Multiverse Allusions and Illusions
(originally posted on IMDb 3 July 2019)

It took 23 movies, but the Marvel Cinematic Universe finally has a thoroughly self-reflexive entry with "Spider-Man: Far From Home," and it's clever enough to make this one of the best of the entire series. In more ways than one, "Avengers: Endgame" (2019) irrevocably altered the universe. The introduction of time travel--which allowed the movie to revisit and annotate prior MCU entries--already pointed the way for the movie-within-a-movie concept employed here. And, indeed, much of this one is spent ruminating over the fallout of "Endgame." The antagonist, Mysterio, is at the center of this construction; he uses an image projection system to create illusions--essentially, he directs a movie-within-a-movie, for what is cinema, especially one as laden with CGI and fantastic superhuman characters, if not an illusion. Like other MCU movies, Mysterio's projections involve destroying whole cities as spectators look on with awe. This isn't the usual silly alien invasion fluff. It's a movie versus a movie within. And no hero in the MCU is better equipped for this allusive turn than the "really old"-movie-referencing web-slinger Spiderman. Heretofore merely concerned with being a local hero of reflecting similar films that came before him--"your friendly neighborhood Spiderman," who, say, would run through backyards like in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" (1986)--he's now fully invested in meta cinematic universe building.

Of course, there's still the obligatory romantic pining and the high-school jokes are a plenty, and the sequel follows the traditional route of being a globe-trotting follow-up (including the countries in large text across the screen alongside the names of famous cities, lest someone mistake Venice, Italy for Venice Beach, I guess). But, I love the self-reflexive meta-narrative. This is a cinematic multiverse (and a rather apt response to the stakes for complexly-layered narrative being raised by "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" (2018), I might add). One of the illusions Mysterio puts Spiderman through is especially wonderful in its surrealism, and the climax essentially comprises Spidey entering Mysterio's movie to deconstruct the illusion, which alludes to what the entire meta-narrative construction is subtly doing in the first place.

Even the after-credits scenes, which are often merely irrelevant bits of humor in these superhero flicks, furthers this construction and deconstruction. The shapeshifting (another form of illusion) aliens from "Captain Marvel" (2019) make a return, and Fury gets up to leave a virtual-reality beach he's vacationing in, complete with an illusion on a screen. He's figuratively doing the same thing patrons of "Far From Home" are about to do: exit the theatre. Moreover, these illusions specifically allude--similar to "Endgame" in its traveling back in time to past movies--to prior pictures in the MCU, such as the "BARF" virtual reality show put on by Tony in "Captain America: Civil War" (2016), the joke recalling Tony's revelatory press conference from "Iron Man" (2008) and Fury's virtual-reality room recalling Loki's (another shapeshifting master of illusion, by the way) prison cell from "Thor: The Dark World" (2013).

Perhaps, the only thing I'm not sure if I'm keen on here is Peter Parker continuing to execute his powers on behalf of the techno-corporate overlords and private clandestine military outfits of Stark Industries and S.H.I.E.L.D.--most conspicuously by idolizing the late Tony Stark. None of which is to dwell on the wisdom or lack thereof of handing over a vast arsenal of weaponry to a teenager. As in "Spider-Man: Homecoming" (2016), those looking to compete with these masters of plutocracy are labelled terrorists--as with Vulture, as with Mysterio and the other disaffected workers held under the grandiose thumb of Iron Man, even from the grave. One wonders what the multitude of visual effects artists and other laborers churning out these productions for the likes of Bob Iger or Kenichiro Yoshida make of this narrative.

The DC universe has a similar situation with the billionaire Batman, and like him, the protector of moneyed interests and practitioner of militarized invasions of the citizenry's rights, (after all, Parker deletes a peer's cell-phone picture and accidentally orders a drone strike on him, to boot), Spiderman either dies or lives long enough (even if still in high school) to see himself become the villain--at least according to the Daily Bugle. Because he's the hero the universe deserves, but not the one it needs right now.... He's a dark knight.