If I saw this guy in an alley, I'd run, fast. I'm actually gonna try and find this movie to get a better sense of the suit, what is it from?
^^ The fan film "Batman: Dead End." It's rather good (especially for a fan film) and is around somewhere for free.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hjp0I_okX0w Warning: It takes a really stupid left turn halfway through. As I understand it, it was made as a special effects or costuming demo or somesuch. You can also see the same guy in the same Batman suit in the fake trailer for a "World's Finest" movie, made by the same people: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIWskgVx_v0
I don't have a problem with the armor suit. I mean, this is a friggin comic book movie where there is a glowing blue god running around. The reason for the kwel suit is simple. There is no way in hell they're going to make this a movie where the main characters look like some stupid take-off on the Adam West Batman. There's no way to do that and not turn it into a bad comedy, especially if the guy is all fat and out of shape. Besides, 'in universe' I'd imagine that 'looking badass' is half the battle. Unless he's really ripped, some asshole running around in long-johns and a half-cape with an owl mask on wouldn't last 2 seconds as a crime fighter. The whole "What if superheroes were real" question is really something that has to be taken a little bit on faith, because the real answer is "Get killed almost instantly" Or "Be totally useless" or maybe "Be a secret handshake club like the KKK" and really, none of those options lends itself to huge explosions.
To be accurate... the part of "Night Owl" was originally intended to be Ted Kord, the second "Blue Beetle." (Similarly, "The Comedian" was the Charleton comics "Peacekeeper," and so on and so on) Ted Kord was... yes... a rich kid who spent his money following in the footsteps of a previous hero. He was never a particularly physical guy (not to the same extent as, say, Bruce Wayne) and was more of a "science geek in a costume." He was a pretty good acrobat, and he had a flying vehicle called "The Bug." Kord, of course, got a bullet through the brain a couple of years ago... (sigh) But the point is that Dreiberg was "Kord" in every meaningful sense except for the name and the particular creature he used as his symbol. Why do I bring this up? Because not every "superhero" was all about "running around chasing guys with machine guns and punching them. In fact, even Batman isn't so much about doing that... he's more about confusion and fear (though he's good at the other as well). Really, the only comic characters who can get away with the sort of thing that was suggested above would be characters like Superman, Wonder Woman, or Captain Marvel... the "near-impervious" ones. The Beetle... and by association, Night Owl... are really detectives "in drag" so to speak. Same with Rorschach... even though he's insane, really, in "Watchmen," he's still the DETECTIVE, far more than the "superhero." His mask, and his trenchcoat, certainly don't qualify as "body armor." Yet, apart from The Comedian, he's the most violent and confrontational character in the book. And I LOVED the bit with him in prison... without anything, not even his costume... shorter and slighter than all his would-be-attackers... well, he barely NEEDED a "rescue," did he?
Yeah... but you've never worn body armor, have you? Take it from someone who HAS... you don't want to spend any time RUNNING (much less JUMPING... and the subsequent LANDING) carrying that much extra weight around. Cops don't wear that stuff 24/7... S.W.A.T. teams have better body-armor, sure... but they're wearing it in-action for a matter of MINUTES, usually... and if it's longer, they're not running around in pursuit while wearing it. You really have no idea how much this sort of thing restricts your movement and just how EXHAUSTING it is to try to do physical activities with it on. Just climbing a few flights of stairs with a flack vest on leaves even strong, fit men panting.
If you think about it, would a superhero along the lines of Batman be fighting, running, and jumping his ass off for hours at a time? I think a 'work smarter not harder' approach would be more realistic anyway. I mean, even wearing a leotard there is a limit to how many dozens of ninjas you can fight at any one time, right? Think: Indiana Jones. My brother is a firefighter. Firefighters wear heavy bunker pants, a huge coat, huge boots, a mask, a helmet, and a breathing system w/ tanks on top of whatever they're doing. Such as using an axe to smash out windows or carry hose or what not. Now that shit's heavy. Granted, they aren't in combat against a ninja, but as far as stress and weight go, they have it pretty rough sometimes. Now, the key is obviously to rotate the line-up so they can get a breather. But it is certainly possible to do heavy lifting like that for a while. And firefighter ain't always in the best shape... I'd imagine a superhero type guy Would want to have some armor, on the other hand I see no reason for them to wear spandex. Superman can get away with that. But a pudgy human? Yikes.
Well, there's a "happy medium" in between which works pretty well. Think of the lightweight bulletproof vests worn by most "big" politicians these days. They're enough to (as said in "Batman Begins") stop a knife, or a small-caliber round (unless it's straight in) but they're quite thin and pretty lightweight, made up of several layers of kevlar-mesh fabric intended to delaminate upon high-energy impact. It's enough to keep a guy alive even if the bullet penetrates... since most of the damage from a gunshot wound is NOT related to the "hole," it's related to the massive "water balloon" explosions of cells in the regions adjacent to the "hole." Less energy in the bullet... LOTS less tissue damage! (Part of why "bullet size" is a poorer predictor of lethality than "type of casing" - magnum, etc, etc)
I don't think costume design is nearly as important in the movies as it is in the comic books. In comic books you get very controlled static images of people in costumes that you have time to look at and examine in context. In movies most people don't spend much time staring at a guy and what symbolism his clothing may convey because you're watching what's going on on screen and listening to the dialog. In movies you'll have both acting and music to convey aspects of the characters that the costumes may have in the comics. So while the movie Viedt may not look like he has a god complex by the way he's dressed, hopefully his acting will tell us all we need to know. Considering the fantastic nature of the setting, I don't think the feasibility of body armor for a super hero is that big a deal. Particularly when you're talking about a universe in which materials may not exhibit the same properties they do in real life. Rorschach's mask is probably impossible in the real world, it doesn't mean we should give him some kind of heat sensitive semi-transparent cloth because it's more realistic. If they want to put people into muscle bound body armor to make the characters not look like cos-play all-stars, I'm all for it.
Perhaps they can work the old suit in somehow, maybe the suit we see in most of the movie is a suit he worked on over the last 10 years, as a 'maybe someday' project.
Perhaps it's the exoskeleton suit the Dan broke his arm with in the novel? That's pushing it, but at least that explanation borrows something from the source material.
I'm guessing you've also heard of "shear thickening fluid" being developed at Aberdeen Proving Grounds?
Agreed. Sure the costumes we see in superhero movies nowadays may be impractical in the REAL world, but most of us aren't ever going to try one on ourselves. Hell, actors ALWAYS complain about how hot and sweaty and constricting their costumes are during the making of a movie, yet none of that ever comes across onscreen. And that's all that really matters. I don't care how freakin uncomfortable those Batman or Iron Man or Robocop suits were to wear-- all I care about is what they looked like in the final film.
I'd only heard of it very distantly... ie, I knew that SOMETHING like that was in early development. My company has another R&D branch developing magnetorheological fluids... (fluids whose viscosity changes when subjected to an electromagnetic field, or alternatively when a current is passed through the fluid itself). The basic approach here isn't all that different... only the nature of the suspended particles. Pretty cool... thanks for sharing!
The scary thing is, that's pretty close to what Dreiberg is supposed to look like! (less the hat, of course!)