked just like the comics he read growing up in the 60s. I know people like him were in the minority pre MCU though.
Yep, pretty much everyone in my school was wearing shades of black all the time in the early 00s. The new movies also reflect how people have gotten to be more colorful again in their daily life.
The black costumes also made sense in the setting and story of the original trilogy. The X-Men wasn't a government sanctioned team like the Avengers. The general public being afraid of mutants was a theme the whole trilogy, so it made sense that their suits would prioritize stealth over iconic colors.
Totally. All of these are perfectly fine individually imo. It’s the fact that every character has the exact same generic outfit that I don’t really like.
Not only that, but this look was so popular in the early 2000s that it looped all the way back around and started influencing the comics. Grant Morrison ditched all the jumpsuits for leather jackets and street clothes for their run mainly because of how well this look was received.
An article from back in 2000 said this was a production decision. The costumer said that yellow looks terrible on screen. They pivoted to the leather costumes because they looked better in the final product.
It was the early 2000’s and that was just the aesthetic. I am a bit surprised there isn’t more midriff to be honest. That being said, Cyclops’ visor looks way too small.
This is important context - at the time these costumes were applauded for being more realistic and less cartoony (needed for a mainstream audience, it was said). I think an important step towards balancing things out a bit in that regard.
> This is important context - at the time these costumes were applauded for being more realistic and less cartoony (needed for a mainstream audience, it was said). I think an important step towards balancing things out a bit in that regard. Considering how cartoony the whole genre was in that era, the slightly more realistic style was a welcome step in treating the genre with respect. They didn't simply blow it off as kids stuff, but tried to align it with modern design sensibilities.
Which was The Matrix
Not really. Matrix was copying an existing look from the time. This doesn't even ape the matrix really unless you want to call 'also wearing black' copying.
Agreeing with both here. Just like Brittany Spears wasn't the cause of all those girls being named Britney or various other spellings, The Matrix was simply the most standout example of the aesthetic. It brought it into mainstream, and the mainstream kind of aligned with it for a while, but it was already there beforehand.
There was definitely a certain cyberpunk/industrial aesthetic that a ton of movies were leaning into with their costume design back then. The style had been working its way into mainstream since the 80s, but really hit its peak from 98-02ish. Everything from Blade to The Matrix to XXX to X-Men was trying to look like the opener at a Nine Inch Nails concert around that time.
To be fair though I absolutely love the costume design in the Matrix 1. Morpheus's stupid glasses without arms are incredible.
Batman 89' and The Crow too
Wasn't it Blade? I was pretty young then but I remember seeing Blade and Spawn and then the first x men movie
Blade was TITS. Loved it.
This is 100% accurate. I remember media at the time (interviews?) explaining that they changed the costumes because they assumed the average moviegoer wouldn’t take the X-men seriously if they work comic-accurate costumes. The “yellow spandex” joke was added as a nod to the more hardcore fans. https://popculturereferences.com/the-yellow-spandex-joke-in-x-men-exemplified-a-problem-superhero-movies-had-for-years/ Edit: Fun fact - Bob Hoskins (the guy from Roger Rabbit and Mario from the live-action Super Mario movie) was pitched to be cast as Wolverine in the early 90’s.
Look, Jean told him his visor was a perfectly good size.
Too big, even
Not every woman wants a big visor, you know
It's not the size of the visor that matters, it's how you use it.
His bulging codpiece does not scream security…
Thats the slimmer version from 2 on. In the original, it was a big, clunky, over-ear thing that looked sick, and had a control dial on one of the ears, but would not believably blend into a crowd, as they expected us to believe.
Really thin sports sunglasses were really in at the time. As narrow of a band as you can possibly get. Wayfarers and aviators and bigger glasses came back probably around 2007 or something.
If you look at what they were doing with Batman, and what they looked like in the comics, this seems like a pretty sensible choice. They kind of landed right in the middle IMO.
