“Swimming costume” actually, because “cozzie” is short for “costume” in general in parts of the UK, but the usage is not unknown elsewhere.
Second you’re using “grim, dark, and kevlar” as a prejorative strawman for “not ridiculous spandex”.
No, I’m using it to refer to the tendency to replace perfectly good iconic superhero costumes with some stupid shit the costume department comes up with that they think looks “practical” and “realistic”, but actually looks dull as dishwater, and not really much different from an ordinary human soldier or some such. I’m also backhandedly referring to the tiresome black/dark blue look of things in a lot of these films (the X-Men films for example), as well as a particular sense of “realism” (not “grim, dark”, but “grimdark”, a term used in discussion about comics to refer to a certain period of comics evolution and development).
If you watch the Captain America movies his costume isn’t grim and dark, it’s recognizably close to the comic book red, white, and blue flag costume with the main change being that it’s made of material a soldier might wear because spandex would look incredibly stupid on a soldier.
Oh don’t be absurd, “spandex” is just a trope. Nobody knows what the fuck superhero costumes were supposed to be made of most of the time, but when explained it wasn’t “spandex”, it was “unstable molecules” or Kryptonian material, or special hi-tech friction-resistant material or whatever. Essentially, all superhero costumes were, was an excuse for artists to indulge in drawing human bodies as if they didn’t have clothes, but they had clothes. But again, that’s part of the point - it’s an ideal that hearkened back to the ancient Greeks, of the “body beautiful”. Fit human bodies, both male and female, are, or can be, beautiful, in a certain light, don’t you know? And part of that body poetry is what’s missing from the modern superhero movie - again, a failure of courage, or perhaps just not giving it enough thought.
Marvel are a bit hit and miss, and they haven’t been the worst offenders, at least they’ve been trying to retain some colour, though there’s still the error of trying to make the materials thick and tough as if the point of the costumes was protection. The X-Men films have been the worst offenders. Batman, he’s sort of middle-ground, you can accept that his outfit has to be armored in some sense, because “plot armor” can only go so far in a movie context.
Buying into the premise that superheroes exist is one thing, but trying to sell people on the idea that anyone would voluntarily wear nothing but yellow spandex and a domino mask that extends off a foot to either side of their head while being shot at is something entirely different.
Why wouldn’t they, if they had superpowers?
I sense you aren’t fully absorbing the concept of having superpowers here.
Soldiers, police, etc., have to wear body armour because they’re ordinary human beings who face guns and the like, and they don’t have superpowers. But people who actually had the kinds of superpowers portrayed in comics, or were aliens, or demigods, etc., etc - why the fuck would the need for protection figure into their rationale for what they wear? That’s the whole point: they don’t need special clothing to protect them, their superpowers are what protects them, they wear special clothing to give themselves a signature look - to be bright, shiny, unique, one-of-a-kind, like gods.
What would you think if someone said: “WHY AREN’T THEY WEARING A MILLION POUCHES LIKE THEY DO IN THE COMICS? ALSO LIKE FIVE SWORDS APIECE. ROB LIEFELD IS THE MOST SUCCESSFUL COMIC ARTIST EVER!”
I’d think they were an idiot, because he was an absolutely terrible artist whose popularity was a godawful aberration. You’re not going to get much traction for your argument by putting classic, iconic designs by great artists on a level with Liefeld’s rubbish.
