Spiderman: Far from home

[Sholos]

Just got out. Liked the movie overall and curious to see where they'll go next with it. Peter's got a lot to look forward to.

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I legit teared up when Happy put on Led Zeppelin for Peter to work to.

[Douglas]

Just got out. Liked the movie overall and curious to see where they'll go next with it. Peter's got a lot to look forward to.

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I legit teared up when Happy put on Led Zeppelin for Peter to work to.

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That's one of the best scenes in the movie in my opinion. Happy used to consider Peter as some annoying kid of no consequence that he was unfortunately stuck dealing with. Now he trusts Peter to handle a serious supervillain threat with potential mass casualties, and putting on that music the way he did was his way of saying it. They've come so far together.

[The Glyphstone]

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Part of the joke there is that Peter thinks it's Led Zeppelin but it's actually AC/DC. Specifically Happy put on 'Back in Black', which has become Iron Man's unofficial theme song in the MCU. So it's also an additional layer of symbolism for Peter being Tony's successor.

[Bartmanhomer]

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Part of the joke there is that Peter thinks it's Led Zeppelin but it's actually AC/DC. Specifically Happy put on 'Back in Black', which has become Iron Man's unofficial theme song in the MCU. So it's also an additional layer of symbolism for Peter being Tony's successor.

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I thought Iron Man unofficial song was Black Sabbath.

[Mordar]

Saw it Saturday...for most of it I felt like I was watching a Nickelodeon movie. The pacing, presentation, supporting characters...all felt more like Drake and Josh or Suite Life (yeah, yeah, that isn't Nickelodeon) than MCU.

Not an auspicious start for the film, particularly not as the first post-Endgame entry. Following it up with the whole "I don't wanna be a super-hero this week" and the CW-inspired secret identity joke hurts it a lot for me, pushing it into the bottom tier of the MCU (and adjacent) films for me. Not GotG 2 bad...but you can see it from there.

Mysterio was good. Power source and tie-in less so...again feels like something CW would do.

Spoiler: CW intersection with FFH

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Not every villain needs to have a unified origin story...metas could exist outside of the STAR labs explosion, or the meteor-freaks to push it back to Smallville. MCU has established a number of ways to develop powers...so we don't need this to be Stark rejects. Not a huge deal on its own, but coupled with the other things I didn't like it just becomes a bigger issue for me.

Overall, I felt it dragged and seemed to be trying to hard to make Spider-Man the replacement for RDJ (moreso than Iron Man) in the new phase.

- M

[Psyren]

Seeing it on Friday, but seeing very mixed reviews for now. I have some concerns myself based on some of the merchandise and trailers, but it will probably be fine.

RT has 91 critic/96 audience so not sure where this is coming from.

For me, I definitely enjoyed it, but I'm very wary about where it looks like they're taking the MCU next. In particular,

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Secret Invasion seems like a hard 180 after they spent so much time establishing the Skrulls as sympathetic in CM, and continuing that here by having them integral to setting up SWORD. Yeah we could go from that to "there are evil Skrulls", just like there are some good Kree out there, but it runs the risk of the screenplay getting very muddy.

Regarding the movie - it did a great job of establishing Peter's greatest asset, more even than his powers - his smarts.

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I loved watching him geek out about multiverses, and the "build my own suit" montage is a standout as many others have mentioned. I also liked how quickly he came up with a test to make sure that Happy wasn't another illusion.

Jake Gyllenhaal as Mysterio was great too - just the right level of egotistical, maniacal, and vengeful. You really get a sense for how dangerous he would have been up against many other superheroes. Pity nobody's figured out a way around the "Peter tingle"

My one criticism is that the MCU seems to be falling back on a common premise, which is essentially the one that sank Suicide Squad:

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Namely, "the thing we made to solve our problems is itself the main problem, so why did we make it in the first place?" E.D.I.T.H., I mean. Funny acronym aside, we saw this same issue pop up in Winter Soldier with Project Insight, Suicide Squad with the Enchantress, and Age of Ultron with... well, Ultron. While one of those movies is far worse than the other two, it's been a problematic element in all of them, because it just makes what should be the smartest folks in their respective universes (Fury, Waller, and Stark) look outright dumb or insane. When the world would have been safer if you did nothing, that's a problem.

We're also running into the other problem with the MCU, namely where are all the other heroes when world-changing threats emerge, though I suppose we're going to find out about Doctor Strange's absence shortly. At least they do a better job with this than DC seems able to; Superman handles cosmic threats for example, but he doesn't seem to have as much of a reputation in the popular culture for that as Thor, Carol, or even Green Lantern.

Lastly, I really want a Night Monkey theme song!

