7 MCU Costumes That Need To Change

Marvel's biggest fashion offenders.

Scarlet Witch MCU
Marvel Studios

Translating often ridiculous and outlandish comic-book costumes to the big screen is no easy task, but overall, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has done this quite well, bearing in mind the need to design something that works within a live-action setting.

But nobody's perfect, and Marvel has also managed to produce a number of duds in this department. Several of its costumes have either not done the comics justice, been executed poorly, felt lacking for story reasons, or worse, just look plain bad.

Fortunately, the episodic nature of the MCU gives it the ability to constantly adjust, tweak and improve as it goes along, and the costumes are one area that can quickly and easily change from movie to movie.

So while it's given us some truly great looks, including Cap's Winter Soldier outfit, Thor's badass Ragnarok armour and Iron Man's Mark III suit, the MCU also contains Hawkeye's dreary garb, Diamondback's battle suit, Whiplash's metal braces and Captain America's Avengers outfit.

On the whole, there are definitely some characters whose current costumes just don't feel quite right, but that could always change for the better in future.

7. The Nova Corps

Guardians Of The Galaxy Nova Corps
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

The Nova Corps were first introduced in Guardians Of The Galaxy, essentially the space police whose job was to protect the planet Xandar from threats, both local and planet-wide.

Their look was a more grounded version of the costumes worn by the Nova Corps in the comics; colours were more muted and the helmets were less showy. Functional, but not very inspired.

Why The Costume Needs To Change: In a franchise like Guardians - where everything is bright and kooky, with weird-looking aliens, talking trees, intelligent raccoons and a planet built out of the head of a dead Celestial - it's a bit disappointing how dull and blue the Nova Corps outfit looks.

Maybe that was the point - they're the goody-two-shoes law enforcement agents, they're no fun, and they have boring costumes as a result. But the fact that they're often played as a joke (John C. Reilly and Peter Serafinowicz's characters in particular) suggests otherwise, and it's weird that they don't have a fun costume to go along with this comedic tone.

This is even more disappointing when you see how awesome the initial concept art for the Nova Corps was. These costumes looked distinct and absolutely badass, not just like someone copied and pasted the comic-book version and lowered the saturation.

MCU nova corps concept art
Instagram: andyparkart/Marvel Studios

On the plus side, now that Xandar has been decimated by Thanos in Infinity War (offscreen), now would be the perfect time to give the Corps a redesign.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!