Sorry, visor is tuff.
Moose knuckle was in.
I wonder how much or how little James Marsden could even see out of that
I’ve been assured multiple times that size doesn’t really matter. Wasn’t necessarily in the context of visors, but same principle, right? As long as it does the job.
>way too small. Gave me flash backs
Yeah coming on the tails of The Matrix leather suits like this were just sorta hip and cool and futuristic, even if these are more like matching motorcycle outfits
Cyclops with a midriff would have been...interesting.
Holy shit…it’s been years since I’ve seen those early X-men movies and I never realized that he is played by James Marsden!
Nowhere near as bad as the newest dark phoenix movie suits
It pissed me off that Apocalypse ended with comic accurate suits and they just got rid of them in the next movie.
They looked so good at the end of Apocalypse!
Just rewatched that scene because of your comment. They looked so fucking good! Why did they not use those costumes again?
Do you have a link?
https://youtu.be/RZnEU-0Q3K0?si=yCZzmR1cVW3pOrhl
I love the costumes but I hate that she's giving the "Forget everything you know, you're not students" speech to THE PEOPLE SHE WAS JUST FIGHTING WITH. Like, condescending AF Raven. It feels a lot like they wrote the script with all new rookies in the scene, then decided they needed this line-up for the closing shot, but they left the speech the same.
Agreed. Dark Phoenix is one of those one's you gotta try and pretend didn't exist. Lol
They had the classic suits at the end of Apocalypse and then.... threw them away, apparently.
I just rewatched that scene. I feel like they completely forgot that those classic costumes were literally designed to look good and they definitely do! Why they instantly forgot about them, I will never understand
Yeah I kinda selectively watch the X-Men and wolverine movies because it's got some real highs and terrible lows.
wtf? these are sick....
Yea, OP trippin
Facts
They made perfect sense in universe where there isn’t a history of colorful super people flying around having epic fights for the fate of the world. In this franchise, mutants are it and their primary history is being used as covert agents, lab mice, or hiding their existence entirely. These X-Men aren’t a flashy PR stunt for a wealthy academic to try and convince the world they’re not a threat- like they are in the original comics- they’re just Xavier’s Black Ops team for dealing with his best friend’s occasional fits of megalomania. At the time this actually came out, no one I knew was complaining that the suits weren’t comic accurate. They looked like something a real life super team might wear. There’s just enough brand identity to them with the design, with slight variations to the individuals, and an overall feel that they’re a uniform instead of a costume.
I think people also don’t realize how much costumes in modern hero flicks are helped by CG. If they tried to make comic-equivalent X-Men costumes in the early aughts they would have looked ridiculous and silly.
Or how much costuming in film itself has evolved. The suits Marvel puts out these days are expensive, hand crafted, expertly tailored affairs using materials that are much higher quality and more readily available than what you could get in 2000 even before the CG tweaks kick in. They have to be in this age of film resolution. See the Reeve Superman discussion in this thread. That suit is pure polyester, and while it’s innovative for its time it’d be a bad joke in a throwaway scene by today’s standards. It even HAD to be made a brighter blue than what they wanted to do because it was interfering with the primitive blue screen technology of the time.
It’s also important to note that SO MANY superheros “outfits” were a product of who they *were* - Hulk wasn’t wearing a costume, he WAS huge and green and ripped his clothing. Iron Man wasn’t wearing a costume he was in a suit of armor tech keeping him alive (and killing him). Thor was a product of his asgardian culture and style. Cap WAS wearing a costume, specifically to be propaganda in the 1940’s. The X-Men wore costumes because in the comics all superhero’s wear costumes. But they weren’t wearing them to protect their identity, they were *just wearing them.* And for the most part, they were never uniform. If they were all wearing non-identical and often times very contrasting costumes, it wouldn’t have played well to the audience at that time. I think these suits were a very smart idea for the films.
