Pre-Movie Avengers post: Loki's costumes, armour, and image-consciousness.

Related: Movie Costumes I Have Loved: Thor.

I suppose I could apologise for making another Avengers-related post, but I ain't sorry. Nope. I need to get rid of all my Avengers excitement somehow, otherwise I'll just run around in little circles waving my hands in the air until the top of my head comes off and steam comes out of the hole. (<--- actual example.)

So here we go: Hello, Tailor's first ever pre-movie costume review, brought to you by the many clips and trailers Marvel has helpfully provided in order to whip fans into the maximum possibly frenzy prior to the movie's release. Thankfully none of these trailers contain any information about what actually happens in the film itself, so this blog (and my brain) will remain gloriously spoiler free until April 26.

Picture of Loki and Thor grinding Get Low by Lil Jon, from The Art Of Thor.

Thanks to my recent introduction to Game Of Thrones, I had armour on my mind as I perused the various Marvel teasers. For the most part, the battle costumes in Game of Thrones are quite closely modeled on the kind of medieval armour we expect to be worn by jousting knights, and is reasonably practical. The armour we saw in Thor is pretty much the opposite -- showy, sparkly, and inspired by comicbook illustrations drawn by people who were making it up as they went along. Which is totally fine! The fact that the costume designers for Thor managed to make the Asgardian clothes look even remotely like something worn by actual people in real life is enough for me. Thor and Loki are both alien princes. For all we know, the non-metallic bits of their armour are laser-proof and knitted from meteor rocks, as opposed to being the slightly cheap-looking pleather they appear to be. Haters to the left.

Loki's ceremonial armour from Thor.

The Asgardian armour in Thor was very clean and polished, fitting in with a rather over-the-top, cartoonish aesthetic that worked in the context of the film but looks pretty cheesy in pictures. From what I've seen of Loki's Avengers costumes they're similar on what he wore in Thor, but are a lot more lived-in and have better detailing. The Avengers is altogether a bigger movie with high production values, plus the costumes from each of the individual Avengers' own prequel movies presumably had to be tweaked a little in order to mesh the different looks. Also, since one of the Loki's outfits from the Avengers trailers seems almost identical to the one he was wearing at the end of Thor, I think it's meant to be that one, just looking a bit the worse for wear after a few days/months/untold millennia floating through Yggdrasil's Space-Vortex (or whatever it is he was doing while he decided to take over Midgard and stop washing his hair).

screenshot from The Avengers promo material.

The main difference I've noticed is that Loki's armour in The Avengers gives the appearance of being more battle-ready. There's more wear-and-tear as if he's actually encountered some fighting and dirt (which Magical L'Oreal Prince Thor never seems to, even after he launched himself directly through the skull of a giant monster in the Thor movie), and at least one set of his gauntlets have been replaced by something a little more practical and less like an Asgardian Prince party costume.

screenshot from The Avengers promo material.

The addition of a single shoulder-piece (that's called a pauldron, armour-enthusiasts!) suggests duelling, as there's generally more armour on a person's exposed side -- ie, the side that's presented towards the enemy. However, in the case of Loki this is kind of tricky because a) his main weapon isn't his spear, it's his ability to make you so annoyed you chop your own head off in frustration, and b) he's a master of illusion. So he can basically look like whatever the hell he wants. This makes Loki's costume and appearance the most interesting of any character in The Avengers, because you know that the way he looks is always going to be a conscious choice. I'll be on the lookout to see how Loki presents himself to different characters over the course of the movie, since the trailer already shows several costume variations. For example, the impressive gold armour and helmet (as pictured below) is from a scene where Loki addresses a crowd of fearful civilians, whereas when Loki visits Tony Stark he tones it down to a more sedate black get-up, possibly because he knows Tony would laugh at him if he showed up wearing eighteen-inch gold goat horns on his head.

screenshot from The Avengers promo material.

The real question, though, is if he's ever actually wearing any of this stuff. Most of the time when he's in armour it's not because he thinks someone's going to come at him with a halberd, it's for performative reasons. And when we see him in Midgardian clothes (ie, a suit and tie) the implication is that that's an illusion, so... what is real? Will he turn out to have been wearing pyjamas throughout the entire movie, just using his magic to throw on a few dramatic Emo God outfits from time to time to remind everyone that there's an evil overlord in town? I hope so.

Links

This gifset is handy for comparisons between Loki's (similar) costumes in Thor and The Avengers. He definitely looks broader and tougher in the new movie, mostly due to the widened shoulders. In Thor his costumes tended to emphasise how slight he was in comparison to Thor, but in The Avengers he needs to present a more aggressive image because he's the primary antagonist rather than the hero's misunderstood little brother. While in Thor Loki often looked vulnerable and delicate, the costumes and visuals in The Avengers need to emphasise the more angular aspects of Tom Hiddleston's features.

This is another good look at how Loki's Thor costume is a lot more cartoony than the scraped and dented metal we see in The Avengers.

The Mary Sue: For anyone still wondering, yes, women can wear full armour too. Although not directly related to Thor or The Avengers, this article has a lot to say about body-shape, practicality and aesthetic, and how they relate to the type of body armour we see worn by sci-fi/fantasy characters.

Finally: The best Tony Stark/Loki costume commentary you're ever likely to find.