Back in February, director Joe Johnston spoke a bit about Captain America’s costume in Marvel Studios‘ Captain America: The First Avenger – Johnston said, “In the first USO sequences, the frustrated patriot will be wearing a version that is closer to the classic Jack Kirby-designed costume, but then later as the super-soldier hits the war zone he will be wearing a sturdier, more muted version that he makes himself that is more like battle togs. The stripes across his mid-section, for instance, will be straps, not colored fabric.”
Mike over at JoBlo was fortunate enough to get a look at a test costume for Captain America, and from his description, it seems to mesh with Johnston’s original plan.
From Mike Sampson at JoBlo:
The first thing I noticed is that the trademark wings that flank the side of Cap’s hood are gone. In fact the “hood” is gone entirely. In its place is a more traditional M1 Army helmet though this helmet does come over the eyes to give Cap a traditional “domino mask” look. Still present is the white “A” in the middle of the hat (nothing fancy, this is the traditional font), though like the rest of the costume, the blue of the helmet is much more muted than the blue in the comic costume. A thick black strap comes down over the ears and connects under the chin.
Cap is wearing a blue neck piece but from what I saw, it’s hard to tell if this is connected to something under the helmet or whether it’s something like a turtleneck (I’m gonna guess the latter).
On his chest still lies the white star though it’s not as prominent as the comic version. The costume is still split horizontally through the middle with blue on top and red and white stripes on the bottom. But instead of stripes, it’s actually just a white base with two red utility straps acting as stripes. These straps affix to a metal loop at the midpoint of the chest and a black strap extends up to the shoulders from that point.
His shoulders have pads over them that extend down to about mid-bicep and are attached via a brown strap under the arm. The sleeves (for lack of a better word) are white with a fairly standard brown glove.
The fabric of the costume doesn’t look like the scaled material of SPIDER-MAN but more of a leather fabric, like something you’d see on one of the X-MEN. Cap wears an old school utility belt, the likes of which we haven’t seen much in modern superhero movies. Utility belts were a staple of comic superheroes but haven’t made the transition but here Cap sports a rather thick belt made up of brown pockets with a silver buckle.
As you might expect, there’s no codpiece to be found and Cap is wearing blue pants tucked into brown utility boots. The pants aren’t skin tight but they aren’t baggy either. And for those who are curious, the pants actually have a fly so Cap can take a leak if he needs to.
The suit actually has a practical WWII military look to it with some of the obvious Captain America flourishes that we would expect. It’s hard to really pass judgment on a costume until you see it properly lit, in motion and doing what it’s meant to do. But based on what I saw, I’m pretty impressed with how they were able to adapt the costume for the film.
As for the shield, it actually hews very closely to the classic design of red/white/red rings with the white star in a blue circle at the middle.
It sounds a little something like this…
What do you think? Let me know in the comments.
Captain America: The First Avenger is slated to hit theaters on July 22, 2011.
