Full disclosure I am the type of fan who loves to see my characters brought to the big screen looking like they were ripped from the pages of a comic. I am also not opposed to minor changes which can help make the characters fit in a real world setting a bit but I am totally against swapping a whole teams outfit and mask for black matrix leather(obviously black panther already wears black so no problem there).
Why is Black Panthers mask important to marvel? well until now in the main marvel cinematic universe we have yet to see a fully masked hero. Thor wears a
helmet(granted not a lot) Captain America has a cool open mouth mask, Star lord has a mouth covering but we only get about 2 mins of him in full helmet and the rest of the heroes so far with the exception of iron man have no head coverings at all (hawkeye, hulk, Black widow etc). Iron mans helmet while it does cover his full face from the outside gives onscreen privileges and camera options that I don't think can or will work with panther, for example being a robotic helmet even though we don't get to see tony's face from outside camera shots we do get plenty of full view face shots of the actual man from an in helmet cam throughout all of the films giving the actor as much screen time as say a cap or thor. Also it is pretty much a understood fact that the robotic voice that comes from iron man is some sort of amplified speaker within the helmet(I believe the upcoming ant man will be a small mix of these elements). For Panther not only would the actual face time of the actor be cut down to 0 during suit up action scene's but how would you portray the voice of the king of Wakanda while in full costume? Lets look outside the MCU to other masked heroes for reference, a big one that comes to mind is of course is Sony's many renditions of spider-man. While I think Toby and Andrew both had ample screen time as actors in a solo hero pic im curious how it would work in a multi hero setting such as avengers. As for his voice while wearing the mask it was a slight muffled but understandable presentation that I thought was fitting for a school kid who made his own costume with limited resources, but would that be suitable for a King of a rich and powerful nation who's costume is not just made to conceal his identity but as advanced armor and a symbol of his bloodline surely they could do better?. For certain characters such as Rorschach of watchmen the gurgle and muffled sound adds to the grittiness and grunge of the hero but I just think something clear and powerful is needed to portray a king who thwarts bad guys as opposed to a teenager or a near homeless vigilante.
Looking closely at Panthers mask in the teaser image it may be a form of mesh around the mouth area which can help with the clarity of speech and breathing. Im guessing for marvel to get full use out of Bosemen he will have a good amount of maskless action to help familiarize the face to the character. Lets just hope we get a lot of full costume action thrown in for comic books sake.
No comments:
Post a Comment