Cosplay Forecast for Summer 2011

Picking out a costume for a con is a lot like choosing an outfit for a party. You find yourself asking a lot of the same questions: What will I look good in? What’s going to stand out? What can I afford? And the ever important: What’s everyone else wearing?

As the summer con season gets into full swing and all the much-hyped summer movies finally make it to our screens, this year’s cosplay trends are starting to emerge. Here’s my predictions for the costumes we can expect to see at up-coming cons.

Obviously, the best place to look for current cosplay inspirations is the “now playing” list at your local theatre, plus recent and soon-to-be-seen flicks. Before we dig in, here, I just want to say that I’m commenting on costumes, not on the quality of the films or even whether or not I liked them. Some of these films are a little divisive, and I don’t want to get into whether or not anyone should wear these costumes, just saying that people will be.

Sucker Punch
io9 already called it on this one, but it bears repeating. Between the sexy simplicity of the costumes and the hype surrounding the movie, I expect every other small-built woman at the con will be donning a sailor skirt and pigtails. The thing is, the popularity of this costume, plus the fact that the film came out in March, means that it’ll be pretty stale by the end of the summer season. What’ll be interesting will be seeing the Sucker Punch cosplayers who do characters other than Baby Doll or take on the costumes from the alternate realities. Can we get some steam-powered zombie soldiers, please?

Super
This movie was made for fast and dirty cosplay. There’s not much to work with as far as supporting characters, but we can expect to see dozens of Crimson Bolts and Bolties running around, with or without tire irons.

Priest
Between the movie’s poor reception and its underwhelming box office performance, we probably won’t see a whole lot of Priest cosplayers. Still, the film’s design was one of its strongest features, and these costumes are so simple and so cool, I’ll be disappointed if there aren’t a few, at least.

Cowboys and Aliens
I can’t make a lot of speculation on this, seeing as the movie’s not out yet, but, based on the nerd buzz and what we’ve seen of the film’s look, I expect to spot more cowboys than usual at this year’s cons.

X-Men: First Class
In addition to being about, y’know, mutants and stuff blowing up, this is very much a stylish, period film. There will certainly be some fantastic takes on the new (old?) X-suits, and Emma Frost’s wardrobe will give us a number of fresh spins on a classic, super sexy costume. Plus, if you got people with the right looks, the evil mutants in this film (It’s not clear whether they’re actually the Hellfire Club.) would make for a great group cosplay.

On the other hand, there are some big list films that we probably won’t be seeing much cosplay from. While the release of Thor might yield some high-quality replicas of the movie costumes, there will probably only be two or three really good ones, plusthe occasional classic Thor. Likewise, there’s always some Green Lanterns hanging out, and the movie might increase that number slightly but not by much. Ditto for Harry Potter and Captain America, though the film variation on Cap’s suit might yield some interesting copies. Finally, despite the release of a new Pirates of the Carribean film, Jack Sparrow is essentially done. He’s become as much of a con mainstay as any member of the Justice League, so let’s just cross this costume off the trendy list.

On the video game front, which I know about only via my Twitter and Tumblr feeds, Portal 2 and whatever the hell the new Pokemon game is out will probably have good showings, and Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood will continue to be popular through the summer con season.

In general, though there will certainly be some undead stumbling around, there will probably be fewer zombies at the cons, this year. At SDCC last year, you couldn’t cough without breathing in zombie virus, but, by virtue of there being few major zed-word releases this year, the shambling masses will likely be fewer in number. With luck, though, there might be some decent Walking Dead cosplay, inspired by the AMC series.

As always, there will be dozens of Doctors and Companions of every era around and probably one or two Silence for them to run from.

Then again, I could be totally wrong, and every single con-goer will be in the ever classic Ash+chainsaw combo.

This has been your cosplay forecast for Summer 2011. Now get back to your sewing machines!

-shadowen