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2014 Movie News Archives

March 12, 2014: Michael Wilkinson Talks Henry's Muscles, Crotch and Removing the Red Trunks

Esquire has published an interview they conducted with costume designer Michael Wilkinson at the recent event at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art where he was the special guest for a Q&A about his designs for "Man of Steel". Here's a portion of the interview...

ESQUIRE.COM: How much pressure was involved with being the guy who had to design the Superman suit?

MICHAEL WILKINSON:�There was some pressure, although I have to preface it by saying that when the director Zack Snyder asked me to work on Man of Steel, I was already working on another project. So he started off with another costume designer, James Acheson, who developed the suit, and then I came in and finished the development and designed all the other costumes in the film. We were so thrilled to be able to contribute to the look of Superman in the 21st�century. We wanted to create something that was relevant and made sense to contemporary audiences.

ESQ:�So is James responsible for taking away Superman's red briefs?

MW:�Yes! In the early stages of development James worked with some illustrators and I remember hearing stories of the red briefs getting smaller and smaller until one day they simply weren't there.

ESQ:�Did you read a lot of the comics in preparation for Man of Steel?

MW:�We spent lots of time just looking at the 75 years of how this character has been drawn and how he's been portrayed, both in film and on TV. But more importantly we really sunk our teeth into the mythology of Superman and what he means to the world, what he symbolizes, where he came from. A lot of the efforts we took in the film were to explain why the suit looks the way it does. We didn't want it to be a random, ornamental decision. We start the film on the planet of Krypton, which is where the suit comes from, and we go to great pains to show the suit fitting into the culture. All of the people you see on Krypton are wearing this chainmail-like suit, with the same detailing as the Superman suit. Everyone has their family crests on their chests. The cuff and the boot details are shared through all of the different characters we meet on Krypton. So by the time we see Superman in his suit we understand why it looks the way it looks.

Read the complete interview at Esquire.com.