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PODCAST | Where does Spider-Man Far From Home fit in the pantheon of Spider-Man films? And is it (gasp) BETTER than Endgame? At least one of our hosts thinks so.
PLUS: We get a breakdown of those shocking end credit scenes directly from Director Jon Watts and go Spinning the Racks with some more Spidey News.
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One of Far From Home’s Shocking Twists Introduces a Key Aspect of Spider-Man’s Lore
https://io9.gizmodo.com/one-of-far-from-homes-shocking-twists-introduces- a-key-1836182738
Unlike Spider-Man: Homecoming, which did a solid job of rethinking characters from the comics in new ways in order to make yet another Peter Parker-centric story feel fresh for the big screen, Far From Home amps things up by cleaving ever-so-slightly closer to the source material.
But it isn’t until the film’s credits have begun rolling that the most surprising, and deftly-executed, contribution to the life of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Peter Parker pops up. It’s one that’s almost certainly going to change the shape of Marvel’s future films. Spoilers ahead, of course.
here are a lot of things to unpack about the mid-credits scene, the most obvious of which being how downright delightful it is to see J.K. Simmons reprise his role as a very-enraged Jameson, who once again has a very big axe to grind with Spider-Man. In Marvel’s comics, the circumstances of Jameson’s legendary dislike of the web-slinger are drastically different and involve Jameson being jealous of the media attention Spider-Man’s heroics draw. Jameson first develops a hatred for Spider-Man when the hero inadvertently steals the spotlight from Jameson’s son John, an astronaut embarking on a mission that ends up going awry. After Spider-Man ultimately saves the younger Jameson, Jonah’s still unconvinced of the vigilante’s intentions and continues with his media crusade against the hero, in part, because it leads to a boost in the Bugle’s sales.
Despite Jameson’s rage being rooted in irrationality, his insistence that Spider-Man is a public menace that must be dealt with is a fundamental part of the character that’s always resonated to a certain extent, because you can kind of understand where he’s coming from. Spider-Man, like all costumed vigilantes, is a public menace when you look at him as a beacon or a lightning rod for the villains they invariably end up tussling with in their adventures. Superheroes might be fighting because they want to do the right
thing, but the reasons behind their cause can only do so much to make civilians sympathize with them. That isn’t really the reason Jameson himself harasses Spider-Man, but it’s an idea that’s baked into the characters’ dynamic, and goes on to make Peter’s stint working at the newspaper even more layered with meaning.
But Far From Home legitimizes Jameson’s hate in a novel way because you can’t entirely fault him for coming to the conclusions about Spider-Man that he does. Even though the footage is edited to make it seem as if Peter ordered all of Mysterio’s drones to attack, no one has any way of knowing that it’s been tampered with, and given everything the planet’s recently been through (see: Endgame), no one’s really thinking about villainous media manipulation.
While the world’s Infinity Snapped-population has returned, Far From Home makes clear that the world’s a different place now. Earth’s citizens are aware of the larger-than-life things going on because they simply can’t deny their existence anymore. Everyone’s been affected by them in one way or another, and they look to superheroes like Spider-Man and the Avengers to keep them safe. That’s what makes Jameson’s report as compelling as it is devastating, because it pushes you to understand why the public would latch on to the “Spider-Man as a menace” narrative in the MCU.
How the public feels about Spider-Man has been different at various points in time depending on what he’s in the news for, what kind of suit he’s wearing, and what hero team he’s hanging out with, but it’s one of the most interesting things about his larger mythos because of what it represents. Peter Parker’s always understood that there wouldn’t be a Spider-Man were it not for the friendly neighbors who accepted him as a Queens folk hero before he joined the big leagues, and the bad reputation Jameson’s hellbent on giving him might as well be a character in Spidey’s rogues’ gallery in and of itself.
Far From Home gives Spider-Man that new, yet familiar threat to face in a more than inspired way, and Peter’s going to have one hell of a time trying to disentangle himself from the messy conundrum the next time we see him swinging scrims the silver screen.
