Color in Superhero Movies

Superhero movies are probably my favorite genre of film, and a lot of my fondest memories in the cinema are with superhero movies. The first film I can ever remember seeing as Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer, and even though that movie was garbage, it was a blast seeing it with my whole family. Superhero films are practically a tradition in my household. Everything from Suicide Squad to Infinity War, Wonder Woman to Homecoming, we’ve seen all of them.

Superhero films are just...wonderful to me. The music, the action, the characters, the settings, and the topic of this video: the colors. 

Color Theory is one of my favorite things to analyze. Colors mean so much to us in visual mediums, yet we so rarely talk about them or discuss their implications. Color (or the absence thereof) can elicit so many emotions and feelings, and color subconsciously alters how we perceive certain events in visual mediums. Superhero movies, in particular, have never really settled for a specific color palette; it’s something that varies between companies, between films of the same series, and sometimes, it fluctuates heavily within the same film. 

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I got the idea for this video after watching Zack Snyder’s Justice League. All of Snyder’s movies have very washed-out, saturated color palettes. Sometimes it can be a problem, such as Dawn of Justice, where most of the movie has the exact same dark, shadowy palette, which makes it hard to tell apart certain scenes. However, other times, like with his Justice League, it works wonderfully. 

I’m a big fan of this movie’s visual style, more so than its predecessor. Here, the saturated visual style isn’t a problem anymore because Snyder does such a good job of throwing in a splash of color to separate certain scenes and characters. Now, rather than just saturated grays and blacks all throughout, that visual darkness accents the “pops” of color that come right after. 

For example, the warm, orange sky and the calm greens of the cornfield in Smallville look fucking fantastic. It’s a visual combination that isn’t seen anywhere else in the movie, so when Clark reunites with Martha and Lois, it’s an image that’s burned into your brain, because that exact combination was totally unique to that scene. 

The movie also makes much more use of gold and blue, all over the place, and often in relation to specific characters. Gold has been associated with royalty throughout the centuries, and here, it’s used for the Amazons, Themyscira and Diana. It symbolizes them as a step above normal humanity, as demi-gods and divine warriors, and it’s seen heavily when Steppenwolf chases them across the island. Gold is also more noticeable with Arthur’s outfit and trident, but it’s a bit more rusted and washed-out, symbolizing how he’s the son of royalty, but he hasn’t fully accepted his heritage. 

Blue, meanwhile, is associated with energy and power. When Arthur fights Steppenwolf solo, due to taking place underwater, the whole scene has a green-blue tint to it. Arthur’s eyes are also a pale blue, as is the massive tidal wave he summons when they save Silas Stone. 

Barry also generates blue lightning anytime he runs, a visual indicator of the power within him. When Barry taps into the Speed Force and reverses time, the whole world around him is a dimension of blue and gold cosmos.

These two colors, blue and gold, also feature heavily in the spin-off films. Aquaman takes place largely underwater, and features Arthur fully accepting his Atlantean royal heritage, so both colors feature heavily in the color palette. Wonder Woman, meanwhile, features Themyscira as a bright, colorful utopia, but all scenes set outside it are gray, drab and lifeless, showing how the Great War has destroyed morale. When Diana reappears in Wonder Woman 1984, the movie makes more prominent use of bright reds, blues and yellows to show how her presence has had a positive effect on humanity. 

Back to Justice League, Apokolips is often associated with this dull, burnt-out, rusted copper color. The color of fire and metal and sand. It’s seen when the six look through the Boom Tube at Darkseid, it’s seen in the Mother Box’s virtual reality vision with Victor, and it’s seen in the Knightmare sequence. That copper color seems to symbolize death, devastation, and defeat. 

This may be a bit of a stretch, but I would argue that gray has its own meaning within the film. The Parademons are gray, Steppenwolf’s armor is a metallic gray, his lair is a colorless gray, his holographic communications with DeSaad and Darkseid are gray, and Victor’s armor is gray. This seems to be another color associated with Apokoliptian technology. (Note, however, that black is not necessarily associated with them. Black is seen in the Gotham scenes, in Batman’s outfit, and in Barry’s time travel, but it is not an outright malicious color. It is mysterious, exotic and unfamiliar, but not outright destructive.)

