Spider-Man: Far From Home (spoilers)

I'm really curious as to how long Talos and his wife have been playing Fury and Hill.

There's a ridiculously large amount of room for them to have been around for years, with only Carol's legitimate grief at his death (as shown in the Captain Marvel stinger and continued in the opening minutes of Endgame) to counter that he could have been Fury since the first Iron Man...and I'm still not totally convinced it isn't a thing.

I really want to see how deep that rabbit hole goes.

...oh yeah, and how Peter deals with both being outed and accused of murder. That's a thing.

Edited by HandsomeRob on Jul 3rd 2019 at 9:23:26 AM

One Strip! One Strip!

Well the simple and most likely explanation is that they only replaced Fury and Hill on Earth post-Endgame to cover up the fact that Fury (and probably Hill, though we didn't see her on the space station) isn't actually on Earth anymore.

Though I do have a crackpot theory that Maria Hill doesn't actually exist. She's always been Soren, with Fury's knowledge.

The theory does start to break down a bit when we get into the details, but I don't think anything in the actual movies explicitly contradicts it.

I doubt Fury, at least, was a Skrull before Endgame. The way Talos phrases things in the scene, it seems like Fury and possibly the remaining Avengers took off into space to do space things after coming back from The Blip (god, the citizens of the MCU are bad at naming things), leaving our Skrull pals behind to housesit.

It also explains why "Fury" complains about not knowing anything (because he's Talos, who outright doesn't know anything).

The actual Fury cooperating more fully with the Skrulls and Carol, however, does explain pretty well what he was up to after SHIELD fell in Winter Soldier and why he was absent for such long stretches of time.

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

Soren has been using a disguise of actress Cobie Smulders for the past 15 years because Coulson thought it’d be hilarious to be coworkers with “Robin Sparkles” and nobody told Soren the truth.

Right. I was gonna use the idea of the Avengers in space to take another potshot at Quill, but decided not to.

I assume that, with the network they set up with Carol, Rocket and Nebula during the five years post Snap, the Avengers are somewhat expanding their influence in the universe.

One Strip! One Strip!

I kept waiting for Dmitri (the SHIELD guy) to turn out to be Chameleon in disguise.

Also this quote perfectly sums up how much I love Mysterio:

"I went in fully expecting Mysterio to be Mysterio, but I wasn’t prepared for just how Mysterio Mysterio was."

Edited by Nightwire on Jul 4th 2019 at 9:23:10 AM

Did I understand it right that Quentin Beck wasn't actually his real name either?

Either way, I liked what movie did with Mysterio since it did highlight why the character is cool villain to fight (he is definitely on underrated side)

Quentin Beck is Mysterio's real name in the comic, but I don't remember, was it confirmed anywhere in the movie that Quentin Beck is real, or just a name he made up?

I mean, if you could find out with research that he is ex Stark Industries worker, you'd think that even Talos would have found that out. And I could swear during the bar speech he mentioned something about that among other things he noted he faked, but I might have misunderstood or remembered wrong

I guess he can always lean on "I'm from an alternate universe, and the Quentin Beck of this one is dead."

Just got back from watching the movie:

• Oh dear god, I knew something was going to go on with Mysterio, but he STILL played us all like goddamn fiddles.
• Oh dear god, they brought back J. K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson and The Daily Bugle is back!
• OH DEAR GOD, THE WORLD KNOWS PETER PARKER IS SPIDER-MAN AND THINK HE KILLED SOMEONE.
• OH DEAR GOD, FURY AND HILL WERE SKRULLS. But at least they were Talos and his wife apparently doing Fury a solid. So...SWORD confirmed?

And the worst thing is, we don't even know what happens next!

Are they going to go forward with Spider-Man not having a secret identity anymore since the MCU doesn't even bother with it most of the time?

(Oh, and funnily enough, I once came up with the idea of Hill being a Skrull for the comics to explain why she's such a witch.)

We have a way out of Peter's identity being outed.

Skrulls.

and a pact with a demon!

New theme music also a box

No! No! Bad!

Oh my god, that is a perfect way for them to get out of this cliffhanger: just have Talos shapeshift into Beck and record another video confessing to the murders and claiming he lied about Spider-Man's identity! Also, Talos owes Spider-Man at least that much, considering he fell for all of Mysterio's lies.

So I just saw the film yesterday and it was fucking awesome. Like, I was worried that the trailers would have spoiled most of the film, but they actually didn't — especially the Mysterio reveal and pretty much everything after that.

The Mysterio reveal was slick, too. Just Mysterio pretending to be a friend and mentor and doing such a good job that, hell, we the audience wanted it to be true: that's the sign of a really good conman. And then the bar patrons slowly disappearing and the entire thing being revealed as an illusion, not just by one person, but by many? Awesome.

And I'll remind you that "Quentin Beck" wasn't actually Jake Gyllenhall's character's name, just the name he gave Fury, which means that now anyone can become "Quentin Beck" and Mysterio, even if Gyllenhall's character is dead. (I can see him coming back, but only as a post-death hologram, which would be neat.)

