After all of our rampant speculation about how Disney would bring Wolverine to the MCU, and whether or not Taron Egerton would play him, Ryan Reynolds posted a video on Twitter revealing that Hugh Jackman would be playing Logan again in Deadpool 3. And that’s great news. for many reasons, but one in particular: It’s one last chance to make Wolverine really dress up like Wolverine..
Disney, Marvel… it’s time to bring out the yellow lycra.
“What do you prefer, yellow lycra?”
Fox’s X-Men movie did a lot of things right, but it’s also a product of its time, and at the time, making a movie based on a Marvel comic book was an extremely risky undertaking. The success of Blade paved the way for the X-Men to hit the big screen. On the other hand, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, tight black and/or leather suits were all the rage: The Matrix, Mission: Impossible 2, Charlie’s Angels, Trapped, Tomorrow Never Dies, and The Avengers (Uma Thurman’s, not Marvel’s) had a similar fashion sense.
The original X-Men movie even has a joke in which Wolverine complains about going out in public in the leather suit, to which Cyclops replies, “What do you prefer, yellow spandex?” The material is irrelevant, but a little color would be nice.
X-Men producer Ralph Winter has said in interviews since then that the intent of that line it was a nod to comic book fans, rather than poking fun at the source material. Winter admitted that certain trade-offs had to be made to make the X-Men appeal to a wider audience (such as Wolverine not having the height of Joe Pesci or the body hair of Robin Williams) and also noted that the leather suits were chosen for convenience, as they meant the stars would spend less time in the dressing room. Sure, they might be less obtrusive than the rubber superhero suits from, say, Spawn or Batman & Robin, but the color of a suit has no bearing on how easy it is to put on. And ultimately, the leather suits were so tight at first that the actors had trouble climbing a three-foot wall.
After the success of the film, the comics followed suit in multiple timelines: Ultimate X-Men gave Wolverine a makeover that inverted his classic color scheme to be mostly black with some yellow stripes, and Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s New X-Men gave the entire team an overhaul that was more reminiscent of sexy firefighters than conventional superheroes.
A few years after the X-Men debuted on the big screen, its box office success was surpassed by Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, which featured an impressively faithful rendition of the wall-crawler’s extremely colorful costume. It would have been nice if subsequent X-Men movies followed suit, but presumably Fox didn’t want to mess up what had already worked once.
X-Men 2 and X-Men: The Final Stand gave Wolverine’s suit some festive yellow trimbut that was the closest Fox ever came to putting on anything resembling his classic comics look… Well, at least until the infamous Wolverine deleted scene, in which Logan receives his iconic brown ’80s suit. .. which later… never led on screen?
Also, a quick sidebar: Wolverine Immortal introduced Yukio, who was inexplicably stylized to look like some sort of cross between Pippi Longstocking and Wenda from Where’s Wally, even though in the comics… she ACTUALLY WEARS A BLACK LEATHER JUMBO .
X-Men: Days of Future Past DID Give Wolverine a New Suitbut instead of doing something that had been made out of in the comics for Wolverine, they replaced the motorcycle’s black leather with a carbon fiber tactical suit with blue and orange accents.
Despite Fox’s X-Men movies being hit or miss, Hugh Jackman’s portrayal of Wolverine is always a high point; It’s a shame that in his nine films and 17 years as the character, he has never dressed in colors… but there is always time.
Marvel Cinematic Uniforms
Ever since he first played Deadpool in X-Men Origins: Wolverine (arguably the most heinous reimagining of a Marvel character to date), Ryan Reynolds has gone down well with fans twice. Despite Deadpool continuing to skewer (sometimes literally) Fox’s other X-Men properties, the Deadpool movies (specifically the second) have been two of the most faithful adaptations of the mutant-focused corner of the Marvel Universe. I mean, he watches Colossus and Juggernaut fight. Sure, Juggernaut could use more red and Colossus could use more yellow, but I’ll take it.
In the MCU, the costumes have been pretty consistent with their comic book counterparts since day one. Not that they need an excuse to redesign the characters, but the current disarray of the Multiverse is allowing for a few makeovers: Loki and Scarlet Witch and Vision gave you some classic outfits in the form of Halloween costumes and an alternate timeline variant. . Spider-Man: No Way Home has lived up to some of Sony’s more questionable costume choices for villains of the past, redesigning Green Goblin and Electro in ways that take inspiration from the comics. The No Way Home concept artists even they played with putting the Lizard in his classic lab coat and purple pants.
Meanwhile, Multiverse of Madness showed us the most faithful to the comics versions of Black Bolt and Professor X to date, as well as Reed Richards, although, in Fox’s defense, the matching jumpsuits were one of the few things that the Fantastic Four movies did well. Obviously all those versions died, but still, they looked good.
How Wolverine fits into Deadpool 3, and the MCU as a whole, isn’t something that worries me. If there’s one thing that can make plot points more implausible than the idea of the multiverse, it’s Wade Wilson’s ability to break the fourth wall and pull pranks on the audience. This movie will definitely be a lot of fun, and I’m really excited to see these two characters interacting on the big screen, in a coming-of-age movie no less. But if this really is the last time we’ll see Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, I think Marvel Studios should put it in yellow and blue or at least brown and orange.
With Wolverine confirmed, what else are you hoping to see in Deadpool 3, costume related or not? The return of Cable? A repeat of Taskmaster?
