The 10 Most Overdesigned MCU Costumes, Ranked (2024)

One of the biggest complaints everyone has with the Marvel Cinematic Universe concerns their costume designs. Indeed, Marvel Studios has a terrible tendency of completely overdesigning their costumes. They often include unnecessary lines, odd color segmentations, and absolutely useless inclusions that do nothing for the overall design other than make it visually busy and, occasionally, flat-out off-putting.

What makes this tendency even worse is that characters start their Marvel Cinematic Universe tenure with a great costume, only to have it completely ruined in their next appearance. It makes their costumes look confusing, over-populated, and hard to look at, to the point where it's often hard to understand how official concept art can even look better than the final product. These are the most over-designed costumes in the MCU, ranked by how unappealing they are, especially compared to what came before.

10 The Vision Suit

Vision (Paul Bettany)

While, at first look, Vision may not seem very overdesigned, when taking a more critical look at his suit, there's a lot happening here that is a bit too much. If one takes a look at the comic book Vision design, he's primarily green and yellow, with the red color in his design living primarily on his chest and face. While being comic-accurate doesn't make a movie suit necessarily good and isn't needed at all, being comic-accurate would have helped the Vision design in the Marvel Cinematic Universe quite a bit.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe Vision finds itself feeling somehow both empty and overdesigned at the same time. There's not much happening on the front of the costume, and due to this, Marvel Studios added a lot of unnecessary red blotches on the arms and down the sides of the costume. While it would look more empty without these lines, there are better ways to fix that issue.

9 The Stark Suit

Peter Parker/Spider-Man (Tom Holland)

The Stark Suit introduced in Captain America: Civil War is pretty much the perfect base example of the many issues with Marvel Studios costumes. While the color segmentation is pretty good, for the most part, if one looks closer, they can find dozens of lines within the blue of the suit that add absolutely nothing.

Comparing this suit to the likes of Tobey Maguire's and Andrew Garfield's, in which the blue is solid, the suit looks clustered and jarring. The Stark Suit is still good-looking, as the colors are bright and popping, but the useless lines can be distracting, making Spidey look a bit like a circus performer. It also adds fuel to the theory that Marvel Studios is just scared of segments of solid colors.

Captain America: Civil War

PG-13

Sci-Fi

Thriller

Action

Where to Watch

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*Availability in US

Release Date

May 6, 2016

Director

Anthony Russo , Joe Russo

Cast

Martin Freeman , Daniel Brühl , Robert Downey Jr. , Sebastian Stan , Elizabeth Olsen , Chadwick Boseman , Chris Evans , Paul Rudd , Frank Grillo , Scarlett Johansson , William Hurt , Paul Bettany , Anthony Mackie , Emily VanCamp , Tom Holland

Runtime

147 Minutes

Writers

Stephen McFeely , Christopher Markus

8 Black Widow's Endgame Suit

Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson)

The suit Black Widow wore in Avengers: Endgame may look like any of her other suits if one squints, but upon closer inspection, it's filled with absolutely pointless design inclusions. In the past, her suits have typically been solid black with small red accents, like the symbol on her belt. However, the Endgame suit decided to throw those perfectly fine design philosophies away.

Much like the Stark Suit, rather than a solid color, the suit is filled with pointless lines that add nothing. While it's not terribly distracting, thanks to the lines also being a shade of black, they're still present and make it look cluttered for no reason. It, again, alludes to Marvel Studios being resistant to solid colors. Her previous outfits, like the ones seen in Iron Man 2 and The Avengers, are pretty much perfect.

See Also

14 Best MCU Costumes In Marvel Movies & Shows, RankedOriginal Marvel Kostüme online kaufen » KostümpalastThe 25 Best Marvel Superhero Costumes, RankedA Fashionable Decade: The 25 Best MCU Costumes, Officially Ranked

Avengers: Endgame

PG-13

Adventure

Action

Sci-Fi

Superhero

Where to Watch

• stream
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*Availability in US

Release Date

April 26, 2019

Director

Anthony Russo , Joe Russo

Runtime

181 Minutes

Writers

Keith Giffen , Stan Lee , Larry Lieber , Don Heck , Jim Starlin , Joe Simon , Steve Englehart , Jack Kirby , Steve Gan , Bill Mantlo , Stephen McFeely , Christopher Markus

7 Taskmaster's First Suit

Antonia Dreykov/Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko)

Fans were pretty excited when it was revealed that Taskmaster was going to be one of the villains in Black Widow. Alas, general opinion wavered a little bit when she was first shown in the trailers because, well, the suit didn't look great. There are a lot of elements that go into this suit being overdesigned, and it's not just the typical useless lines.