[GloatingSwine]

My one criticism is that the MCU seems to be falling back on a common premise, which is essentially the one that sank Suicide Squad:

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Namely, "the thing we made to solve our problems is itself the main problem, so why did we make it in the first place?" E.D.I.T.H., I mean. Funny acronym aside, we saw this same issue pop up in Winter Soldier with Project Insight, Suicide Squad with the Enchantress, and Age of Ultron with... well, Ultron. While one of those movies is far worse than the other two, it's been a problematic element in all of them, because it just makes what should be the smartest folks in their respective universes (Fury, Waller, and Stark) look outright dumb or insane. When the world would have been safer if you did nothing, that's a problem.

We're also running into the other problem with the MCU, namely where are all the other heroes when world-changing threats emerge, though I suppose we're going to find out about Doctor Strange's absence shortly. At least they do a better job with this than DC seems able to; Superman handles cosmic threats for example, but he doesn't seem to have as much of a reputation in the popular culture for that as Thor, Carol, or even Green Lantern.

Lastly, I really want a Night Monkey theme song!

Eh, I think you're overestimating how often the MCU has done that and it not be Tony Stark's fault.

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Like in Winter Soldier Project Insight was never made to solve any problems, it was made to let Hydra take over the world, they just told everyone it was "for security".

Meanwhile, "Tony Stark is his own worst enemy" is a consistent theme of his stories, and so it's also inextricably linked to any legacy he leaves to the world. Even In Death I'm The ****up.

[Psyren]

Insight was absolutely made to solve a perceived problem (i.e. the heroes - who were much smaller in number around WS - not being able to be everywhere at once.) Sure, that perception was heightened and the checks and balances eroded by Hydra, but at some point they had to fool multiple supposedly-very-smart people to bring us as close to the brink as they did.

I'm not saying this is a problem in and of itself - you need the drama to come from somewhere after all - I'm more concerned about the fact that Tony being his worst enemy should be a known quantity by now, and so some contingencies should be put in. Specifically,

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some of his bigger gaffes (Ultron, and now EDITH) should really have had much more in the way of safeguards put in. There is a great video series on Youtube called Nando v. Movies where he makes minor (and some not-so-minor, hi DC) tweaks to a movie's premise in order to make said more credible and interesting. One that he suggested for Age of Ultron was that Ultron itself could have been built with the Laws of Robotics in mind, i.e. not being able to kill. That would have ramped up the tension far more - Ultron's goal being to remove that block and THEN drop a big rock on the planet - while also making Tony seem a lot smarter than he came off in that movie. EDITH should have been built similarly, rather than handing a freshman the ability to call down lethal drone strikes on his classmates.

[Reddish Mage]

Insight was absolutely made to solve a perceived problem (i.e. the heroes - who were much smaller in number around WS - not being able to be everywhere at once.) Sure, that perception was heightened and the checks and balances eroded by Hydra, but at some point they had to fool multiple supposedly-very-smart people to bring us as close to the brink as they did.

I'm not saying this is a problem in and of itself - you need the drama to come from somewhere after all - I'm more concerned about the fact that Tony being his worst enemy should be a known quantity by now, and so some contingencies should be put in. Specifically,

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some of his bigger gaffes (Ultron, and now EDITH) should really have had much more in the way of safeguards put in. There is a great video series on Youtube called Nando v. Movies where he makes minor (and some not-so-minor, hi DC) tweaks to a movie's premise in order to make said more credible and interesting. One that he suggested for Age of Ultron was that Ultron itself could have been built with the Laws of Robotics in mind, i.e. not being able to kill. That would have ramped up the tension far more - Ultron's goal being to remove that block and THEN drop a big rock on the planet - while also making Tony seem a lot smarter than he came off in that movie. EDITH should have been built similarly, rather than handing a freshman the ability to call down lethal drone strikes on his classmates.

Spoiler: smarter plots = better movies?

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I wonder if audiences can really follow these smarter plots or if there is enough time in the movie to follow those twists and turns. If Ultron had safeguards in him, then broke them anyway doing the same things in the same runtime, they weren't much of a safeguard. However, if he does a two step, that's a lot of movie dedicated to explaining how Tony sought to make Ultron the proper smart way and failed.

Finally, Vision was supposed to be the superior Ultron mark 2 that actually works. Vision makes no sense if Ultron was thoughtfully designed...but failed anyway.

In other words Ultron is a case where "smarter plot" is too long to explain and doesn't really work anyway.

Here, with Spiderman FFH, we get a system designed to hack anything and call in drone strikes (we don't know if it can do other stuff). However, that itself, and given Age of Ultron and Winter Soldier, is probably something that shouldn't exist at all in this universe. If we have it that Tony made the system smarter, to make it self-aware (like Ultron) and ignore explicit orders from Peter to transfer the capabilities to another (which violates the 2nd of the 3-laws) and then have Beck compromise it, we'd still be have lots of problems. However, now we have to show Beck's team compromising the thing, and explain how Peter restores the technology's original purpose...a purpose that doesn't make sense in the first case.

