Favorites - 17 Favorite Superhero Costumes in Live-Action

While I get the interest in talking about some Digimon, some Assassin’s Creed, and the “greatest Batman Story Evar”, I thought I’d go to another subject. We’ve had a lot of good superhero costumes come across the screens for years, haven’t we? You don’t even have to start with Christopher Reeve’s Superman costume either. George Reeves and Kirk Alyn even had some well-rendered suits. Yeah, we’ve gotten some lackluster costumes over the years. I can look at 90’s comic movies, the Arrowverse, Smallville (love the show, but some costumes… eh), and even the MCU for some bad ones. Oh yeah, who remembers Shaq’s costume from Steel? Quite horrid, I say!

So, here are some of my favorite superhero costumes in live-action. Yeah, I’m going all over the board with this one. To even make this harder on me, I’m going to only include one superhero for this list, so no doubles like Ben Affleck and Michael Keaton for Batman. It’s also not in exact order, but I’ll have my favorite superheroes up top. I considered including villains on here, but that’ll wait for now.

1. Superman from Superman: The Movie

Man, this was hard. You know I had to include Christopher Reeve’s iconic costume on this list. Unfortunately, I had to leave Henry Cavil off because he’d be in second with Brandon Routh (in that pretty accurate Kingdom Come suit from the COIE crossover) coming in third. Still, there’s a reason Reeve is still remembered today. He made the suit work. He made the whole role work. There’s a reason folk don’t want to let go of his version of Superman… no, I’m not one of them.

2. Batman from Batman v. Superman and Justice League

This was another tough one because Batman’s had a lot of good costumes. Heck, even Robert Pattison’s costume looks good in those teasers, and we even hadn’t seen it on screen yet. If I had to pretty much choose a good rendition, I’d pick Ben Affleck’s main suit from Batman v. Superman. Heck, Affleck had quite the pick of suits since his Battle Armor, his modified suit in Justice League, and the tactical suit  from JL looked cool. Yeah, the movies weren’t great, but they at least looked good.

3. Spider-Man from The Amazing Spider-Man 2

This is another hard one. There have been some good Spidey costumes in live-action. Even though the Raimi movies has that silver webbing, those suits looked cool. Tobey MacGuire’s suit, Tom Holland’s new suit from Far From Home (still need to see it), and Andrew Garfield’s first suit from ASM were good. Garfield’s suit from ASM2 takes the cake out of all them. Even though that movie was crap, that suit looked awesome. It’s like it was ripped out of the comics. Too bad that suit didn’t make it to the MCU.  

4. Captain America from Avengers: Endgame

Cap has pretty much had good suits in the MCU. Even the lackluster suit from The Avengers movie had its good points. I almost threw his Super Soldier suit (the suit from Winter Soldier) on here, but the costume from Endgame takes the cake. It has all the best things that Cap’s suit should have. He’s representing the US, he looks well protected, and he looks pretty powerful. Heck, he picked up “Mew Mew” in Endgame, and he looked epic doing it.

5. Black Panther from Captain America: Civil War

When T’Challa stepped on to the scene, he did it in style. His first costume was on fleek, man! By the way, I hope I’m using that term right. It was so cool that it makes the suit he got in his own movie look pretty drab. Yeah, I’m not a big fan of the more advanced suit he has now. There was just something about the original that made it work. It may have been the designs or the fact that it looks like it could take a punch. Either way, it was one of the reason I grew to like T’Challa in Civil War.

6. Iron Man from The Avengers

You can pretty much pick any of the MCU movies that has Iron Man in it to find a good suit. All of them have been well done. I wasn’t a fan of the Infinity War suit, but other than that, Tony Stark’s suits have been faithful to the comic. The one that pretty much sticks in my mind is his modified suit from the first Avengers movie.

7. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from TMNT (1990)

I gotta give the TMNT some love here because their costumes from the first movie looked awesome. The animatronics and puppetry came together so well. It also helped that those suits were made so that the stunt team could pull of some cool moves. Yeah, you might have saw a hiccup here and there, but the Jim Henson Company did an awesome job bringing the Turtles to live action.

8. Wonder Woman from the DCEU

Wonder Woman’s costume in the DCEU is pretty perfect. I like the armor look for her since she is a warrior after all. You even got places where she can have her different weapons. Other than the color change, it hasn’t had many alterations, and it does need any. She is as powerful and beautiful.