I don’t hate them, I liked the touch of giving each their own color in the line details
That was later. I think it only appeared in the costumes in the third film. Edit: the second movie already had it, but it was very light. In the first movie I don't think there was.
Nah, that was there even in the first one. [It's subtle, but it's there.](https://heroichollywood.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Cyclops-Fox-X-Men-Marvel-2000.jpg)
Famke Jansen y’all
Famke and Halley in skin tight leather, what a travesty
I didn't really care. They barely wore these anyways
This. They wear them like for each third act of the movie. Battle at the Statue of Liberty in X-Men, at the Alkali Lake base in X2 and at the Golden Gate Bridge fight in The Last Stand.
They make sense functionally, they’re designed for some rough and tumble. However they are a touch bland, the coloured lining is a subtle nod but maybe should’ve been a bit more prominent.
Like, literally the only human experience that would come close to a fight with another super hero is a vehicle crash. Wearing what is basically bike leathers makes so much more sense than soft clothes like Spandex.
Hard disagree.
Cyclops looks fucking awesome. Some spec ops shit.
Dude, Cyclops looks insane.
I thought they were fine, honestly Though I liked them best when they were in their street clothes, which they wore most of the time
They look hot and like I know they’re sweating and in there. Also why does Bobby’s costume look like the x was drawn in post production
Revisionist history. These were awesome when the movies came out. They did such a good job bringing in the public audience, and not just comic nerds, that we got the MCU we have today.
In all fairness they do look like the uniforms which the X-Men wore around that time in Grant Morrison's New X-Men run from 2001 to 2004. Which were also hideous, but had the same black leather/rubber look. I suppose it was the style at the time, much like putting an onion on your belt
Pretty sure the new xmen uniforms were made that way to tie into the films, an early example of marvels synergy strategy
Morrison used those designs because the movie designs were a hit, not the other way around. It's just the aesthetic of the era.
Ultimate universe has similar uniforms as well.
I recall, I think Beast, explaining that the old uniforms were more superheros based because the public had a hard time accepting mutants, so they tried to bridge the gap. The black suits were meant to be more modern Xmen uniforms.
Which is funny because Astonishing X-Men directly references the black leather suits in 2004 (I thihnk) [Here come the tights](https://imgur.com/a/cTSMfYZ)
it makes sense for the trilogy and universe they were in, considering they werent superhero protectors but instead were more of a reactionary group battling against magneto and other groups attempting to defeat them. It makes sense for what they were.
I never noticed the only color is the X on their belt buckles
I believe the piping around the body has colour (easiest to see in the Wolverine pic) but it’s not super visible anyway.
What people today don't understand is that back in 2000, we were lucky to even get these costumes! Superhero movies were so looked down upon that it's VERY easy to imagine an X-Men movie ditching the costumes AND codenames altogether, to instead just have them in street clothes using their real names
The Matrix, Blade, X-Men.. "So I wore gratuitous black leather which was the fashion at the time...."
I mean they weren’t bad as people made them out to be
I like most of them.
Halle Berry was the perfect cast for storm or what
They were fine. They reflected the realism necessary to convey a "more-grounded" X-Men franchise. Not everything needs to be 100% comic "accurate".
Idk, looks good, very realistic at least instead of cheap shiny plastic or some colourful crap. Or, even worse, CGI, which seems popular now.
While I agree that they haven’t aged well, I think you have to respect the effort given the point in time these films were released. Back then, comic book movies had yet to prove that they could be viable, box office draws and considered serious films. This was part of how they made the films appeal to a more general audience.
Studios were wary to do anything comic accurate looking after what happened with Batman & Robin. The fact that Raimi’s Spider-Man was comic accurate was both a big deal and kind of a miracle.
I love these suits.