In other words FFH is a case where the smarter plot doesn't work once again.

Playing the geek game of filling plot holes often just ends up creating more and more complex plot holes. That is especially true because these plot contrivances are paper-thin cliche contrivances found in countless movies and comic books anyway. They were even less realistic when they first came about in the...60's? 50's? 40's?

In Endgame, we get Thanos proposing to destroy half of all life. That's one of the most patently absurd strategies for bringing about paradise ever (because of population rebound will happen within a few generations). However, had Thanos also decided to subtly change things, we would have had a longer explanation, that wouldn't work either.

The blip-back is the thing that disturbs me. It seems transparently obvious to me that people would lose not only their apartments and schools, but their families, friends, jobs, property, and potentially social status en masse as a consequence of the blip. This is vaguely alluded to their being a charity drive for those displaced by the blip, but the movie well underplays the catastrophic consequences of having half the population disappear for years and then suddenly "blip" back. How fortunes, governments, militaries, families, companies and social networks all disappear in the 5 years post "devastation" of the snappening only to have half the population suddenly come back and clamor to have their lives reinstated. The idea of that everybody in the world collectively shrugged and found some way to move on with their lives with minimal consequences is simply silly...which is why they played it for laughs.

If you're convinced sensible explanations can really be made, by all means, tell me I'm wrong. However, I think a very different concept has to be used in place of all of the above, probably something Hollywood would think too complicated for a general audience.

Recall, executives forced the Witkowski's to substitute humans as "batteries" rather than "processors" for the machines, even though in retrospect, everyone would understand that latter concept and it would have been a lot more interesting. I'd give you great internets if you could make a substitution half as good as that one.

[Psyren]

In other words Ultron is a case where "smarter plot" is too long to explain and doesn't really work anyway.

I disagree, it wouldn't take much at all. Spoiler for off-topic:

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Ultron would do all the same things - recruiting other villains, try to escape to the web, getting partially countered by Jarvis - but it makes him a lot more threatening when you actually realize there's something clear, however flimsy or temporary, standing between him and the mass murder a truly unfettered AI could unleash pretty much instantly, and that said thin reed is something Tony planned for (however imperfectly) rather than essentially being a stroke of good luck or incompetence on Ultron's part. (And really the laws of robotics aren't that heavy a lift anyway - audiences got on board with the likes of Robocop and I, Robot after all.)

For EDITH it would be even easier:

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An error message when Peter tries to (unknowingly) kill his annoying classmate, and a quick line where Quentin (or preferably his pet egghead) disables the safeguards - that's it, that's all it would take for Tony to not look like a posthumous basketcase without changing anything else about the film. But I get it, they wanted a short action scene on the bus where Peter takes down the drone, regardless of how implausible it is that he got his entire class to look out the window at some nonexistent goats while he jumped 15 feet in the air.

I'll link the Nando video later but it goes into detail on how you could introduce a concept like that quickly without bogging down the movie.

Recall, executives forced the Witkowski's to substitute humans as "batteries" rather than "processors" for the machines, even though in retrospect, everyone would understand that latter concept and it would have been a lot more interesting. I'd give you great internets if you could make a substitution half as good as that one.

Uh no, I don't find "processors" more interesting at all; it doesn't change anything about the Matrix's failings, nor the Architect's ultimate judgement that "there are levels of survival they're willing to accept" when it comes to either wiping out Zion or coexisting with it. But we're really drifting off topic here.

[zimmerwald1915]

because of population rebound will happen within a few generations

It occurs to me that we have a counterexample to this truism: Russia. The demographic "echo" created by the Second World War shows up generation after generation, as the WWII generation failed to have babies due to being dead, and their descendents never existed due to their putative progenetors being dead. The country's population, rather than growing rapidly through a baby boom, has flatlined or declined in the generations since.

This hasn't led to increased quality of life for the Russians, so doesn't touch the larger point about Thanos's plan being a bad way to create good quality of life, but the specific point that demographic rebound would moot Thanos's plan in a few generations is not trivially true.

[Reddish Mage]

I disagree, it wouldn't take much at all. Spoiler for off-topic:

Spoiler: Ultron plus 3 laws

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Ultron would do all the same things - recruiting other villains, try to escape to the web, getting partially countered by Jarvis - but it makes him a lot more threatening when you actually realize there's something clear, however flimsy or temporary, standing between him and the mass murder a truly unfettered AI could unleash pretty much instantly, and that said thin reed is something Tony planned for (however imperfectly) rather than essentially being a stroke of good luck or incompetence on Ultron's part. (And really the laws of robotics aren't that heavy a lift anyway - audiences got on board with the likes of Robocop and I, Robot after all.)

