How Spider-Man: Far From Home Was Challenged to Bring Classic Comic Villains to Life

Taking outlandish comic book characters like Vulture and Mysterio and grounding them in Spider-Man's corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is a "big challenge," admit Homecoming and Far From Home screenwriters Erik Sommers and Chris Mckenna.

"How do we make him more grounded, how do we make him more real, how do we make him fit into the MCU? It's always a big challenge and it really just comes down to spending a lot of time in the room, going over different versions, looking at source material and discussing it over and over," Sommers told Variety.

"You just sort of just grind away at it. That's what we did. We spent a lot of time in a windowless room with [director] Jon Watts and the folks from Marvel and [producer Amy] Pascal just [asked], 'What about this, what about that?' We talked about it in different iterations, went down different roads and eventually settled on the version we ended up with."

Big contributors are stars Michael Keaton and Jake Gyllenhaal, who menaced Spider-Man (Tom Holland) as Vulture and Mysterio, respectively. One of Gyllenhaal's many contributions to the role was Quentin Beck's beard, and the superstar actor "was right," Mckenna added.

"Ninety percent of it is casting. I mean, Michael Keaton, you're going to believe anything he says. Jake, you're going to believe anything he says," McKenna continued.

"I don't mean to go to this well again, but I will go back to the beard. It came out of a logical place for Jake. Jake was like, 'Well, this guy is supposed to be a soldier from another world, he's not going to be stopping and shaving. He's not going to be clean-shaven.' And we were like, 'Yeah, you're right.' So, again the beard. It's about mostly facial hair. That was the hardest thing to crack."

Spider-Man: Far From Home is now playing.