MJ was better used in this film and I thought she and Peter had good chemistry. The opening sequence explaining the Blip was hilarious. Ned and Betty's relationship was also hilarious and a nice comic Easter egg.

Basically, I liked it a whole lot. And the post-credits scenes were awesome, especially goddamn J. K. Simmons and the Skrulls reveal.

Which means, of course, that Fury is in space probably because he's trying to set up SWORD or Alpha Flight and their new headquarters, the Peak or AFLOSS. Which means, in either case, we should be seeing Abigail Brand soon, which would be awesome.

Edited by alliterator on Jul 4th 2019 at 11:55:46 AM

Things change Pete,things change

-insane laughter

Peter totally has a dream like this

New theme music also a box

The whole Mysterio reveal scene was so good. It was so wonderfully cheesy and comicbook-y, I loved it. Almost felt like Beck was talking directly to the audience.

And nah, I still don't buy that Quentin Beck is dead one bit. One thing always to remember: Never, ever believe Mysterio.

I think my favourite thing about pre-reveal Mysterio (aside from his leitmotif actually having a somber version that shows up during the rooftop talk) was his intentionally badly written heroic sacrifice.

Like, it's really hilariously paced. He stops to say it was nice knowing Peter, flies into Molten Man's chest, explodes, and then like 20 seconds later he stands up again.

Kaze ni Nare!

RE: Clearing Spidey's name: A short while after my initial post, I thought "hey, there's some leeway to prove Peter isn't a terrorist by having Pepper Potts make a public statement saying the drones came from Stark Industries tech stolen by former employees. And I guess Peter can do the reveal speech from Civil War."

But then:

That. Sounds. SO MUCH BETTER THAN WHAT I CAME UP WITH.

BTW, did anyone notice a sign that said "We can't wait to show you what comes next!" Think that was on purpose?

Man, when are we going to know about Phase 4?!

Edited by TargetmasterJoe on Jul 4th 2019 at 3:23:53 PM

Other things I liked about this film:

• Flash Thompson was a lot more likable in this film — from him liking Spider-Man, to his admittance about wanting people to like him, to his sadness about his mother not showing up to pick him up from the airport, there's a lot of little things that give him more depth than in the first film, showing that while he is a bully, there's a reason for it and he gets more sympathetic.
• I love Mr. Harrington's Black Comedy about his wife pretending to have been Blipped. Hell, Martin Starr is hilarious, especially when he's telling everyone that things have finally turned around for the better.
• The fact that Mysterio definitely deliberately based his outfit off of Iron Man and Thor, with Doctor Strange probably thrown in there, too. He even compliments the guy who wrote the entire story about him coming from another Earth and so on. He really is like Ozymandias.
• Fury figuring it out. "Well, that's some bullshit." And then him getting Maria Hill to save him using an RPG. "You got me?" "I got you." It's even better when you realize that they are actually Talos and Soren, who survived Kree raids and being hunted down. The Skrulls? They know how to survive.

I liked how Talos being Fury makes a lot of sense, because when you really look at it “Fury” in this story is noticeably out of character: he’s not just a hardcase, he’s obstinate, unreasonable and only really listens to whoever has the most authority, with none of the Stealth Mentor trends and humility we see from Fury elsewhere.

He absolutely acts like someone doing an impression of Fury: only knowing him as a hardass and simply playing to the hilt that way. I kept expecting him to have been a Mysterio illusion all along, and the reveal that he’s Talos was perfect.

That’s also one of the reasons why I don’t buy Talos having been Fury for any longer than since Endgame: he’s really bad at being Fury.

Also, fun but stupid idea: we get what’s technically Secret Invasion, but the Skrulls are all good guys peacefully integrating on Earth, and nobody really cares in universe.

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

I was a little dissapointed that Talos wasn't returning in a villain role because he was so good as an antagonist in the first half of Captain Marvel, but it great to have him back regardless.

+1 for the stupid idea. There are enough awful alien races in the Marvel catalogue to pull a Secret Invasion type storyline if they want to, without having the Skrulls in particular pull a 180. And given their power set is almost exclusively the province of evil races/characters in comics; seeing the heroic applications, a la Widow in Winter Soldier, would be refreshing.

Edited by ViperMagnum357 on Jul 4th 2019 at 5:39:03 AM

Yeah, I love the concept of "Secret Invasion but it's actually good."

They have already confirmed that not all Skrulls are good, so they can still use that idea of ​​infiltration.

—-

I liked the new feats of Peter, who in the previous movie was a jobber.

After this movie, I do not think there's any credible way for a Badass Normal like Kraven or the Kingpin to be threats to him.

In fact I think Peter would be able to beat not one or two, but more than 3 winter soldiers at the same time.

Edited by JoLuRo075 on Jul 4th 2019 at 5:24:34 AM