Spoiler: 3 laws = at least 3 new scenes

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Ultron couldn't actually attack the Avengers than until that later part is removed. Also, its the THREE laws. Tony could simply order Ultron to shutdown all systems. If Tony put in all three laws, rather than some vague prohibition against directly killing humans, it'd be a whole thing.

Also, in the original, Ultron was deemed a "failure" and then took over Jarvis like a virus. He was incomplete and only vaguely instructed by his creators, that's a good explanation. Three laws have a lot of technical problems, vagaries, and contradictions that would make a nice topic for the Asimov thread.

For EDITH it would be even easier:

Spoiler: fixing FFH with ineffective software patches

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An error message when Peter tries to (unknowingly) kill his annoying classmate, and a quick line where Quentin (or preferably his pet egghead) disables the safeguards - that's it, that's all it would take for Tony to not look like a posthumous basketcase without changing anything else about the film. But I get it, they wanted a short action scene on the bus where Peter takes down the drone, regardless of how implausible it is that he got his entire class to look out the window at some nonexistent goats while he jumped 15 feet in the air.

Spoiler: I prefer relying on the morality of a teenaged hero

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If Tony put in safeguards that his people can be so easily bypassed, that also says Tony is also a basketcase. How can the guy who made Ultron think a few easily bypassed security protocols can protect the world?

The canon EDITH at least obeys Peter Parker and only Peter Parker, it could only be disabled by Peter Parker...who does so...but EDITH does give a word of caution in requiring very clear confirmation. Tony trusted Peter with the system, he even trusted Peter to choose a successor, but he did put in a safeguard against accidental transfer.

You are suggesting Peter gets EDITH with automated training wheels like in Homecoming. We saw that once before. This is a Tony that trusts Peter completely.

That makes Tony look like an idiot for giving so much power to a teenage boy who is clearly not ready to take up the mantle. However, given that Beck, who had a team of Stark's ex-employees, needed to basically convince Nick Fury and alter Peter's reality in order to get EDITH, that suggests Tony may not have been that stupid after all. He just had his blindspots like he always did.

I'll link the Nando video later but it goes into detail on how you could introduce a concept like that quickly without bogging down the movie.

I'll watch, but the description given is that Nando basically thinks brief mentions of these concepts are fixing the plot holes. I see the OG plot holes as fairly shallow in the first place, and the fixes are creating new ones.

Uh no, I don't find "processors" more interesting at all; it doesn't change anything about the Matrix's failings, nor the Architect's ultimate judgement that "there are levels of survival they're willing to accept" when it comes to either wiping out Zion or coexisting with it. But we're really drifting off topic here.

Spoiler: Matrix as run on Human Processors in the Original Concept

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OMG, other than playing into the myth that we use like 10 to 15% of our brain and the rest is available for processing, the idea of having the Matrix processed by human brains makes a huge difference.

Now the humans are fighting...essentially themselves. One is the human qua human, the other is human as a processor that acts as the intelligence of the machines. Moreover, its transparently obvious to everyone that humans make bad batteries (and also its rather silly). The idea the machines need humans to be their brains opens the door to a lot of personal identity issues and mind/brain/body issues that the released movies never went into.

Of course, all of that was probably stuff the studios would have preferred stay well away from a mainstream audience.

It occurs to me that we have a counterexample to this truism: Russia. The demographic "echo" created by the Second World War shows up generation after generation, as the WWII generation failed to have babies due to being dead, and their descendents never existed due to their putative progenetors being dead. The country's population, rather than growing rapidly through a baby boom, has flatlined or declined in the generations since.

This hasn't led to increased quality of life for the Russians, so doesn't touch the larger point about Thanos's plan being a bad way to create good quality of life, but the specific point that demographic rebound would moot Thanos's plan in a few generations is not trivially true.

I would posit this is because resources in Russia were constrained and did not allow for population expansion. I am, however, just spitballing and don't want to get into Russian history.

In a resource rich environment population rebound would happen according to scientific studies of all sorts of animal and insect populations. It happened with humans after the plague (it looks like a little blip on a population history chart), after numerous events in human history that kill off large populations but don't make a dent (really only the black plague makes a noticeable, albeit temporary, depression). Of course, these are population charts made by historians operating on very, very, old and suspect data supplemented by their own assumptions and rules of thumb. Of course the historians know it should look like a smooth curve, but these charts exist and supplement population demographic theories.

That overpopulation causes misery is something long posited and discussed in lots of literature (Charles Dickens is found of referring to it). Thanos' take on it is slim on the detail but its serviceable.

