End Scene Spider Man No Way Home
Emmanuelle Riker
Spider-Man (Tom Holland) swings a flustered MJ (Zendaya) through the Manhattan skyline and drops her off at 8th Avenue and 33rd Street, where a massive screen on the side of Madison Square Garden shows a report from TheDailyBugle.net.
A doctored video makes it look like Spidey killed Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) during the climactic battle in London -- the illusionist's recorded testimony says Spidey is a villain from another universe who was controlling the drones wreaking havoc on the UK capital.
A Daily Bugle website also sprang up in the wake of Far From Home hitting digital and ahead of the Blu-ray coming out Oct. 1. It includes a YouTube video of Jameson railing against Spidey and hailing Mysterio, a "Blip Blog" featuring people's stories about the period after Thanos' snap (including Peter's hapless teacher Mr. Harrington) and an article Night Monkey.
Spidey's been outed to the world and framed for murder, meaning his entire life is turned upside down as we head into Phase 4. It's a dark, stunning contrast to the end of Iron Man, where Tony Stark revealed his own superhero identity to the press and a nice reference to the comics' Civil War storyline (which saw Peter outing himself at Tony's urging).
Even more importantly, this scene marks the glorious return of Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson. He played the cigar-chomping Daily Bugle boss in all three Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies, but those aren't part of the MCU and this isn't the same character -- note the lack of a buzzcut.
From this glimpse, the MCU's Jameson appears quite different to the Raimi-verse's traditional angry newspaperman. Here, he's more of an Alex Jones-type conspiracy theorist (mirroring his role as an angry podcaster in last year's PS4 game) -- one who was willing to paint a bullseye on a teenage boy based on a choppy video.
As for where he got the video, it was probably from Mysterio's assistant William Ginter Riva (Peter Billingsley), who escaped with a hard drive after Spidey foiled his boss' plan in London. We saw earlier in the movie that Riva worked for Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges) way back in the first Iron Man, so he's had two villain employers.
"But now he's more recognizable as a real-world person than he was in those films. So I don't know; it's kind of interesting to look at how the world has changed around him," he said in our interview.
"There's no buzz cut, no cigar, no suspenders. But for the most part he's still the spirit of J Jonah Jameson -- I wondered like, was he a newspaper man? What's happened? There are so many questions."
There were fears that Far From Home would be Spidey's last hurrah in the MCU, which could have impacted how this plotline played out. Sony owns the cinematic rights to the character and its deal with the Disney-owned Marvel Studios allowed the wallcrawler to join the MCU. That deal expired with Far From Home, and the Sony-Marvel relationship was apparently severed after Disney sought a greater cut of box office revenue from future Spider-Man films.
Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) and his wife Soren (Sharon Blynn), a pair of shapeshifting Skrulls, pretended to be Fury and Hill. You might remember this couple being reunited during Captain Marvel, which takes place years prior to Far From Home in the MCU timeline.
Fury and Hill were actually disguised Skrulls for the whole movie, echoing the Secret Invasion comic storyline where Skrulls secretly replaced humans. This is like a benign version of that sinister takeover, but it could foreshadow a future MCU storyline.
This reverential tone would be out of character for Fury, but is absolutely in character for Talos -- she reunited him with his family back in the '90s. Performances by Jackson and Smulders are a little flat during the movie too; this revelation makes their acting even more impressive.
It does raise the question of what the Skrulls have been doing since the events of Captain Marvel, when they left Earth to search for a habitable planet where their race could live. Maybe even more people have been replaced by the shapeshifters.
Earlier in the movie, Talos-Fury also makes a passing mention of "Kree sleeper cells" -- in reference to the race that wiped out the Skrull homeworld. He and Soren could be on Earth to hunt the genocidal aliens.
"I don't want to say anything about where we're going next but, I mean, having seen Captain Marvel and now that the world knows about Fury and the Skrulls and all of that, it's just another thing to draw from in this crazy, complicated, rich universe that's the MCU," he said in our interview.
Tom said they were "so in the dark" while filming Spider-Man: Homecoming, but for this movie the three of them were really "part of the creative team," and they were asked questions and gave feedback.
Not only did they have to pull together so many storylines and characters from three different Spider-Man franchises, but the COVID-19 pandemic caused production to be delayed, and that only added to the script taking a while. In March 2020, Chris and Erik were still working on the first draft of the script.
