Superman's New Hero Costumes Could Have a Deeper Meaning
Guy Gardner and Hawkgirl's costumes could convey the DC reboot's themes.
James Gunn's Superman movie is still in the throes of production, preparing to deliver a massive blockbuster upon its summer 2025 release. In recent weeks, Superman has filmed an array of exterior sequences in Cleveland, Ohio, providing some surprising public glimpses at what the film will deliver. The latest glimpse arrived on Wednesday, with set photos showing the first look at Guy Gardner / Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion) and Kendra Saunders / Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced) in their superhero costumes, alongside Michael Holt / Mister Terrific (Edi Gathegi) and Clark Kent / Superman (David Corenswet). the set photos feature plenty of recognizable elements for Guy and Kendra — their bright comic-accurate color schemes, her masked helmet and mace, and his signature bowl cut haircut. But other aspects of the costumes have immediately been met with online scrutiny, namely the matching white paneling across their costumes and the LordTech symbols embossed on their chests.
We're still over a year from Superman's theatrical debut, and probably several months away from the marketing campaign beginning in earnest, so we don't yet have context for how these hero costumes factor into the film. Given Superman costume designer Judianna Makovsky's experience working with Gunn on comic-accurate costumes for The Suicide Squad and the last two Guardians of the Galaxy movies, it is safe to assume that there is some sort of intentionality behind these new aesthetic choices. In fact, there is a chance that they could play a key role in Superman's storytelling — and in the larger storytelling set up for Gunn and Peter Safran's new DC Universe.
The first clue might be within the LordTech symbol, as it has been heavily theorized, thanks to Sean Gunn's casting as Maxwell Lord and various other context clues surrounding Superman, that Lord might be funding the film's version of the DCU Justice League. There is certainly plenty of comic precedent for this, particularly with Lord bankrolling the fan-favorite Justice League International roster (which Guy is among the most beloved members of) in the 1980s, in an effort to rebrand the team for a globalist and capitalist world. Sure, the comic iteration of the JLI were never explicitly branded with Lord's name or business ventures, instead wearing their own individual flashy jumpsuits. But having Guy, Hawkgirl, and Mister Terrific all wear the Lord brand could help immediately establish their team's reputation as a corporatized entity in the DCU, providing a stark contrast to Superman's status as a freelance hero.
There's also the fact that Guy, Hawkgirl, and Mister Terrific's costumes share matching silhouettes and white paneling — an aesthetic that, while ripped almost exactly from the comics for Terrific, is a bit out of place with the other two characters. Outside of special gear worn on a random odd mission, no comic roster of the Justice League has worn costumes that match this much, a fact that has given some fans pause upon seeing these photos. But that reaction might be part of the point, especially in a landscape where matching uniforms have grown common in superhero media. Parallels can easily be drawn between these color-coordinated suits and the Quantum realm suits worn in Marvel's Avengers: Endgame, which homogenized the aesthetics of multiple heroes into time-traveling soldiers clad in red and white. Guy's vest, while technically comic accurate, even has the same visual effect as many of the screen-accurate Marvel Cinematic Universe outfits. You can also see the resemblance to many of the costumes worn on The CW's Arrowverse of DC shows, which often boiled down to heroes with the same silhouette and some sort of personalized leather jacket. Time will only tell if these parallels are intentional, but it certainly wouldn't be the first time that Gunn's superhero work has been interpreted as a meta dissection of the larger genre.
Either way, there's a good chance that there's more to Superman's superhero uniforms than meets the eye. Superman's colleagues in the superhero world be a portrait of commercialized sameness — only for his actions to inspire them to break out of the mold — would be a profound storyline for the movie. It has been safe to assume that Guy, Hawkgirl, and Mister Terrific will appear in plenty of additional DCU projects after Superman, and this theme would give them a chance to lean into their own individuality (and the costumes) that fans already know and love. Through the costumes of Superman, we could get a window into what kind of fleshed-out superhero world the DCU already is — as well as what it can be.
Superman is currently scheduled to be released exclusively in theaters on July 11, 2025.
