Even as a lifelong comic book fan, I understand why filmmakers often feel the need to change the look of some superhero costumes as they are translated from the page to the big screen. Take, for example, the duds worn by Scarlet Witch a.k.a. Wanda Maximoff. In the comics her look definitely pops off the page - donning a long flowing cape, a unique head piece, and typically exposing way more skin than she's covering up - but it's also a design that might look semi-ridiculous in live-action. So, naturally, writer/director Joss Whedon and actress Elizabeth Olsen will be changing that costume up a bit for when the character appears in the upcoming The Avengers: Age of Ultron.
Olsen recently sat down for a chat with Total Film (via Coming Soon) to talk about her role in the upcoming mega blockbuster - which actually just started production yesterday in Johannesburg, South Africa - and during the interview explained a bit about the approach that Whedon is taking with the Scarlet Witch costume. While she didn't exactly give a fully detailed description of what we can expect her to be wearing, she suggests that the design will be cutting down on the skin exposure and look a bit more grounded in reality. Said the actress,
"I don’t think Joss ever would have hired me, honestly, if he wanted me to wear those outfits. I am not a professional athlete and nor am I a model. Wearing those costumes wouldn’t be fun for anyone who wasn’t those things. He already had a different idea. It respects and involves the comic book character, but it's different. More rooted. It's for someone today... If someone walked around wearing what she wore in the comics, people would stop and say, ‘What the hell… she thinks she's a superhero!'"
For those unfamiliar with the various looks of Scarlet Witch, you can see a few examples below:
Obviously some of these are more conservative than others, but some also aren't exactly super practical for the battlefield. We can probably expect Whedon and his team to find some sort of middle ground.
Personally, I'm less interested in the design of Scarlet Witch (Marvel Studios has nailed pretty much every costume so far), and much more interested in the production's approach to her origin story. Because of the way the rights to the character are split with 20th Century Fox, Marvel doesn't have the legal ability to call her a "mutant" in The Avengers: Age of Ultron (not to mention the fact that she is the daughter of Magneto). This means that the script will have to find a different way to explain her complicated power set, which allow her to manipulate reality and probability. The same story goes for Quicksilver a.k.a. Pietro Maximoff, set to be played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson.
In addition to the Maximoff siblings, other new additions to the Marvel universe set to appear in The Avengers: Age of Ultron include James Spader as the eponymous Ultron, Thomas Kretschmann as Baron Wolfgang von Strucker and Paul Bettany as Vision. Look for the film in theaters May 1, 2015.
