How Amazing Spider-Man 2 brought back the classic Spidey-suit
By Daniel Wood
Amazing Spider-Man’s costumes
Spider-Man’s suit in Amazing Spider-Man was a slightly radical adjustment to the one that Tobey Maguire sported in Sam Raimi’s trilogy. That’s because it was designed to look like a teenager could have made it and put it together. However Amazing Spider-Man 2 brought back a more classic Spidey-suit that was met with almost unanimous approval.
Deborah Lynn Scott, who was the costume designer for Amazing Spider-Man 2 was given one simple design brief for the second film. Marc Webb and co wanted the ‘Most Spider-Man-Y Spider-Man’ and that’s exactly what we saw in the film. But how did Scott arrive at this costume? Well, she talks through the process and the reasoning behind her choices with MTV.
The Eyes
The difference between the eyes in the first Amazing Spider-Man film and the second is actually quite astonishing. Because the effect that the eyes have on the overall appearance of Spider-Man cannot be undervalued. So whilst Amazing Spider-Man gave us the smallest eyes a cinematic Spider-Man has ever had, Scott says “The brief from Marc was to make them as large as possible, having said that, you have to work within the framework of Andrew Garfield’s head.”
The Webs
The detailed webbing on Spider-Man has varied significantly between the different versions of Spidey in the comic books and on-screen was no different. In Sam Raimi’s trilogy, the webbing on Tobey’s Spider-Suit was hand-cut which resulted in a fairly big, chunky pattern. In Amazing Spider-Man 2 the webbing was screen printed allowing for more control
The Colour
We all know that Spider-Man is typically red and blue, that goes without saying. But the challenge for the costume designers was which shade or hues to use. “The red and blue really just gets down to dealing with what is the most flattering for Andrew,” Cook said. “How do you make him look the most powerful, the leanest, longest… all of these things that complement an actor?”
So, quite a lot of thought goes into everything, which I guess I already knew but it’s nice to see the reasoning behind things and it was certainly nice to see what can be considered a classic Spider-Man get-up returning to the big-screen after the slight deviation in Marc Webb’s first film. The question of the day now is – Will it be back for Amazing Spider-Man 3?
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