Throughout the weekends of several years of Dragon-Cons, I’ve often noticed people dressing up as characters that are supposed to be big, hulking characters. Banes, Hulks, etc; characters that are always perceived to be seven-footers, and just plain big as shit.
I’m not going to target the fact that in a lot of these cases, the muscle suits don’t always look that great, but I’m just really going to target those costumers who utilize stilts to achieve the height that they don’t naturally have.
I hate to single anyone in particular out, but the chances of this person actually reading this, I wouldn’t bet on, but there’s a guy I’ve seen for the past three years now who always shows up as The Executioner, from Resident Evil 5. Forget the muscle suit, forget the fact that I can’t remember if I’ve ever once seen him with an actual axe prop and forget the fact that he’s done it many years in a row, but it’s the fact that he trudges around on stilts that kind of puzzles me.
The Executioner is no doubt a very large man, but the guy doing this costume just looks way out of proportion to me, because of the stilts. He ends up being like 7’3 or something, and he can’t walk straight, and everyone has to get the fuck out of his way when he comes clomping through the atrium, because it’s obvious he can’t stop and turn on command as people on their regular feet can.
To me, accuracy is also in presentation and overall realism. I’m not saying a guy has to get up in my grill and stare at me with dead, cloaked eyes and try to intimidate me, but a little bit of plausibility doesn’t hurt. So with that in mind, I don’t find this Executioner the least bit plausible, because he’s on big clumsy stilts. When I play RE5 Mercenaries mode, the parts of the game I hate the most is when one or two Executioners are spawned, because they’re horses that can take a buttload of damage and won’t die. They’re also nimble, can jump over gaps, and if they close the distance on you, they grab you on the head and slam you into the ground, and are capable of insta-killing you. If Mercenaries mode were real, and hunting and murder were legal, I’m fairly confident that this Executioner would be the biggest pushover ever, as if he were the Demon and I were Sting.
I don’t really mean to pick on one guy so much, but he’s the first that comes to mind. There were several other costumers I saw also in the same boat, and towards the end of the weekend, all I could think about was that episode of Pinky & The Brain, where the Brian becomes Billy Bo Bob Brain, the Country Singer, and tries to use subliminal message and hypnosis to try and take over the world. But one of the criteria for being a country singer was being six-feet tall, so he builds leg stilts that are 5’11 and 7/8ths and then bam, he’s six-feet tall. Height doesn’t always equal accuracy, and frankly, if I were in that position, I think I might have just chosen a different character to be if I couldn’t pull off the proportionate accuracy.