9. Snake-Eyes from G.I. Joe: Retaliation

Even though the G.I. Joe movies weren’t good (even Retaliation unfortunately), the ninjas (Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow) always had a good showing. Snake Eyes (Ray Park)  looked good in his suit in Retaliation. I’m not counting Rise of Cobra because Snake Eyes was far from good that in that movie. That suit just didn’t work for me. The body armor looked kinda cheap, and those fake lips on the mask looked horrible. Hopefully, we’ll be seeing him in all his glory in that new Snake Eyes movie… when is that coming out anyway?

10.  Blade from the Blade movies

Wesley Snipes pretty much look awesome in the black armor and black trenchcoat. Yeah, it’s a simple look and it may have started the “Throw Superheroes in Black” trend, but it worked for Blade. It worked in all three movies.

11. Green Arrow from Arrow

If there’s one character from the Arrowverse who’s had good costumes, it’s Green Arrow. Even when he wasn’t going by that name yet, his look was pretty cool. All of his suits looked good, but the one that takes the cake is his Season 4 costume. That one was pretty nice.

12. The Flash from The Flash (1990)

While Grant Gustin and Ezra Miller look good in their suits (excluding Season 5’s crap suit), I gotta go with the original here. John Wesley Shipp looked pretty awesome in the Flash series. Even though it’s missing yellow boots, it just looked smooth. Heck, it looks like it might be easy to move in too. Shipp has even been sporting the Jay Garrick costume in the Arrowverse, so it’s cool to see he hasn’t lost it.

13. Booster Gold from Smallville

Smallville had some nice costumes for folk like Green Arrow,  Hawkman, Black Canary, and Clark too. Yeah, he didn’t where “The Suit”, but I did like the alternatives for a pre-Superman. One costume that was the best of the bunch was the one for Booster Gold. He shows up in the 10^th season in the episode “Booster.” Not only did the actor (Eric Martsolf) fit the role pretty well, the costume was pretty faithful to the comics. I liked that he had sponsors logos embroidered on the costume. It just added to his ego.

14. Deadpool from Deadpool

While I don’t like the character personally, I do have to admit that Deadpool had a really faithful costume. It was leagues better than… whatever he wore in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Heck, he probably had one of the best costumes in that X-Men franchise.

15. Aquaman and Mera from Aquaman

I thought I'd group these two together. While we first saw the two in Justice League, the costumes they ultimately got in Aquaman were awesome. Mera looked more accurate to the comic… if only Amber Heard was better in the role. As for Jason Momoa, he ruled in the new costume he found along with Posieden’s Trident. I didn’t know how that look would work in live-action, but now that it’s here, it’s glorious.

16. Black Widow from Captain America: Civil War

Scarlett Johansson pretty much looked good in any BW costume she got. She worked them all well. Yeah, I’m saying she looked hot in them! Not only were they comic accurate, they just looked good! Yeah, there were a couple of shots (that one shot of her in Loki’s interrogation room) that were… a bit much, but she rocked. My favorite of hers is probably the one from Civil War. Yeah, they’re all black, but that one looks cool.

17. Robin/Nightwing from Titans

One more should end it because I could keep going. While I’m not the biggest fan of Titans, the casting and costuming has been pretty good. The most impressive one from the first season was Robin. The suit looked detailed and seemed liked it got ripped right out of modern comics. It also helped that Brandon Thwaites helped make that suit look pretty epic.

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UPDATE 7/17/20: One more thing

18. The X-Men from X-Men: First Class

I had to come back for this one. While the X-Men themselves haven't had the best costumes in the movies, First Class actually actually did for me. The uniforms they wear towards the end of the movie were pretty cool. They had the vibe of the suits from the trilogy, but they had color and reminded me of the orginal yellow and blue costumes they had from the comics. I also liked the detail that went into having most of them look suited to the characters.

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Alright, I’m gonna tap it off here. I could keep going on this, but I gotta stop it somewhere. Besides, I think I got a couple more posts on live-action costumes on the way. I did miss out on the villains, and there’s also the bad costumes that need to be mentioned. I know they’re be more good costumes on screen, so all I can do now is wait. Until then, Peace, God Bless, and be careful out there. Pray, disinfect, and wear a mask.