During a recent chat with Variety, the writers behind Spider-Man: Far From Home, Chris McKenna and Eric Sommers opened up about the biggest decisions they had to make regarding the film’s narrative and the direction in which it would take the larger MCU.
To begin with, the writing duo say they were told by Marvel about the events of Avengers: Endgame, that large parts of their movie would be a reaction to what happened in that film, and that they needed to keep things light after all of the gut-wrenching moments in the Infinity War sequel.
The two also spoke about how having Mysterio as the villain allowed them to explore the nature of fake media and the lies and half-truths that characters in the sequel were telling each other, particularly Peter himself, regarding his secret identity and his reluctance to take on the mantle of Tony Stark (although he might not be the only one vying for the position).
“When the whole team decided we were going to go with Mysterio, and obviously so much of Mysterio has to do with deception, it just seemed like a natural progression to move the story in that direction. Especially since Peter is also — sort of — lying to himself about not wanting to step up and not wanting to face the new reality that he finds himself in. It just felt very organic that everything was about deception and lying either to yourself or others.”
Perhaps most interesting of all, the writers touched on what exactly happened during the Blip, explaining it as so:
“You spend a lot of time in a room with the team just talking about all this stuff. There were some things we definitely talked about a lot. “Okay, let’s say you were in an airplane and you blipped and then you come back, but the airplane is not in the same place anymore, so do you just blip back in the sky? And then is it half of all life? Does that mean, like, cats and animals? And what happens to the bees? They’re already having so much trouble, the bees.” So we got bogged down in the nitty-gritty.”
“We were told though that when Bruce [Banner] brings everyone back that he accounted for that, that was part of his wish. Everyone came back safe and sound. We don’t have to worry about people falling out of the skies. “
Of course, one of the big highlights of Far From Home was J.K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson, the owner of DailyBugle.net and the guy who outs Spidey’s secret identity at the end of the film. Having Simmons reprise his role as Jameson from the earlier Spider-Man movies had been long discussed at Marvel. And the current film’s storyline involving deception and the rise of fake news was seen as the perfect entry point for his character into the MCU.
“Once we realized that news would play a huge part particularly in the undergirding of the movie in terms of facts and fantasy, facts and fiction, then we played around with the idea that Mysterio would be pulling one con at the end. It became clear that it would be a perfect entree for J. Jonah Jameson. And then we were thinking, “How do you top J.K. Simmons?” And you know how you top J.K. Simmons? You get J.K. Simmons.”
Finally, McKenna and Sommers also spoke about the Skrulls, their appearance in Spider-Man: Far From Home, and their possible role in the future of the MCU. While neither writer was able to confirm whether Marvel was planning a Secret Invasion storyline for Phase 4, they both expressed interest in seeing the fan-favorite comic book story being adapted at some point in the future.
If you’re interested to read more, you can check out the full interview over on Variety via the link below, and we certainly recommend you do so as it’s full of interesting insights into what was another great film featuring everyone’s favorite wall-crawler.
