Spider-Man: Far from Homehas its fair share of twists and surprises. However, writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers nearly had a bigger twist in mind for Jake Gyllenhaal’s Quentin Beck, aka Mysterio. Tom Holland and Gyllenhaal have a great on-screen chemistry inFar From Homeand one can tell that they get along in real-life too. With that being said, Gyllenhaal delivers one of the more interesting Marvel Cinematic Universe characters in quite some time. There areSPOILERSforSpider-Man: Far From Homebelow, so read ahead at your own risk.
Mysterio is the villaininSpider-Man: Far From Home. Marvel Studios did a decent job of trying to make it seem like he isn’t, but he is. Though that part was pretty obvious, writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers had enough extra layers of the character to keep even the most hardcore Marvel Comics fan on their toes. But, they originally wanted to add another layer. Sommers had this to say.
“There were some early, early versions of this movie where Mysterio was a Skrull… There were a lot ofSkrullversions of the story early on. When you’re doing a con artist movie, what we finally landed on-we sat down and talked about how do we keep on fooling the audience, how do we keep on having a lot of fun reveals? How many distractions can we get away with before people want to murder us? (The Mysterio Skrull reveal) was an early idea about why he was doing everything he was doing.”
When it comes down to it, the Mysterio Skrull idea didn’t make it too far in the creative process. There’s a lot more going on than just working with Marvel Studios onSpider-Man: Far From Home. Sony is involved too, so there’s going to be a lot of cooks in the kitchen. Chris McKenna explains.
“I don’t think it ever made it to paper, necessarily, but we talked about it for a while. But we talked about a lot of stuff. We spent a lot of time in a windowless room with (director) Jon (Watts), and the folks from Marvel and Pascal Pictures, just talking it through. That’s what it is, in those early stages. It’s just a lot of talk. Going down different roads and just gradually refining things until you have a story.”
The Mysterio Skrull idea would certainly have been interesting, but it seemsChris McKenna and Erik Sommersended up making a better decision for the character. With that being said,Spider-Man: Far From Homewas able to bring in the Skrulls in another totally shocking way. As the post-credit scene reveals, Nick Fury was on simulated vacation the whole time, while Talos took on his identity and almost went too hard on Peter Parker on a few occasions during the course of the movie.
Spider-Man: Far From Homeis currently in theaters andkilling it at the box office. As of this writing, the sequel is sitting at $847 million and will likely be the firstSpider-Manmovie to make it to $1 billion, as long as things keep running smoothly. Thankfully, Jon Watts and crew have crafted a movie that has replay value, which is getting MCU fans back into theaters for a second time. The interview with Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers was originally conducted byCollider.
