How Spider-Man: Far From Home Deals With the Era of “Fake News”

It’s not often that a big budget superhero movie can make a critical commentary on the current state of the world, but Marvel Studios managed to do just that with Spider-Man: Far From Home. From the state of unrest after “The Blip” to the introduction of Mysterio, right on down to the mid-credits stinger that changes Peter Parker’s world forever, there is a major thread that addresses the tiresome topic of “Fake News.”

Spider-Man: Far From Home writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers opened up about this narrative theme during an interview with Collider, explaining how it dovetailed neatly with Mysterio’s debut in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

“Obviously we live in a world of fractured reality. Everyone is living in their own bubble of what they see as the truth,” explained Sommers. “We follow social media that just confirms our own biases. We can’t even agree on what’s fact and what’s fiction. Yeah, so all that plays into this character who’s able to manipulate reality, and get everyone to believe something and even though it’s so clearly, by the end, a lie that he’s been telling, half the world still believes it.”

In the movie, Mysterio manipulates both Spider-Man and the world at large into thinking he’s a hero, despite many fans with knowledge of the comics knowing that he’s actually a villain. And that major reveal played nicely into the themes of the film.

“I think once we settled on Mysterio, it was definitely a challenge to figure out exactly what his plan was going to be, and how he was going to carry it out,” Sommers added. “Once we decided that it was going to be a deception, or a con, we knew that he was going to be portraying himself as a friend, portraying himself as an ally and a potential replacement mentor to Peter. We knew that we were going to have to then show our cards at some point, and reveal that this was a trick. Where that happens in the movie now is pretty much where we always wanted it to happen. We didn’t really want to hold it that much longer.”

It’s not clear if Marvel Studios will follow up this trend in the third Spider-Man movie, but a certain character introduction in that mid-credits scene does show a lot of potential…

Spider-Man: Far From Home is now playing in theaters.