Spider-Suit

One of the things that's always irked me about the Spider-Man films is the oddly-designed and proportioned costumes. Here's an overview of Spider-Man's look from the comics over the years:

Spider-Man's physical proportions vary somewhat, but generally it's agreed that he's quite a bit thinner than most other superheroes, relying more on speed and spider-like technique than strength. The alt-universe reboot series Ultimate Spider-Man, which put the character back in high school, did this to the extreme.

Ultimate Spidey is short, skinny, and incredibly agile-looking, with huge round white eyes. This is easily my favorite version of Spider-Man. It's goofy, but it completely fits the teenage story that Ultimate told.


The 2002 Sam Raimi-directed movie version is both incredible and disappointing. On one hand, it's a gloriously-accurate version of the classic comics' suit, with nice features like raised textured webbing. On the other hand, that version of Spider-Man is mostly normally-proportioned; there's nothing about his body that screams "Spider-Man." The eyes are a little small, too, only adding to the feeling that this Spider-Man isn't necessarily all that specific to the character. Fortunately, they put him in a ton of super-iconic Spider-Man poses, somewhat offsetting the problems.

Overall, the movie suit just isn't spider-like enough. That's one thing that the reboot film, The Amazing Spider-Man, mostly fixed.

There, finally, we have a skinny, teenage-looking Spider-Man, complete with web shooters. There's other problems with this suit, however. This image of a collectors' figure based on the ASM suit illustrates it rather well.

The suit is predominantly blue, and the blue shines very, very bright. This is a big no-no for Spider-Man design; the red is always supposed to stand out against the darker blue or black. Furthermore, the ASM suit has blue creeping into normally-red areas, like the "belt" and the suit's fingers. What's almost worse is that the eyes are dark yellow. Why are they dark yellow? It makes little-to-no sense.

If one could combine the Raimi and ASM costumes (and perhaps make the eyes a little bigger?) the perfect Spider-Man costume would likely emerge. And, by happenstance, that's exactly what The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is doing with its new-and-improved costume.

OH YES.

Finally, twelve-year-old Aaron's dreams of seeing the perfect Spider-Man costume on-screen are being realized. Twenty-three-year-old Aaron is pleased.