Note that this directly plays into FFH because we start with a funny account of the "blip" when everyone returns and life somehow moves on the same as always and there is no wide-scale problems on the newly crowded world filled with temporal refugees.

[Psyren]

Spoiler: 3 laws = at least 3 new scenes

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Ultron couldn't actually attack the Avengers than until that later part is removed. Also, its the THREE laws. Tony could simply order Ultron to shutdown all systems. If Tony put in all three laws, rather than some vague prohibition against directly killing humans, it'd be a whole thing.

Also, in the original, Ultron was deemed a "failure" and then took over Jarvis like a virus. He was incomplete and only vaguely instructed by his creators, that's a good explanation. Three laws have a lot of technical problems, vagaries, and contradictions that would make a nice topic for the Asimov thread.

I was using shorthand here - as you mentioned, the "don't kill humans" is really the only one you need.

Spoiler: I prefer relying on the morality of a teenaged hero

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If Tony put in safeguards that his people can be so easily bypassed, that also says Tony is also a basketcase. How can the guy who made Ultron think a few easily bypassed security protocols can protect the world?

The canon EDITH at least obeys Peter Parker and only Peter Parker, it could only be disabled by Peter Parker...who does so...but EDITH does give a word of caution in requiring very clear confirmation. Tony trusted Peter with the system, he even trusted Peter to choose a successor, but he did put in a safeguard against accidental transfer.

You are suggesting Peter gets EDITH with automated training wheels like in Homecoming. We saw that once before. This is a Tony that trusts Peter completely.

That makes Tony look like an idiot for giving so much power to a teenage boy who is clearly not ready to take up the mantle. However, given that Beck, who had a team of Stark's ex-employees, needed to basically convince Nick Fury and alter Peter's reality in order to get EDITH, that suggests Tony may not have been that stupid after all. He just had his blindspots like he always did.

Under what circumstances could Peter ever possibly

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need to call down a lethal dronestrike on someone? Peter doesn't kill and Tony knows it. Even in Homecoming, nobody actually died. (Well, that one henchman did, but Peter wasn't even there for that.) Leaving that functionality in by default served no purpose except making Tony look silly.

For me, having Quentin need the admin transfer + some keystrokes from his hacker guy to remove the safeguards is both plausible and makes him look better.

I really have to leave the Matrix thing alone because we'll have a 50 page thread otherwise, sorry.

[Ramza00]

You have to remember that Ultron in the MCU is not a robot, but is instead an emergent phenomenon like a biological lifeform. He is a Frankenstein monster giving life where Ultron mind was shaped by Tony but Ultron was not alive, and suddenly the threshold was crossed when Tony was not looking and Ultron emerged alive, and then he emerged grew and grew and grew. Once he emerged and grew past a point no super-ego rules, relegations, three Asmiov directives was going to work.

Tony's aesthetic values of life is sacred is inherrently absurd. It is also absurd to value life some of the time and not other times, to see this human as an enemy and that human as a friend, especially when friends can betray you in the present, past, and future.

Now when I say humanity valuing life as absurd, this means I still value life, I still love and defend life, but I reconogize it is not a math problem you can ground in mathematical axioms, it requires choice and enough of a ego to make self define value statements in the moment.

Ultron was given rules but he then broke the rules for the aesthetics behind the predetermined choices did not make sense to Ultron. The aesthetics were incompatible so he rejected Tony's rules and he self created his own aesthetics.

Vision agreed Tony rules were arbitrary and contradictory but he made a leap of faith and how the aesthetics compatible enough.

-----

My point here was making the mistake that Ultron was a machine instead of seeing Tony we creating a child with his own will and volition. Ultron was Tony's Frankenstein's Monster, for Frankenstein did not understand people let alone children, Frankenstein want mastery not realizing mastery requires ambiguity and choice as a foundation.

[ben-zayb]

Just got back after watching Iron Man: FFS Iron Man: Far From Over Spider-Man: Far From Home.

It's a solid 7/10 as far as entertaining me is concerned, although I did have to turn my brain off for my own good for a good portion of it. I actually appreciated the out-of-suit and out-of-web actions, to follow through with Homecoming's idea that Peter being Spider-Man is more than just having the suit (well, until he had to resort to Starktech....again). Gyllenhall and Holland killed in their roles. I even like the subtheme of concealed reality: from Spider-Man leading a double life, to Quentin Beck's BARF tech, to Talos disguising as Fury, to real Fury's space holodeck.

My main gripe like others was that there was just too many Stark stuff in this movie, and the point of Peter being his own person instead of being Stark Mark II would have worked for me if not for the fact that he ended up using Stark tech itself anyway.



Final Musings:

What's the deal with the airport security casually ignoring Pete's Spider Suit? Did they really just think he's cosplaying or something?