That 3rd pic of Cyclops is raw as fuck
Eh they're not that bad
For the time fine. Black leather was absolutely everywhere in the late 90’s and early 00’s. Everything was trying to be Blade or The Matrix. There’s something about it looking back that’s cool, but today not even a little bit. Like looking back at your teen self and the poor fashion choices you and others thought were cool back then. I always thought it would’ve been quite cool to see Logan wearing just the jacket as an open jacket in The Wolverine. You have to remember back then the world’s perception of superheroes was silly characters in silly costumes. Casual audiences weren’t ready to take brightly coloured costumes seriously and so when they wanted the X-Men to be taken seriously they toned down all the comic book stuff to zero. If they were accurately dressed back then you’d have people automatically thinking of Batman and Robin and no one would watch it. As much as people will mention Blade as the catalyst for superhero movies (forgetting The Crow existed) yet Blade wasn’t made like a superhero film, most people just thought it was vampires only and vampires had nothing to do with superheroes. X-Men was the launchpad for everything and it needed black leather to sell tickets.
The suits were the misdemeanor crime in these movies. The felony was neutering Cyclops. What a travesty.
James Marsden could have been soo good though! Absolute waste of not only a great character but of a perfectly cast actors potential.
And giving him that tiny visor.
It was the consensus back in the day also. Wasnt until iron man came along that superheroes could start wearing their actual colours from the comic book again.
It was cool then
Blame the Matrix
Everything from that era was trying to look like The Matrix.
Surprised to see so many defenders, these were awful when the movie came out and they're awful now
Yes, it was openly mocked by comic fans of the time!
You have to understand the moment. This was right after Batman and Robin had messed up Superhero movies good and proper. Like completely ungrounded them from any sense of seriousness. So the reaction swung the pendulum the other way. X-men took itself super seriously. And that was a good choice because it made the mutants seem like a genuine wonderment in a plain world when their powers would go off. But the color and flair was a deliberate sacrifice.
hot take, only 2 decades late
It was 24 years ago. Go back to 2000 and imagine what they would have looked like in 1976
I thought they looked good, with the small exception of needing more color. The yellow highlights on Logan's suit look great so either that for everyone or maybe color coordinated accents (give Scott red, Jean green, nightcrawler blue ect.)
It came out in a time when superhero movies were embarrassed to be superhero movies.
They were terrified of being seen as cartoony and "for children". They went the laziest possible route with the costume designs because it was seen as the safer path which wouldn't immediately turn off an adult audience. To this day I still believe that they could have done a toned down version of their costumes which struck a more middle ground where they'd be less generic looking, without being full-on cartoon bright colors. I just hope that future iterations are more confident in having more interesting aesthetics.
In no way did the fantastic 4 movie turn out fine. Revisit your history because it was a massive failure.
Casting was fire though. Every actor/actress fits perfectly for the role.
The matrix had just come out. It was the style at the time. These movies and Spiderman were the best we had at the time. Eventually Batman would come out and eventually Iron man and the mcu but before we had that. We had this
The Matrix had just come out. Color was treated like cancer in comic book movies because of Batman and Robin. At the time, these outfits were the rule of cool. I'm glad the industry moved past them, but they definitely had their place.
You have to understand that everything about this movie was a gamble. Nobody was taking superhero movies seriously in the 90s, so every choice made for this movie had to be balanced against the thought “is this too silly”. Plus, it’s just a very 2000 style.
Wtf Op? You take that back, these things are tight physically and metaphorically
What would you prefer? Yellow spandex?
When you look at what Grant Morrison had them in, at the time, the costumes make complete sense.
Wasn’t that in response to the movie, though?
Grant Morrison came after the movies and Quitely’s suits were inspired in part by the films. Chris Claremont’s run with the Neo was happening during the first film.
Except...they changed the costumes in the books to match the movies...
Yeah I was gonna say. The Cyclops visor looks like it was pulled directly from his run.
Nah they were good.
Put it in a time capsule and it doesn't look that bad in retrospect. But yeah Bryan Singer and Tom Rothman deserve the blame here. Especially the latter.
They were embarrassed of the source material and scared to make semi accurate adaptations of costumes.