Abstract
As fantasy films in which super heroes with superhuman abilities play an active part are rapidly becoming more popular, super hero stories are taking root as a new genre in fantasy films. The costumes in films play an important role in visualizing the virtual reality of fantasy films when those costumes are worn by characters so as to express and define them. In the meantime, in the antagonistic structure of good versus evil as a typical subject in these films, it may be said that the costumes of super heroes who advocate good and those of villains who represent evil have been created as an image of power. In this sense, it is necessary to establish an analytic system of how images of the power of good and evil are visually created in costumes for fantasy films. As such, this study seeks to analyze costumes in fantasy films more systemically through semiotic, which has taken root as a science of analysis in all areas of science. From the perspectives of aesthetic semiotic developed by Morris and costume aesthetics, the syntactical dimension is analyzed into formative elements and the principles of costumes; factual and expressive meanings, themes, and inherent meaning, all of which are immanent in costumes, are elicited in the semantic dimension; and the influence of costumes on viewers is described as identification in terms of pragmatics. This study provided a system to analyze costumes in fantasy films(especially 'Superman', 'Batman' and 'Spiderman') from the perspective of Morris' semiotic, and based on the analytic system, examined how 'power' is revealed in the costumes of super heroes and ruffians, and what it implies.