In our previous article, we touched upon Spider-Man's various preliminary designs. Despite some clear deviations, the pitches all remained fairly faithful to the original design and its signature elements. It wasn't broken, so there was no need to fix it, right? Green Goblin's design, however... Whole different story.
To this day, the Goblin power armor featured in the final product is as iconic as it is divisive. Some people love it, some think he looks like a Power Rangers villain. In any case, it took a lot of trial and error to reach this final look, as translating his comic appearance to the big screen just wasn't gonna cut it the same way it did with Spidey. Here are some of the design concepts pitched for the Green Goblin.
Teves Design Concept Art
Staying consistent with our article on Spider-Man, let's start with the designs cooked up by Teves. This design is, quite frankly, spectacular. It's incredibly faithful to the source material while introducing bio-mechanical body horror elements that would've kept in-line with Raimi's tastes and the film's unique aesthetic identity. It makes one wonder why this was scrapped... could it have been too scary for the kids? Too expensive to make? Who knows...
James Carson designs
Here we have a variety of designs suggested by artist James Carson. I can't say I'm particularly a fan of these, although I do have some nice things to say about them.
For starters, I must say that I appreciate the maskless design's approach to modernizing elements of the original Goblin design. It makes it all fit within a militaristic context and, while it still looks ridiculous, it almost seems like a plausible piece of tech. Almost. Having Norman's face be so exposed was also a good call, considering how baffling it was to cast somebody as expressive as WILLEM DAFOE only to cover up his face for most of the film.
Certainly not a fan of his circular glider pitch, though; looks like a flying saucer to me. Is he a Goblin or an Alien?
Alex Ross Redesign
Now this is a weird one. Alongside his fantastic Spider-Man redesign, Alex Ross also suggested this peculiar, medieval swashbuckler look for the Goblin. The tattered rags are a nice touch, and in a vaccuum I quite like it, but it clashes HEAVILY with what the movie was going for and even his own Spider-Man design.
The sword is a silly, pointless addition, and the glider looks less like a glider and more like a flying scooter. Utterly campy and ridiculous, even by superhero standards. Quite glad this got passed up, all things considered. At least it also made it into the tie-in game, I suppose?
Warren Manser designs
Possibly the most conceptually interesting of the bunch, Manser's designs seem to take inspiration from the medieval approach Ross had taken and cranked up the gothic vibes up to eleven. In these designs you can see what would eventually become the final Goblin design start to form, with the full mask and a slightly futuristic, minimal look. I quite like the idea of the mask opening up to reveal the user's face like that, as it's both creepy and practical.
I've got to say that they all look pretty cool, but I'd be lying if I said I preferred any of them over the final product.
Animatronic Mask
Ending the article with the most well-known piece of scrapped Goblin concepts, the animatronic mask. It's the most direct adaptation of the Goblin's comic look, seemingly being built off the comics themselves rather than using any commissioned redesigns.
It seems that there's a few reasons as to why this went unused. There's reports of it being too cumbersome to work with, reports of Dafoe finding it uncomfortable, but the most consistent report seems to be that Sony suggested against using it as they felt kids might find it too scary. In any case, it's a fantastic design and a real shame that it went unused.