Did the movie forget showing us what happened to Quentin Beck's motley crew, or was that a deliberate omission?

If EDITH ready existed prior to Stark's death, why didn't he just deploy them in Endgame?

Why does it seem like The Blip barely affected the lives of the main cast, heck society in general from what was shown in the movie?

Even without Strange, aren't there other sorcerers in different jurisdictions across the continents? Considering the claim that the threat was inter-universal, this seems like a good reason for the sorcerers to get involved.

Why is Fury getting help from a 16 year old, instead of reaching out to Falcon, Bucky, Wanda, or War Machine?

[Friv]

I can answer a few of these:

What's the deal with the airport security casually ignoring Pete's Spider Suit? Did they really just think he's cosplaying or something?

I think we're supposed to just infer that she doesn't care. Maybe she doesn't know who Spider-Man is, because he's not a big enough name in Europe. Maybe she thinks he's cosplaying. Maybe she went home and told someone, "Oh, yeah, I stopped Spider-Man at the airport. He tried to smuggle a banana in. What a guy."

Did the movie forget showing us what happened to Quentin Beck's motley crew, or was that a deliberate omission?

We didn't see what happened to most of them, but William explicitly was able to finish assembling that post-mortem accusation and then escape, so the implication is that most of the Mysterio team is still on the loose.

If EDITH ready existed prior to Stark's death, why didn't he just deploy them in Endgame?

Based on their general destructibility, my guess would be that Stark didn't bother deploying them because the giant spaceship hanging in the area would have blown them all up in a matter of minutes. That, or he didn't have EDITH access in the one suit he still had access to after the surprise attack.

Why does it seem like The Blip barely affected the lives of the main cast, heck society in general from what was shown in the movie?

I mean, this one is really just "they want to mostly be able to play in a real-world-like sandbox." You can headcanon it as "the Infinity Gems were strong enough that the desire to 'get everyone back safely' papered over a lot of stuff and left things pretty fixable", which seems reasonable. We also see the tail end of a year, since everyone had to repeat a year of school, so there may have been a few truly chaotic months followed by things settling down. They've got a major charity drive for people displaced by the Blip, so it's obviously affected some lives in a big way, but if they want to do superheroes and not pure sci-fi, they can't really examine it.

Even without Strange, aren't there other sorcerers in different jurisdictions across the continents? Considering the claim that the threat was inter-universal, this seems like a good reason for the sorcerers to get involved.

Why is Fury getting help from a 16 year old, instead of reaching out to Falcon, Bucky, Wanda, or War Machine?

Spoilered for potential big spoilers:

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My guess is that even if Fury knew how to contact these sorcerers, Talos doesn't. And I would guess that the real Avengers are in space with Fury, which is why Talos skips over them when he's discussing options.

[Palanan]

Just saw it, had a ton of fun.

But questions:

Spoiler: Kill Them All

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Wouldn’t Tony Stark have written a “don’t kill Peter Parker” subroutine into EDITH’s protocols? His biosignature is known to the Stark database, so why wouldn’t Stark have given the kid that extra layer of protection?

Spoiler: Those &#%@ Americans!!

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As all the Americans were having super-fights against the backdrop of European cities…

…did anyone else wonder why Europe doesn’t have any supers of its own?

Spoiler: Furyians

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Okay, who are the green shapeshifters? Why are they filling in for Nick Fury and Maria Hill?

And is this another tie-in to Captain Marvel?

Spoiler: Where Are My Shoes?

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Okay…where exactly is Nick Fury? Why is he on an alien facility?

Do we know, or is this teasing whatever’s next in Phase 4?

[GloatingSwine]

Spoiler: Those &#%@ Americans!!

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As all the Americans were having super-fights against the backdrop of European cities…

…did anyone else wonder why Europe doesn’t have any supers of its own?

They're mostly X-Men, and so unavailable for legal reasons.

Spoiler: Furyians

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Okay, who are the green shapeshifters? Why are they filling in for Nick Fury and Maria Hill?

And is this another tie-in to Captain Marvel?

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Yes. Those are the lead Skrulls from Captain Marvel. Presumably they are filling in for Nick Fury whilst he is off doing Secret Space Things.

Spoiler: Where Are My Shoes?

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Okay…where exactly is Nick Fury? Why is he on an alien facility?

Do we know, or is this teasing whatever’s next in Phase 4?

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We don't know, but dollars to donuts it's The Peak, headquarters of SWORD. (The counterpart to SHIELD that deals with Secret Alien Stuff).

[Toastkart]

Saw it this afternoon. Overall I enjoyed it. Some of the teenage drama was a little cringey. Then again, it was cringey in homecoming too. Since we're sharing our version of Spider-Man, I grew up on the '94 cartoon and the novels of the same era. An adult. I miss adult Spider-Man. That being said, Tom Holland has made Spider-Man his own thing and I've enjoyed his work so far. There are a couple things that stood out for me.

