A Look at the 2017 Spider-Man: Homecoming Costume

Looking forward to Spider-Man's costume in the 2017 film, Spider-Man: Homecoming.

By Shrey Sankalp

Before dissecting the 2017 Spider-Man: Homecoming costume, let me say something right off the bat – I’m a massive Spider-Man fan, and I’ve always been one. Between the ages of 7 and 12, you could walk into my room and be greeted with a host of Spider-Man memorabilia, ranging from posters to toys to various costumes of different sizes that I wore at different ages to various costumed events (another fun fact about the costumes: I sometimes wore them on outings too, much to the chagrin of my parents, because let’s face it, who wears a Spider-Man costume while going out to dinner? I’m pretty sure even Spider-Man ditches the costume while going out to dinner, but hey, that’s just me!) all bundled up together nicely.

Left Photo: AKM-GSI

My parents were nice enough to take me to the movies day and date whenever a new Spider-Man movie came out (yeah, I wore my costume there too) and I almost always enjoyed them. Of course, I was too young to fully understand the nuance of the films or even weigh their good qualities against their bad, so I loved all three films uniformly, and when a 15 year-old me found out they were rebooting Spider-Man with a new take and a new actor, I was overjoyed with the possibility that I get to experience Spider-Man all over again as it’s meant to be.

Of course, this isn’t an ideal world, so that never came to pass. The rebooted films, while mostly serviceable, were hardly as good as I’d hoped they’d be – The Amazing Spider-Man and I got off on the wrong foot ever since the new costume was revealed, because God, I hated that costume. I was a fan of Maguire’s costume, and Garfield’s costume seemed too…over-stylized. At least that’s what my opinion was at the time. The costume certainly looked better on screen, but there was just so much going on with the costume! The yellow lensing wasn’t a change I was fond of, and the basketball-like texture of the costume coupled with the addition of a blue trim and stylized lines just didn’t cut it for me. It didn’t help that the film turned out to be nothing more than a rehash of the 2002 film with slight changes, and its passable mediocrity coupled with an unflattering costume just didn’t leave me very hopeful for the sequel. Now I will admit that I’m one of those people who don’t abhor The Amazing Spider-Man 2 despite its deal-breaking flaws (too much set up, terrible villain, underused Green Goblin etc.) because I like the things the film got right, and for me it’s the studio meddling that was the issue than Marc Webb’s vision for the story. But out of all the things I liked about the film, I really loved this costume. It was still ‘hip’ enough, but went back to a more traditional look, such as the Ultimate Spider-Man costume, and finally having those oversized eyes on the costume was just the icing on the cake for me. I would have liked to see The Amazing Spider-Man 3 come to fruition, but it wasn’t to be.

Now I was happy when Marvel struck a deal with Sony to include Spider-Man in Civil War, but wasn’t too fond of the fact that Andrew Garfield (who I liked) was being recast and would be played by Tom Holland (who I’d never heard of). Still, I believed in Marvel, and I was glad to see that belief being paid off. Marvel got Spider-Man absolutely right, making him the best iteration of the character till date. Everything about the character, be it his voice, age or costume was exactly how it should have been! It was especially lovely to see a costume that was 100% faithful to the original costume right down to the smallest details, and was a picture perfect representation of the costumes Romita and Ditko drew!

I’m glad this costume is making it to Homecoming (what could that title possibly hint at, I wonder?), because if the costume is making it, so are the other character traits I loved. Plus Iron Man too, who I’m sure will continue his tradition of getting a new costume with every film. Michael Keaton and Bokeem Woodbine are playing the Vulture and Shocker from what I hear, and if that’s true, I’m excited to see what their costumes look like because they’ve got great costumes in the comics too, and if Marvel’s recent penchant for comic book accuracy when it comes to costumes is anything to go by, I expect the movie costumes will look very similar to the comic costumes, and that’s never a bad thing, right? Either way, we’ll find out soon enough. And you bet I’ll be there.