Well, it's official...no Electro costume!

[madmarva]

Maybe when he takes the hoodie down blue lightning bolts will shoot out of his head to mimic the mask.

[ctc]

>He looks like a missing relative to Mr. Freeze

....or the Vanisher.

>It works great on the comic page, but translating it verbatim to the screen would probably be a disaster

One of the biggest problems translating a lot of that stuff to live-action is how shorthanded and partially conceptualized the art is in the comics. Electro's tiara is like that. What IS it? How does it work in 3 dimensions? What's it made out of? Does he bang it in doorways? Does it scrape across the cieling indoors? I think anyone who's made custom figures understands how this goes. I think one of the problems with the reconceptualizations for film is that they go too far the OTHER way.... so you get stuff that conforms to the current aesthetic ideals, and loses a great deal of individuality and recognizability. If the silly costumes cause you THAT much concern you might consider doing something other than a superhero movie.

Don C.

[Bruce Banner]

I think one of the problems with the reconceptualizations for film is that they go too far the OTHER way.... so you get stuff that conforms to the current aesthetic ideals, and loses a great deal of individuality and recognizability. If the silly costumes cause you THAT much concern you might consider doing something other than a superhero movie.

True.

[huedell]

One of the biggest problems translating a lot of that stuff to live-action is how shorthanded and partially conceptualized the art is in the comics. Electro's tiara is like that. What IS it? How does it work in 3 dimensions? What's it made out of? Does he bang it in doorways? Does it scrape across the cieling indoors? I think anyone who's made custom figures understands how this goes. I think one of the problems with the reconceptualizations for film is that they go too far the OTHER way.... so you get stuff that conforms to the current aesthetic ideals, and loses a great deal of individuality and recognizability. If the silly costumes cause you THAT much concern you might consider doing something other than a superhero movie.

As insightful as your post is, you do see that it kinda makes a case for both sides of the argument, right?

[ctc]

>you do see that it kinda makes a case for both sides of the argument, right?

Yup; although personally I believe in erring on the side of weird. The problem for me isn't the weird bits.... like Electro's tiara.... but that the original designs are kinda threadbare technically and don't translate well into live action. But:

>I actually think that the whole realism excuse is pretty lame given the technology that we have today!

I agree witht his bit, 'cos we finally have the technology wherein we could portray ANYTHING; even a physics defying tiara, convincingly.... and the designers keep falling back on the same, standard stuff. So we use all this awesome CGI to create.... a guy in a hood. (For example.) A design that could have been done effectively 30 years ago. It's a shame 'cos it takes away from the uniqueness of the original design.... odd, unfortunate, bizzare as it may be. This design looks like the Black Lightning one from the "Brave and the Bold" cartoon.

That's one of the problems I've had with a LOT of the nerdly arts over the last 15 yeras or so. There's this rush to make things "good," and "realistic;" and in doing so it all looks alike. It gets increasingly tougher to tell stuff apart.... no thanks to the same name being attached to every project too. I think back to Star Wars. The original. Think about how many things from that movie were unique. You can make the light saber sound, or breathing Darth, and EVERYBODY knows what you're talking about. You can quote almost any line and folks will recognize it. Hold up a pic of any of the ships, and folks will recognize it. Leia's hair, the cantina band song ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdmKCovW11w ) the way scenes were paced and presented. "It was a boring conversation anyway." It all made Star Wars it's own thing. (Even though at it's core, it borrowed from other sources.)

You can't do that so much with newer stuff. Everything has the big mass battle at the end, all aliens look like Master Chief, they use the same damned colour filters on EVERYTHING, "bring me the child.... or allspark, oir tesseract, or final element...." That's why you need the silly stuff. It's usually what makes something unique. Daleks, TIE Fighters, and having your spaceship's engines way out on little breakable sticks are all REALLY bad ideas. That are awesome. And they're awesome not because they're silly, but because they're handled seriously in the presentation.

Don C.

[thunderbolt]

I dunno, it could work as Ditko designed it


Spidey could mock it until he gets partially deepfried by him.

[ctc]

>I dunno, it could work as Ditko designed it

Oh, anything COULD work.... that's kinda what I was getting at. That pic isn't bad at all. It's recognizable, still kinda silly but with a hint of effective malice. Show THAT Electro actually doing some damage and the folks'll buy it easy.

It also shows the problems you can run into when producing an actual costume from older designs. In the comic, the tiara doesn't come across as a solid object. It's kinda like Wolverine's headflaps.... collapsible, so they're fabric.... yet oddly rigid 'cos drawing them flapping around is difficult and distracting. (I've often thought Wolvie stuffs his hair in his. That's what keeps them up.) So this design deviates from the comic. (Maybe? Probably?) But not enough that you have to guess who this is, and it keeps the idea of the comic too. (No matter who you put in it.)

The costume thing is a sticking point for me 'cos of a friend of mine. He spent a few years in Japan, and attended a bunch of comic conventions while there, mostly for the cosplayers. (Weird fact: In Japan it's mostly women that go to comic conventions.) He sent back all sorts of pics of people wearing the most bizzare, over the top, impractical and insane outfits from the comics.... and the vast majority looked LIKE the comics. It bugs me that a bunch of amateurs can pull that off, but the big studios can't.

Don C.

[MIB41]

I dunno, it could work as Ditko designed it


Spidey could mock it until he gets partially deepfried by him.

Very cool! If you can get that close as a personal custom, then a movie studio likely could have finished the job. That's a strong argument to keep it close to the source material.

[kingdom warrior]

I dunno, it could work as Ditko designed it


Spidey could mock it until he gets partially deepfried by him.

Actually that would have worked, using realistic colors instead of the bright comic colors.....and yes, Spidey would have torn him up by mocking him,
a distraction that Spidey uses against his foes....But Hollwood wants to see Blue django.....lol