He said, "One of the first things I said to Jon [Watts] and Amy [Pascal], basically when they pitched it to me, before there was even a script, was, 'Listen, I don't want to just pop in there as a cameo or just fill in in close-ups. I want to do the action because that's fun for me." In 2002's Spider-Man, Willem famously did a lot of his own stunts as Green Goblin.
Zendaya explained, "Like, 'I hope the other kids like him.' And like, 'I hope he doesn't come back crying.' And so [Jacob and I] were just there, and I was taking pictures of [Tom, Andrew, and Tobey], so that [Tom] could have it. It was so cute."
Tom and Zendaya both said Tobey is "so funny" and "so cool." Tom elaborated, saying, "T-McG. Man, he was so funny. He was really excited to be back. You could tell it really meant a lot to him. Him putting the suit on again. Us getting back together. It was awesome."
The massive fight between Peter and Doc Ock on the bridge was all filmed on a sound stage and not actually in NYC. For the bridge scene, the set was made up of 40-foot blue screens on three sides of a pad and a roadway with the exit where the assistant vice chancellor fell inside the car.
Visual effects supervisor Kelly Port explained that Digital Domain was tasked with creating the effects for this sequence and they did "such a great job." The team built an entire, fully CG digital environment outside of the little bit of practical roadway they had on the set.
All of the tentacles were super-imposed on Alfred during post-production. In Spider-Man 2, Doc Ock's tentacles were actually mechanical, and Alfred had them attached to his back during filming. The original tentacles were controlled by a team of 16 puppeteers, and their movements were choreographed by Eric Hayden.
"This new new is fly. The homies is like, 'OK, we get you now.' When I was blue, they still rolled with me, but 'OK, you're blue,'" Jamie excitedly said. "With this one, it just feels more comfortable and more today. More modern. Not trying so hard."
Jacob said, "He asked me to give her an autograph picture. At first I thought he was kidding. I literally thought he was just trying to pull my leg or something, but he was genuinely asking for a picture and now we are best friends."
"I was coming in every day on set to watch Jon work," Zendaya explained. "I like to respect the process, so I'm very quiet. I kind of sit in the corner and sometimes ask Jon questions about his work. He was great and lovely and shared so much with me."
At one point, Zendaya was asked to cut down her hours visiting set because Jon Watts was falling behind schedule. They didn't want any distractions, so Zendaya didn't come in for a few days. Then, she said she hilariously showed up to set a few days later, and Jamie was hosting a dance party that involved the actors, producers, and directors. "It was like a full party," Zendaya recalled. "And I was like, 'So, wait, I had to leave...but Jamie is starting full dance parties on set. Maybe this is why we're behind guys?' But it was awesome. He brings such good energy and is a literal party everywhere he goes."
Tom explained, "I have a side to Peter Parker that I got to show, which I can't talk about, but it was so fun doing it. It was scary. Jon [Watts] would be like, 'Cut' and then he would come over and be like, 'Are you OK?'"
After Harry told Tom to "suck it up" after he complained about hanging upside down for hours, Tom asked the stunt coordinator to make sure Harry's stunt included hanging upside down. "As the day's going on he's got these lines and he's starting to forget his lines and his eyes are about to pop out of his head. So, we're driving home that day, and I was actually really proud of him, and he's like, 'Mate, you can complain as much as you want. That was brutal,'" Tom recalled.
She said it was so hard to do spoiler-free interviews on the Spider-Man: No Way Home press tour and have to lie and say how "fun" the movie is. Tom Holland joked that the movie is "bittersweet," and Zendaya immediately replied, "Is it though? Because it's very much just bitter. Like I'm not getting the sweet part."
"As soon as I finished, I went snowboarding," Tom said. "And I have an amazing photo of me FaceTiming [Zendaya] with blood all over my face." Zendaya replied, saying, "I answered the phone, and he's just covered in blood, and I was like, 'What are you doing?!'"
Spider-Man: Far From Home is the sequel to 2017's Spider-Man: Homecoming, and sees Peter Parker/Spider-Man (Tom Holland) recruited by Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and the mysterious Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) while on a school trip in Europe. The pair enlist Parker's help to battle Elementals threatening to destroy the world. Along the way, he meets new allies and old friends from his high school, such as MJ (Zendaya), Ned (Jacob Batalon), Flash Thompson (Tony Revolori), and Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau).
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