For starters, Taskmaster has a random hood for some reason. The hood seemingly has no purpose and doesn't ever be shown to be useful in the film itself. Hoods are cool, yes. But characters with them, like Green Arrow, use them to hide their identity. Taskmaster doesn't need to do that. So what's the point? It's textbook overdesign, and in the worst possible way, too.

Black Widow

PG-13

Superhero

Action

Adventure

Sci-Fi

Where to Watch

• stream
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*Availability in US

Release Date

July 9, 2021

Director

Cate Shortland

Cast

Scarlett Johansson , Florence Pugh , David Harbour , O-T Fagbenle , Olga Kurylenko , William Hurt , Ray Winstone , Rachel Weisz

Runtime

134 minutes

Writers

Ned Benson , Don Heck , Stan Lee , Don Rico , Jac Schaeffer

6 The '90s Suit

Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel (Brie Larson)

While her suit in her recent film, The Marvels, is much better, Captain Marvel's first film features her in an outfit that is very cluttered. Something that's fixed later on is the placement of blue, red and gold lines, dots and segments of color on both the torso and legs. In recent films, they've cut those out completely.

The transition of her suit from Captain Marvel to The Marvels is a huge, surprising improvement for Marvel Studios. But it doesn't fix the rough, borderline hard-to-look-at suit in the first film. The cluttered gold and red bits scattered across the hero's blue torso make it feel like they splattered paint on the comic design and took inspiration from that.

Captain Marvel

PG-13

Superhero

Action

Adventure

Sci-Fi

Where to Watch

• stream
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• buy

See Also

The Best Costumes in the MCU Ranked

*Availability in US

Release Date

March 6, 2019

Director

Anna Boden , Ryan Fleck

Cast

Brie Larson , Samuel L. Jackson , Jude Law , Clark Gregg , Djimon Hounsou , Gemma Chan , Ben Mendelsohn , Lashana Lynch

Runtime

Writers

Anna Boden , Ryan Fleck , Geneva Robertson-Dworet , Nicole Perlman , Meg LeFauve

5 The Integrated Suit

Peter Parker/Spider-Man (Tom Holland)

Somehow, the Integrated Suit from the end ofSpider-Man: No Way Home is a good-looking suit while still being very overdesgined. Surprisingly, the giant gold spider in the middle of the red torso works and doesn't kill the suit as it does for another (more on that later). The real killer of the Integrated Suit is the aspects found in the black segments.

Within the black torso segments of the suit, there are random red lines alongside black lines, all of which add nothing to the suit and make the black segment feel divided. Looking down at the legs, there are black lines like there are on the Stark Suit, but thankfully, they're far less noticeable here. The kneecaps, though, have strange red and gold lining in a row that just look clumped together.

Spider-Man: No Way Home

PG-13

Superhero

Drama

Action

Comedy

Where to Watch

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*Availability in US

Release Date

December 17, 2021

Director

Jon Watts

Cast

Tom Holland , Zendaya , Benedict Cumberbatch , Jacob Batalon , Jon Favreau , Jamie Foxx , Willem Dafoe , Alfred Molina , Benedict Wong , Marisa Tomei , Andrew Garfield , Tobey Maguire

Runtime

148 minutes

4 Kamala's Updated Suit

Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani)

Kamala Khan actually had a great suit in her debut Disney+ series, Ms. Marvel. It was simple, had great colors, and while it still wasn't a stranger to useless lines, it was overall pretty solid. It wasn't until The Marvels that the suit was taken and muddled with. Unfortunately, when Marvel Studios decided to update her suit for the film, they made changes that not only were unnecessary but didn't look great as a whole.

