The upcoming Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is set to introduce a number of new heroes on the big screen with Henry Cavill’s Superman. Ben Afleck’s Batman, Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman, Jason Momoa’s Aquaman, and maybe even Ezra Miller’s The Flash and Ray Fisher’s Cyborg, and all of them need a brand-new costume to dazzle fans across the world.
Speaking with Fashionista, costume designer and Oscar nominee Michael Wilkinson opened up about the process and working with director Zack Snyder on giving the characters the right look.
“(Zack) really wants these characters to connect directly to our world,” says Wilkinson. “So if you were walking down the street and you came across Superman or Batman — of course it would be startling and powerful — but it could actually happen in our world rather than in a stylized version of our reality.”
He goes on to mention that one of Snyder’s first notes on the film was giving Batman a flexible cowl, unlike many of the previous Batman films.
“That’s actually one of the first things that Snyder mentioned to me in one of our initial meetings. It’s a very important thing to Zack that the Batsuit would be comfortable and very flexible, but then would be able to perform in a very natural and forceful way. So a lot of incredible engineering went into the development of the new black cowl…It’s no longer a designer just in his workroom pushing a costume out into the world and that’s it. There’s a real sense of a conversation and engaging in a dialogue about this stuff.”
Wilkinson also spoke about getting the actors into the costumes, revealing it takes 15 minutes to get Cavill into his outfit and Affleck closer to 25 minutes.
“It does involve multiple costumers,“ he said. “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.”
He said that creating the Aquaman costume was a “huge challenge” as well, because the superhero’s past interpretations have made him not as “cool” as the other guys. “People have a lot of complaints about the orange skin and the green tights and that whole thing.”
Also starring Amy Adams, Laurence Fishburne, Diane Lane, Jesse Eisenberg, Jeremy Irons, Jena Malone, Holly Hunter and Scoot McNairy, the Zack Snyder-directed Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice hits theaters on March 25, 2016.