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Common not just to superhero films, but films of all genres, brown is often used to symbolize wastelands, much like the copper colors associated with Apokolips. The X-Men films don’t have a whole lot of unique color language I want to touch on, and they don’t often use this shade, but Logan heavily features brown. 

It’s an ugly color, to be sure, and it makes the setting feel...sad. This isn’t the outright hopeless, apocalyptic world of Days of Future Past. This is a much more mundane and urban but equally depressing dystopia. It’s messy, sloppy, grim and slow. The movie begins in Texas, and a lot of scenes have a brown, washed-out desert aesthetic. Logan’s world is devoid of color, of purpose, and it shows. 

But as the movie goes on, we get farther and farther away from this. By the time Logan and Laura get to the Canadian border, the skies have a light blue look to them, the backgrounds have a tinge of green, and even the-once lifeless brown now feels more earthly. 

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I’ve heard before that many of the MCU movies look drab, boring and dry, especially in Phases 2 and 3. Not saturated or washed-out like DC films, but just visually empty, without any remarkable color or dramatic lighting to speak of. I have to agree with this assessment: many of my favorite movies in the franchise, like Winter Soldier and Civil War, don’t have anything particularly imaginative when it comes to color. 

This is, in part, due to the settings the films take place in. Lots of MCU films take place in broad daylight on top of New York skyscrapers, and there aren’t a lot of shadows to create super dramatic lighting. They also don’t use outright black so much as they use a black-blue and light gray. 

Black, in visual language, is like bolding a word. It adds some pop, makes it stand out more. Without a true black, just lots of gray, it doesn’t feel like the director wants you to see anything in particular, so nothing stands out as super memorable. It’s the exact opposite problem DC had for many years. 

Don’t get me wrong, some films had really great color language. Homecoming had more primary colors, such as with Peter and Tony’s suits, the yellow field of school buses and the red ferry. All of this made the movie feel more energetic and youthful. 

But I would say the MCU’s color problem didn’t really start turning around until Black Panther. Relying on a lot of the same imagery that fuels Wonder Woman, it relies a lot on royal golds and bright yellows. It makes Wakanda feel grand, larger-than-life, and epic in a way that the other movies just didn’t have up until this point. 

Panther also juxtaposes gold with purple a lot. Purple represents royalty, but in a more mystical, cosmic, superior way. Killmonger’s costume is gold because he views Wakanda as his birthright. T’Challa’s dream sequence is purple, as is the energy emitted from his costume. When T’Challa and Killmonger clash, it represents a clash between someone who thinks of himself as a king, and the actual rightful ruler of Wakanda. 

By the time we get to Infinity War, we’re seeing the best color palette of---in my subjective opinion---any MCU movie, just because we’re seeing so much. The Russo brothers did a great job adding a unique color to every subplot and every setting, so as to not confuse viewers trying to keep up with all the characters. 

1. When the Guardians go to Knowhere, the dominant color is red. Partially because of their red outfits, partially because of the scarlet Reality Stone, but mostly because of the flames surrounding them, Knowhere’s red feels angry and vindictive, a great metaphor for Peter Quill’s mental state. 

2. This red mellows out a bit, transitioning into the saturated, washed-out brown/copper of Titan. Using the same color language as Apokolis in Justice League and Texas in Logan, this color palette hammers home how Thanos’ home is now a wasteland devoid of life and meaning. 

3. Most of the space scenes have a dark blue tint to them, but especially when Groot, Rocket and Thor all go to forge Stormbreaker. Same idea as Arthur and Barry, the blue makes Thor feel powerful and energetic. 

4. Finally, all of these storylines converge on Wakanda, again using the gold we’ve come to associate with that nation. 

This sort of color language in superhero movies makes the tales feel larger-than-life and mythical. And that’s fitting, seeing as modern superheroes have rich mythos on par with mythologies of old. Superhero movies can use color in creative ways, and we, as audiences, deserve to see more of it.