What a spectacular way to ruin an otherwise cool costume design and the introduction of Tessa Thompson, a woman of color, in a role of Norse-inspired character.
Just so we’re clear, Chandra, Torch of Defiance wears the most practical version of her armor to date. (The least practical goes to the manga adaptation of The Purifying Fire.) But compared to the armor designs worn by other residents of Kaladesh, it seems a little out of place.
For those curious regarding the fore-mentioned manga:
Essentially the spectrum highlights the problems that happens if a company like Wizards sets a vague design for a character then tries to “fix” it (depending on their priorities on any given day) without ever changing it in a meaningful way.
In this case, if you compare to the previous images of Chandra from the official Magic the Gathering imagery, the changes are:
the-one-potato submitted (first image; bingo and other images added by Ozzie):
This is a Yu-Gi-Oh equipment spell card. It might give the wearer a big boost in their attach stats, but what it doesn’t say on the card is that the defense of the wearer will drop even more…
(Yu-gi-oh has lots of bad cards, it’d be a bad idea to send all of them your way, but this one is so BABD-appropriate, I couldn’t hell myself)
Seeing how bingo-qualifying this… thing is, I checked out what those harpy lady sisters who can be equipped with the “shield” look like… Let’s agree the anime didn’t disappoint my morbid curiosity. Also, apparently English version of the card censored out the protruding nipple spikes:
I didn’t cross out the “More advanced armor = skimpier”, cause the harpies seem to wear this spiky atrocity on top of their usual bodypaint “clothes”:
Meg Foster’s costume weighed a reported 45 lbs., and the actress sustained bruises to her groin from the breastplate she wears throughout the film. Constructed of fiberglass, Foster has said the breastplate restricted her movements a great deal, which is why Evil-Lyn is never show sitting during the film. Foster as also said that the discomfort from the costume helped inform her performance, as the weight and design of the costume forced her to puff out her chest during every take, thus generating the character’s slinky posture.
But people assure us that designs like this are totally practical for real armor…
Today’s throwback: real-life evidence of how uncomfortable lingerie-shaped armor is.
Another amazing thing about this costume is how they went out of their way to make it look nothing like it did in the cartoon (on the right there’s redesign from 2002 reboot, for comparison).
So yeah, not only was the movie character redesigned from scratch*, no-one took it as an opportunity to at least make the costume wearable for a living, breathing woman.
~Ozzie
*To be fair, basically all characters were
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I feel like if this is Google Image search’s best guess for your tabletop wargame promo image then you either need to go back and revise your design or change the type of tabletop games you’re making.
She’s Mandalorian and artsy and it shows. So far she’s had a different design in each season and this one has been easily the most protective yet. Her chest plate is larger, her sleeves look thicker and she even has a convoree design on one of her shoulderplates as a tribute to a lost comrade. And she’s only 18-19 years old and looking very strong and tough and ready for battle.
I’m sure she’ll look fantastic in the Force Arena mobile game! After all, everybody else who was translated from show to game got pretty accurate representations!
…oh.
This reminds me a lot of the story of how Lara Croft was originally going to have a modest bosom, but then the 3D modeler accidentally extended the polygons too far and was told by his boss to “just leave it like that!”
Only in this case I get the feeling they originally made the model rather true to the design, then just kept getting told “make it rounder” until they started to worry it would be too ridiculous, even for Star Wars.
If they’re going to pretend an armored plate is a sports bra the least they could do is give it some straps.