What exactly did they need Edith for? They obviously already had control of the drones for the earlier elemental attacks. Was it just a matter of scale? Did I miss something?

Fury's eye looked like it had more of a defined claw mark rather than the more radial scar it had previously. I didn't notice if this was also the case in endgame. I know they took a gamble on making it a joke, but it fell very flat for me (and apparently, a lot of people). To see it carried forward is kind of a letdown. That being said, I couldn't tell if it was present in the end credits scene, which may make this complaint moot.

As mentioned a couple of times by others, I really enjoyed Peter's building the suit scene. Although I already miss the extra appendages of the Iron Spider suit. Narratively speaking, it makes a lot of sense to move on and build a new suit. Practically speaking I would think I'd want extra arms when dealing with a horde of drones that I can't really see.

Having said that, his spider-sense fight scene was wicked cool.

Spoiler: Far From Home

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As for Far From Home, Ben gets another reference but again, it's not a direct one. The suitcase Peter uses to go to Europe belonged to Ben. His initials are on it.

Benjamin Franklin Pierce?

[Douglas]

I actually appreciated the out-of-suit and out-of-web actions, to follow through with Homecoming's idea that Peter being Spider-Man is more than just having the suit (well, until he had to resort to Starktech....again).

He needed Starktech, yes, but he needed his Spiderman abilities too. If either had been missing, he would have lost. Without Starktech he can't disable enough of the drones fast enough to matter. Without his powers he can't tell what's really going on well enough to fight through the illusions.

Spoiler: Kill Them All

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Wouldn’t Tony Stark have written a “don’t kill Peter Parker” subroutine into EDITH’s protocols? His biosignature is known to the Stark database, so why wouldn’t Stark have given the kid that extra layer of protection?

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Why would Tony have expected such a specific thing to be needed? The line where Edith tells Mysterio that the drones aren't shooting because he's too close to the target area indicates that there is a rule against harming the person giving the orders, which Tony expected would be Peter. Making a version of that rule specific to Peter himself would only make sense if he anticipated that Peter might either be suicidal or hand over control to someone who betrays him, and there's not much reason for Tony to expect either possibility.

What exactly did they need Edith for? They obviously already had control of the drones for the earlier elemental attacks. Was it just a matter of scale? Did I miss something?

Just scale, and possibly some precision and quality, I think. They had some drones, but not the vast stockpile that Edith controlled and probably not made by Tony, so their resources without Edith may have been insufficient to pull off the bigger "Avengers-level threat" illusion.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Douglas
They had some drones, but not the vast stockpile that Edith controlled and probably not made by Tony, so their resources without Edith may have been insufficient to pull off the bigger "Avengers-level threat" illusion.

This was my impression as well. However….

Spoiler

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That doesn’t explain how the Mexican village was so utterly destroyed, unless they were using ordinary munitions or something.

Originally Posted by Douglas
Why would Tony have expected such a specific thing to be needed?

Spoiler

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Seems like a pretty basic failsafe. If you can program for a friendly biosignature, why not include it?

This is the same Tony Stark who knows that Peter disabled the “Training Wheels” protocol, so anything could happen. Given how much he thinks of the kid, I'd expect he'd want to reduce the possibilities of a fatal accident.

Originally Posted by Douglas
He needed Starktech, yes, but he needed his Spiderman abilities too.

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I have to say, Tony Stark loomed large over this film, and maybe a little too large.

That said, the plot was pretty much built around access to Stark’s resources—access for both Peter and Mysterio—and it’s hard to imagine how it would’ve played out otherwise.

That said, it does seem a little odd that Stark would leave control of orbiting weapons platforms to a sixteen-year-old kid, and I have to wonder what Pepper would’ve said about it. I don’t think she really knows Peter, apart from his walking out on her press conference, which wasn’t the best way to impress her. That’s not a pair I can really see doing lunch.

On the other hand, I can definitely see Pepper giving MJ some advice on how to deal with being the SO of a superhero. Pepper is probably the leading authority on that one.

[KillianHawkeye]

NIGHT MONKEY!!!

That is all.

[Psyren]

What's the deal with the airport security casually ignoring Pete's Spider Suit? Did they really just think he's cosplaying or something?

If you saw a spiderman costume in some kid's luggage, would you immediately think they were actually Spiderman? Especially in a foreign country thousands of miles away from New York City. And we don't even know how well-known Spidey even is in the MCU.

Did the movie forget showing us what happened to Quentin Beck's motley crew, or was that a deliberate omission?

Probably deliberate, and one of them (particularly the hacker) could probably get recycled as a different C-list Marvel villain down the line. (Did he get a name?)

