The suit.

Like a lot of comics fans, I was underwhelmed by the first images of the Superman suit for the new movie. The collar was too high, the reds were too dark -- approaching brown in some shots from some angles -- the boots were needlessly fussy, the texture on the blue was weird, the seams were too big and too bold, the embossed, raised "S" wasn't right.

In still photos, all of these things are true.

In motion, on a big movie screen, the damn thing actually works, for the most part. The dark red isn't the stopping point it looks like in photos, the texture on the blue looks line, the seams fade away almost to nothing, and the "S" looks no more or less weird or wonky than, say, Gil Kane's stylised rendition as compared to something like Jerry Ordway's more mainline one.

The one early complaint that still holds is the belt buckle. For some reason, instead of leaving the belt alone, with the simple yellow oval buckle of the comics and previous movie costumes, the designers chose to replace it with a miniature version of the "S" logo.

It doesn't work. It's not awful, but it's distracting and silly and breaks up the look of the costume in a number of key scenes, mainly because the "holes" in the logo are colored red. If it were a solid yellow, it probably wouldn't matter, or even be much noticed, but as is it's a pretty weird costume element.

Still, given my early apprehensions, the suit was a very pleasant surprise.