‘Spider-Man’ Director Explains Those Post-Credits Scenes and What They Mean for the MCU
Director Jon Watts walks IndieWire through two game-changing post-credits scenes, both of which set the stage for more Spidey tales to come
https://www.indiewire.com/2019/07/spider-man-far-from-home-post-credits-explained- 1202155625/
The Marvel Cinematic Universe has never been shy about introducing game- changing elements in post-credits scenes — remember our first look at Thanos, the ultimate big baddie? That was just a quick hit in a post-credits stinger following “The Avengers” — but “Spider-Man: Far From Home” runs positively wild with the possibility that an entire film, an entire franchise can be impacted by something thrown into the middle of a credit crawl.
While Jon Watts’ “Spider-Man: Far From Home” ends on an upbeat note, well-earned after asking young Peter Parker (Tom Holland) to work his way through his grief over “the snap” and the loss of mentor Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) while also navigating a nutty high school trip to Europe, a pair of post-credits scenes hint at a darker future for the webhead. They also lay the groundwork for both the next chapter in the Spider-Man franchise and hint at far-ranging impacts on the MCU in general.
In short, they’re big, perhaps the biggest Marvel has ever offered in this format, and they’re hard not to get excited over (and, yes, Watts knows just how big they are). At the very least, they imply bigger parts in the franchise for two of indie film’s most beloved character actors, and that’s never a bad thing.
“Pretty early on, you start to get a feeling for if something is part of the main body of the film or if it makes more sense as a tag,” Watts told IndieWire during a recent interview. “It was similar with these, but after the tag we did on the last movie, which was just the Captain America PSA, I felt like I owed it to the fans to do something a little bit more substantial.”
Tom Holland is Peter Parker, in Columbia Pictures’ SPIDER-MAN:TM FAR FROM HOME.
Ahead, Watts breaks down both of the post-credits scenes in his film and what they mean for his friendly neighborhood Spider-Man (and, yes, the MCU as a whole) going forward.
[One more time: Spoilers ahead for both “Spider-Man: Far From Home” and its post-credits scenes.]
1. An Old Favorite Returns (And a Hero Is Unmasked)
One happy change for Peter: “Far From Home” finally sees him expressing his feelings for MJ (Zendaya), even if it takes some massive battles and a little bit of misdirection. Even better, MJ knows about his secret identity and is totally cool with it, which is why the first post-credits scene sees Peter picking MJ up in midtown Manhattan and going on a swing around the city.
Just as the pair prepare to part outside Madison Square Garden, giddy about their burgeoning relationship and basking in their big secret, a classic loudmouth breaks in to disrupt all that happy calm. And he’s a familiar loudmouth too: J.K. Simmons, reprising his role as J. Jonah Jameson, now styled as a fast-talking YouTube personality (yes, The Daily Bugle is now a streaming outfit). Seeing Simmons back in the role he so very much made his own in Sam Raimi’s earlier Spider-Man series is the best kind of shock, even if it temporarily obscures what he’s actually saying.
“There was always the chance that he would say no, but I always wanted that,” Watts said. “There was maybe a brief conversation about like, oh, is there a way to reinvent what The Daily Bugle is and who J. Jonah Jameson would be? But it just felt wrong. It’s gotta be him. Like, if it wasn’t him, it wasn’t worth doing.”
But both Jameson and The Daily Bugle have been reinvented for modern times — and a film that cleverly flirts with the influx of “fake news”
throughout its running time — and when he suddenly appears on a giant screen on MSG, he’s not there to issue happy news. Instead, this Jameson is showing off exclusive footage from Jake Gyllenhaal’s Mysterio, who was previously revealed to both Peter and the audience as a con man and fraud.
But the rest of the world doesn’t know that. They still think he’s a for-real superhero who died in the heat of battle (a fake battle!), and he’s still got one last trick: a doctored video that “shows” Spider-Man killing him for no apparent reason. Just as both Jameson and his “DailyBugle.net” reveal themselves to be terrifying (and, yes, sort of funny) new enemies, the loudmouth newsman offers one last shocker, as he reveals Spider-Man’s real world identity, as a shocked Peter and MJ look on.