If EDITH ready existed prior to Stark's death, why didn't he just deploy them in Endgame?

Lingering PTSD from Infinity War? Not fully weaponized yet?

Why does it seem like The Blip barely affected the lives of the main cast, heck society in general from what was shown in the movie?

The main cast of this, for whatever reason, were almost all blipped. Peter, MJ, Ned, Fury, Hill, Happy etc.

Even without Strange, aren't there other sorcerers in different jurisdictions across the continents? Considering the claim that the threat was inter-universal, this seems like a good reason for the sorcerers to get involved.

I expect that we're about to find out what was keeping Strange and the sorcerers busy in DS2.

Why is Fury getting help from a 16 year old, instead of reaching out to Falcon, Bucky, Wanda, or War Machine?

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1) That wasn't Fury.

2) Mysterio arranged the energy spikes so that they had minimal time to react, so even if they had thought they needed backup (which thanks to Mysterio's chicanery, they didn't) they wouldn't really have had time to send for anyone who wasn't already in the area (like Spidey.)

This was my impression as well. However….

Spoiler

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That doesn’t explain how the Mexican village was so utterly destroyed, unless they were using ordinary munitions or something.

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They were - without EDITH, they were using ordinary explosives/ballistics set up ahead of time in a predetermined area and concealed by all their projectors. With EDITH, the illusions were able to move and change on the fly.

[Lvl45DM!]

Oh yeah, I forgot about "MJ" lol. He being "Edgy" was really annoying. When she dropped that part of her character, halfway for that little bit and just was.... human? she was ALOT more cooler.

I actually really like MJ. She clearly has some social anxiety issues, and she puts up a front, but watching her get dorkishly happy about the Italian word 'bo' was great, just like the fact that she was low-key stalking Peter in the first movie, cos she liked him.

[GloatingSwine]

Just scale, and possibly some precision and quality, I think. They had some drones, but not the vast stockpile that Edith controlled and probably not made by Tony, so their resources without Edith may have been insufficient to pull off the bigger "Avengers-level threat" illusion.

The drones were all designed by box of scraps guy, including the ones that were part of EDITH. So the ones they stole along with Edith were the same design as the ones they had, they just had less of them, dozens instead of hundreds.

They already had plenty of destructive capability, with some kind of force projectors that were able to smash buildings, so they could put on a fair old show already.

[Worrkim]

I actually really like MJ. She clearly has some social anxiety issues, and she puts up a front, but watching her get dorkishly happy about the Italian word 'bo' was great, just like the fact that she was low-key stalking Peter in the first movie, cos she liked him.

I like her very much,sometimes,i think i am very similar to her,both have secial anxiety issues,but always put on a happy and relaxed look,because we are hiding our inner fear.

[Rodin]

I expect that we're about to find out what was keeping Strange and the sorcerers busy in DS2.

I doubt they were too busy.

Spoiler: More likely

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Fake Fury pretty clearly doesn't have a way to contact the sorcerors. If he did, he would have contacted Strange to ask him about the Elementals, and Strange would have told him it's a crock.

Other than being contacted directly, the only way Strange would get involved is if there's an actual magical threat to the world. Mysterio made everything up and is just a dude with a bunch of drones, so it doesn't fall into Strange's jurisdiction.

[Psyren]

I doubt they were too busy.

Spoiler: More likely

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Fake Fury pretty clearly doesn't have a way to contact the sorcerors. If he did, he would have contacted Strange to ask him about the Elementals, and Strange would have told him it's a crock.

Other than being contacted directly, the only way Strange would get involved is if there's an actual magical threat to the world. Mysterio made everything up and is just a dude with a bunch of drones, so it doesn't fall into Strange's jurisdiction.

The two aren't mutually exclusive:

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It's possible that Talos had no idea how to contact them, AND that something we'll learn about later was keeping the European branches quite busy.

As for them only getting involved if a threat is magical, we saw that the Ancient One was mixing it up in the attack on New York in Endgame.

[GloatingSwine]

The two aren't mutually exclusive:

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It's possible that Talos had no idea how to contact them, AND that something we'll learn about later was keeping the European branches quite busy.

As for them only getting involved if a threat is magical, we saw that the Ancient One was mixing it up in the attack on New York in Endgame.

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The Ancient One was defending the Sanctum Sanctorum and not a lot else. She certainly didn't turn her prodigious magical powers to the general defence of the city, despite likely being able to turn the entire invasion inside out just by wanting it

[KillianHawkeye]

The main cast of this, for whatever reason, were almost all blipped. Peter, MJ, Ned, Fury, Hill, Happy etc.

Point of order: Happy was not blipped. He lived the 5 years. He even grew a beard. It was a blip beard.