Bluntly put: Kamala's suit in The Marvels is a cluttered mess. The suit now has a large red segment cutting through the torso, random gold shoulders, red segments and gold lines on the legs, a blue line cutting through her gold symbol and the once primarily red arms are now scattered with blue and red blotches. There's not much else to say about the new Ms. Marvel design besides the word of the day: overdesigned.

The Marvels

PG-13

Adventure

Action

Superhero

Where to Watch

• stream
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Not available

Not available

*Availability in US

Release Date

November 10, 2023

Director

Nia DaCosta

Cast

Brie Larson , Zawe Ashton , Teyonah Parris , Iman Vellani , Samuel L. Jackson , Park Seo-joon , Zenobia Shroff , Mohan Kapur , Saagar Shaikh , Gary Lewis

Runtime

105 Minutes

Writers

Gene Colan , Roy Thomas

3 The Iron Spider

Peter Parker/Spider-Man (Tom Holland)

The friendly neighborhood has had a rough go when it comes to having overdesigned costumes. The worst-looking of all his suits is also one of the most overdesigned in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Ever since it was revealed, the Iron Spider has received pretty much nothing but hate, and it is completely warranted. Although it was a gift from the usually suit-oriented Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), the Iron Spider is objectively a mess, and there's no denying it.

The biggest problem the Iron Spider has is the large spider symbol covering pretty much the suit's entire torso, a fully blue symbol with gold outlining. With how big the spider is, it makes the torso look incredibly over-populated. The blue on the suit also struggles with the same thing the Stark Suit does, having random lines that add nothing to the design. But the true killer of this suit is its use of gold accents all over. It could have worked but failed in execution.

2 The Quantumania Suit

Scott Lang/Ant-Man (Paul Rudd)

The suit Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) (and honestly everyone) is wearing in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is obscenely overdesigned. If one were to look at the third film suit and compare it to the one in Ant-Man, they'd probably be horrified. The suit in the first film is actually very good: it's simple, sleek and it's practical.

Alas, the third suit is plain bad. The amount of lines and random black and silver segments is ridiculous. The suit is a wild and jarring mess that is just a strain to look at for anyone who enjoys costuming. The additions to the suit do nothing for Ant-Man's actual abilities and are simply cosmetic. There is nothing wrong with purely cosmetic changes, but when there's this much going on, and there's no practical use for it, it's hard to excuse the mess.

PG-13

Action

Adventure

Comedy

Where to Watch

• stream
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• buy

*Availability in US

Release Date

February 17, 2023

Director

Peyton Reed

Cast

Michael Douglas , Jonathan Majors , Paul Rudd , Michelle Pfeiffer , Michael Pena , Evangeline Lilly , Kathryn Newton , Randall Park , Bill Murray

Runtime

135 minutes

Writers

jeff loveness

1 The Gold and Blue Suit

'Thor: Love and Thunder' (2022)

Many people already have a lot of issues with Thor: Love and Thunder, but as if it couldn't get worse, the suit Thor (Chris Hemsworth) uses throughout the film is the most overdesigned in the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe. The worst part about it is the fact that at the beginning of the film (after his soiree with the Guardians), he's wearing a genuinely excellent suit with fur on his cape.

It's hard to put into words exactly why this suit is as much of a mess as it is. There is no explanation behind why the gold and blue segments and lines are the way they are. It looks like a bunch of lines drawn onto the suit for no apparent reason. To make matters worse, the helmet is utterly horrendous, with the blue segments on the top and the small, barely noticeable lines surrounding the eyes.

Thor: Love and Thunder

PG-13

Action

Adventure

Fantasy

Superhero

Where to Watch

• stream
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• buy

*Availability in US

Release Date

July 8, 2022

Director

Taika Waititi

Cast

Taika Waititi , Christian Bale , Natalie Portman , Tessa Thompson , Chris Hemsworth , ​Chris Pratt2 , Karen Gillan , Russell Crowe

Runtime

118 Minutes

Writers

Taika Waititi , Jennifer Kaytin Robinson , Stan Lee

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