“It’s kind of just strange that this very over the top performance of J. Jonah Jameson from the Sam Raimi films now doesn’t seem as over the top, and there are [now] real world comparisons,” Watts said when asked about threading the needle between realism and wackiness. “So it’s not me, it’s the world!”
So, not only does “Far From Home” end with Peter Parker unmasked, it also ends with Spider-Man cast as a villain. Oh, and now J. Jonah Jameson is running a nutty news outfit that’s hellbent on taking down one of Earth’s biggest heroes. Well, at least some things never change.
2. Nick Fury Needs a Vacation, Too
“I think about [‘Far From Home’] as a con man movie, there’s so many layers of deception throughout the whole movie, that it just felt right to do one last little reveal,” Watts said. “One last little twist at the very end. It all felt on theme.”
That final twist is a potent and funny one, but just like the first post-credits tag, it comes with big implications for the future (and the past). When the scene opens, we’re on a sunny beach and Marvel’s most high-strung stickler Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) is kicking back for some much-needed R&R. Like Peter, he’s clearly been in desperate need of a vacation, but the second the beach scene fades away — like so much of the film’s biggest twists, it’s all a simulation — it’s clear that Fury has been enjoying the relaxing life for awhile.
No, really, quite awhile: it wasn’t him in “Far From Home.” Fury, it seems, is trawling through space on a massive Skrull ship (yes, they’re back!), while he and trusty sidekick Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) have been temporarily replaced on Earth by everyone’s favorite shape-shifters.
“After I saw ‘Captain Marvel’ and saw Fury’s origin story in that film, it just made sense,” he said. “We’ve learned so much more about Nick Fury now that ‘Captain Marvel’ has come out, it felt like the right thing to do. It was on theme as a con, but it was also on theme as like, everyone needs a vacation!”
Fury is called back into action by “Captain Marvel” stars Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) and his wife Soren (Sharon Blynn), who have spent the entire movie pretending to be the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, all the better for the duo to enjoy some free time. Eagle-eyed viewers have likely noticed that the pair seemed a little off their game during the film’s action, but like so many parts of the story, that could easily be chalked up to post-“Endgame” weirdness.
In actuality, their plucky fill-ins have done the best job they can, but now they need the real Fury back in the saddle. And, of course, that begs a few questions: how long have the Skrulls being running these (authorized, still funny) missions for S.H.I.E.L.D.? Where is Fury actually? And what else has happened to the Skrull community after “Captain Marvel”?
“Spider-Man: Far From Home” > Avengers:Endgame
If ‘Spider-Man: Far From Home’ Doesn’t Make a Billion Dollars, Sony Breaks Free of the Marvel Studios Deal
The specifics of major Hollywood contracts are notoriously difficult to ascertain, and the occasional insights we do receive often come from actors revealing how many movies they have left in a particular franchise. But a new report has uncovered a Spider-Man contract stipulation which would allow Sony to wriggle out of its deal with Marvel Studios and once again give Spidey’s original studio home full autonomy over the character’s cinematic adventures. Good thing that won’t happen.
In a recent edition of journalist Richard Rushfield’s entertainment industry newsletter The Ankler, Rushfield peels back the secretive curtain of the deal that was signed between Sony and Marvel Studios back in 2015 to share the character. “The original Sony/Marvel/Spidey deal to co-produce these movies stipulated that if this Spidey cleared a billion, Marvel would get to oversee a third. If it hadn’t, full control would have reverted back to Sony,” he writes.
To be clear, Far From Home has not yet crossed the billion dollar mark at the worldwide box office, but the fact that it’s already made over $600 million in its first week is practically a guarantee that it will cross the coveted billion dollar threshold before it leaves theaters. So the Sony/Marvel Studios deal will still hold – at least for one more solo Spider-Man movie, because actor Tom Holland revealed back in 2016 that he was on board for three solo Spider-Man films and three appearances in other MCU movies. We’ve already seen him in Captain America: Civil War, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame, and now Spider-Man: Far From Home.
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