The costume is different though.

One of the first things you may notice about Zack Snyder's Man of Steel (2013) is that the costume is different.

I went through this seven years ago with Bryan Singer's Superman Returns (2006). They released a picture of the new costume and it seemed wrong.  At the time, there was only one acceptable costume to me; the Christopher Reeve suit from Richard Donner's Superman: The Movie (1978).

Bright blue, with bright red trunks, boots, and cape. Basic S on the front with an all-yellow S on the cape, and a yellow belt. That's it. And aside from that yellow S on the cape (I actually prefer nothing on the cape), I saw no reason to fuck with it, because that was the iconic suit. "It's not the Batsuit," I said. Batman's costume is always different. In every comic book, TV show, and movie, there's always a hundred little changes to the Batsuit, and it's okay, because there's so many facets to that suit, and its real identity is in its essence. Does it have a pointy-eared cowl and cape? Is there a bat somewhere on the chest, and some kind of belt with containers? Good, that's the Batsuit. It doesn't have to look a certain way, just as Bruce Wayne doesn't have to look a certain way. His hair can be black or brown, and his face can pretty much look like anything. Superman's look was always simpler and more absolute, with very little deviation between incarnations. But that deviation, I came to realize, was always there, and just as with the bat guy and all the other superheroes, it's important that every version of that character have its own unique signature, as long as the essence of the character is preserved. So now I celebrate the changes. I like that I can associate every movie version of Superman with its own specific look, just like how I treasure the distinctive style of a Superman drawing by Jack Kirby, or Curt Swan, or John Byrne, or Frank Miller, or Tim Sale, or Bruce Timm, or Alex Ross, or Michael Turner, or Darwyn Cooke, or Adam Kubert, or Frank Quitely, or Jim Lee, or whoever. Vive la différence, as a French person might say.

I have a lot of fun noticing the variations between costumes. The costume designer for Superman Returns was Louise Mingenbach, who'd worked with Singer previously on the X-Men films. The smaller S was a Singer decision from day one. I guess big S's just aren't his "thing." And they decided to have it be a raised urethane S, because a stitched fabric S would have looked a little kinda off-model, which they felt was a detriment to the Reeve films. I can see what they mean. A raised urethane S looks perfect every time. They shrunk the neckline, which I don't like. I prefer the more open neck and wider anchor for the cape. They took the S off the cape for visual effects reasons, and the fact that it's hard to see anyway because it just gets lost in the folds. Again, I agree with this change. The cape should be solid and clean. No need to have it both front and back; he's Superman, not a kicker for the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Then there's the S on the belt buckle. This really threw me when I first saw it. It seemed redundant with the S on the chest. And I thought it was weird to have the S be yellow with a red backing (basically a reverse of the chest S), because I didn't get that it was actually just a yellow belt with no backing, and the red I was seeing was just the trunks underneath. I've since grown accustomed to the S on the belt, which they added because they felt the standard oval buckle was too bland; but given the choice, I would lose it. One S is all you need, and a second S anywhere waters it down. Of course, if you get real close, there's S's everywhere, like the entire thing is made up of tiny little S's. This is a good (or, at least, weird) way to give the suit texture. But the boot treads are just various large S's, which seems a little crazy. Then there's the colors. Mingenbach says that you can't have a suit with three bright primary colors because it's too much for the eye, and that it's better to just do one poppy primary color, and have the rest be muted shades to complement the primary. They decided to go with bright primary blue and muted red. I wouldn't want Superman to always look like this, but I agree in this case that the coloring looks good. Say what you will about Superman Returns-- fantastic colors all over that fucking movie.

The S is nice. It's almost the classic S, but smoother. And it's like a signature of Superman Returns, because that is the only time it was used. Well, that and Smallville. Smallville used the Superman Returns S whenever it needed to show the S. But that's part of it. Superman Returns came along halfway through Smallville's ten season run, so they are both a reflection of the same cultural time, except Smallville was modern teen Clark Kent taking a decade of labored steps to become Superman, and Superman Returns was time-ambiguous sequel to previous movie franchise Clark Kent as adult Superman, despite the fact that Brandon Routh was three years younger than Tom Welling (both at the time and still today).

The Man of Steel costume is even more different. It was designed by James Acheson, who did the Sam Raimi Spider-Mans and Daredevil; and Michael Wilkinson, who previously worked with Snyder on 300 and Watchmen. Where Singer embraced homage to a former Superman, Snyder wants to make a clean reboot all the way through. New music, new origins, new costume. Even the hair is different. This is the first movie Superman to make no effort at a spitcurl. Also, the hair's a little like Superman needs a haircut. Like, I can imagine a scene where Lois Lane ruffles Superman's hair and says, "Looks like you need a haircut," and then tries to give him a romantic haircut, which she can't because his hair breaks the scissors, but she can still give him a nice shampoo.

The S got bigger, made out of whatever kind of rubber the entire suit is made of. And there's only one S, which is great. The whole suit is textured, but the texture is not little S's; it's just like a regular texture texture. It's a great look, which probably ties into the suit's Kryptonian origins? I haven't seen the movie yet. Maybe the biggest change is the absence of the red trunks. This is a change they also made in the comics with the 2011 DC New 52 across-the-board reboot. Is it a good change? With difficulty, I can say, maybe. Because the trunks serve no purpose other than visual flare. The only reason they existed in the first place was to evoke the imagery of a circus strongman. And so you see, the biggest irony about the Superman costume is that it has become far more iconic as its literal self than whatever silly outdated bullshit inspired it.

Also gone is the belt, which, too, served no real utilitarian purpose (particularly without trunks). But there's still hints of a belt. Like, there's a buckle there, or a thing that looks like a buckle. This must be an extension of the swirly accents that adorn the waist, legs, and cuffs of the suit. Again, this is presumably Kryptonian aesthetic (I haven't seen the movie). And the colors are interesting, because it seems to be a play on the Mingenbach approach of muting all but one color, only this time, the lead primary is the red instead of the blue. My gut reaction on seeing it was that I preferred it the other way, but I should wait until I've seen it in action, in the context of its fully realized world. To be crystal clear, this is a movie I have not yet seen.

The new S is one we've seen before, in the Superman comics of the 1940s. It gels nicely with the aforementioned Kryptonian aesthetic presented in Man of Steel. I saw some t-shirts of this new S at the mall, and it made me realize that wearing a Superman shirt is no longer the singular statement it once was. Superman shirts used to be little beyond minor plays on the agreed-upon basic corporate S. But now there's enough S's where the S you wear says something more personal. "I like Man of Steel." "I like Superman Returns/Smallville." "I like the New 52." "I like Kingdom Come." I even saw a guy wearing a black-and-white George Reeves S, the implications of which are at least a 20 minute conversation. Personally, I can find something I love about every Superman that has ever been. And that kinda sucks, because now I have to buy like a hundred shirts.