Michael Wilkinson spoke quite a bit about the upcoming DC films and while he discussed plans to be in London , he also talked about the Costume Design changes that will occur for the 2017 film
For Aquaman:
My inspiration for Aquaman is actually Jason Momoa, he was born to play Aquaman. And so, he has some fantastic tattoos of his own. And got my mind thinking about how to go in a really interesting new direction for the scales that we usually see on Aquaman, so we decided to do them with tattoos and with some cool armor. So, we had this whole plan for Aquaman in this universe and so we look forward to the next few years evolving this exciting DC universe.
For Batman:
When I was talking to the director Zack Snyder, he really wanted to go back to how it’s being shown in the comic books cause when you think about Batman in the last twenty years from the films, it’s sort of really stepped away from the really simple, powerful, intimidating silhouette of Batman in the graphic novels, and so, we wanted to return to that and we wanted to do a Batman that’s a little bit older, he’s been fighting crime for twenty years on the big bad streets of Gotham and so his costume is shredded and it’s ripped and it’s torn. It’s distressed, it’s got bullet holes in it. We wanted to say, ‘this Batman doesn’t really need gadgets or armor,’ his intimidating strength is his real power. Incredible, burly silhouette is what really, and his incredible fighting skills of course, he doesn’t need the armor and the gadgets so much.
Batman’s Cowl:
That was something that was important to Zack. He wanted something that Ben could move in, something he could do all his amazing fight moves in. The choreography was extremely complex like all Zack Snyder stunt sequences. We wanted to have a Batsuit that he could look over his shoulder and do all of these moves. That was very important to us. There’s a lot of engineering in the cowl of the Batsuit. We did many, many prototypes with different materials, different shapes. We really wanted the sense that we have the musculature of Ben sorting of coming through the cowl, so we didn’t know where the cowl finished and the actor started, so it was really a part of him. And so we found a great material to do that with. The movement was great and I think it was reasonably comfortable.
For The Flash:
MW: Well, I’m not really at the liberty to talk about The Flash right now, but it’s something that you’ll be seeing in the future in our films. You do get a glimpse of him, of course, in Batman v Superman. But I’m really looking forward to taking the amazing, iconic costume for The Flash and interpreting it in a fresh way where Ezra Miller is playing The Flash. He’s an extraordinary performer, he has a sort of interesting sense of humor and the youth that will be great for Barry Allen and I think he’s going to make a great Flash.
For Wonder Woman:
MW: That was the most important thing for us. We wanted her strength, her power to be tangible. We wanted her to stand next to the two male counterparts and be very much their equal. So, she brings something very different to the table and she has this incredible power and strength and she also combines that with a grace and a compassion and a majesty that makes her special. It makes her incredibly powerful. And working with the beautiful Gal Gadot was an absolute pleasure. She’s one person that’s as beautiful on the inside as she’s on the outside, so she made my job very easy.
For Superman:
It’s a little bit different. The amazing thing about working on these big franchise films is that everytime you do another, you get to make the costumes even more compelling and more exciting. The one thing I love about my job is that we get to explore new costume technologies and new ways of making costumes. Two years later, there’s new materials, new digital technologies. We use a lot of 3D printing and we scan our actors and we build costumes in the computer.
So, with the Superman costume, we have a new material. The suit is a little bit more sheer, so you really get the sense of this metal undersuit coming through the blue oversuit and we have a new fabric for the cape. And, also, Zack wanted to include a Joseph Campbell quote in the suit, so there’s a quote from Joseph Campbell: ‘Where we thought to stand alone, we will be with all the world’ and we decided to translate that into Kryptonian and we put it through the ‘S’ on his chest, through his cuffs, his belt, through his bicep, just to give a little extra something for the fan with very sharp vision to appreciate.
It is a bit weird that we have no information on Cyborg’s look or Green Lantern’s look, gotta wonder if they have even cast Green Lantern yet and if Cyborg appears in that form in the first part?
Listen to the interview at the 49:56 mark:
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