Hahahaha. True.
True, of course. The other thing about it is that, from a long-term perspective, removing 1/2 the population would be repopulated fairly quickly. The current human doubling time is 61 years, and a few years would be shaved off by the inevitable global baby boom.
I mean, remember that this is a universe where people already know that aliens and other worlds exist, and that there are people with superpowers. I would think anyone and his mother would try to find some way to climb the hierarchy of superpowers at this point since that’s clearly the key to ultimate power, and it’s known to exist. Religions are also mostly pointless in this universe, which could lead to major depression in large chunks of the globe.
So it’s a very different Earth than ours already. Most humans should really be experiencing major anxiety at this point, as a universe with such powerful agents should easily be able to wipe Earth out at some point. The first snap is devastating, but not really that unsurprising given how much danger Earth has already been exposed to.
Even in a superhero realm of existence, losing half the population of the universe is a surprising thing.
I’m not sure that follows. Religion is still a major part of our culture today, and I don’t know why that would change just because superheroes exist.
Without getting into some kind of theological argument, I think the place of god and the specialness and uniqueness of humanity is a big part of many religions. Once you have plenty of god-like beings and the universe is found to be full of aliens, who have lives just as full as humans’, you’d have a major crisis, or at least a major adaptation period.
An external threat, or even just the existence of an ‘other’, could also serve to unify humanity, making national, racial and religious divisions seem minor.
There was a sci-fi show called Babylon 5 where various alien races (and the humans) continued to have religious beliefs far into the future. When asked about it, the show’s creator said, “Religion has been part of society for thousands of years; I don’t see why people would abandon that, just because aliens and spaceships exist.”
Just got home from this. Overall, it was fine. But I found the cutesy Ned / Betty relationship humour overdone. I would rate this as a weaker MCU offering, although I really thought Gyllenhall (sp?!) did a great job.
In terms of Peter’s identity, they have the solution right there in the post-credits scene: Skrull takes Peter’s shape, shows up with Spider-Man on TV and says, “I’m not Spider-Man!” and then the Spidey says, “Nope!” and swings away.
Watched this yesterday.
It was fine. Some cool sequences, I continue to like Tom Holland as Spider-Man, the approach to Mysterio was inspired, I love this iteration of MJ, but somehow all the things I liked only managed to come together to create a solid, rather than amazing movie. Not quite sure why. Maybe because it never quite seemed like there was anything serious at stake - we knew they wouldn’t kill Peter’s adorkable friends/classmates, and Fury was equally obviously never in danger.
Loved the JJ cameo at the end. Intrigued about what they plan for the future of Spider-Man in the MCU. Considering this iteration of the Daily Bugle, I wonder whether we are going to get a commentary on fake news and social media hate mobs in the coming film(s).
Fan fact: there was a lot chatter in19th century during the whole “Is there life on Mars or other planets?” controversy (“canals” and whatnot) about the theological implications of intelligent life on other worlds. And a lot of Christian theologians were perfectly fine with the notion, on the grounds that, 1) the Bible never says anything about what God might have been doing on other worlds, 2) God surely made those other worlds for some purpose as part of the divine Plan, and 3) it would be presumptuous for man to decide God couldn’t create intelligent life elsewhere if He wanted to.
Of course, if there were intelligent beings on other planets, then they were surely heathens that needed to be saved. But that wasn’t a strange or novel idea: heathens on Mars would be just like heathens in Asia or Africa or whatever, only further away.
It’s the distinct lack of Michael Keaton that hurts this movie.
Not bad, not great. Unfortunately, the whole movie turns on the Mysterio reveal, that anyone who’s read the comics is not surprised by at all…
Glad they had the post credit scenes, the failure to have one in Avengers: Endgame is still a decision that completely baffles me.
PS There is a delicious irony in paying the Senior admission to a comic book movie!
Yeah, Keaton inspired a lot of menace. Mysterio was cool, but the palpable menace was missing. Gargan also inspired menace in his bits of the first one.
As to the Skrulls, if we get the FF and the Super Skrull with a 1920’s gangster skrull community, I’ll be very happy.
Missed the JJJ scene but got back from the bathroom in time for the Nick Fury in space end credit scene, but I’m completely flummoxed as to what it means. Guessing Guardians 3/Adam Warlock but I really have no clue.
I agree. I loved the initial reveal because it was so weird and surprising, and in retrospect very fitting the way it felt like a director said “Cut, that’s a wrap” and everybody dropped their roles and relaxed. But his speech was As You Know, Bob at its worst and what he said about his motivation and their plans and goals made no sense at all. Most disappointing scene in the movie.
I saw that scene a different way. They all are kinda nerdy outcasts and at that point they’re only starting to realize their plan worked. It’s kind of an uneasy euphoria where even Mysterio’s character is evolving into more than just the disgruntled tech guy.
I mean, it totally felt like an office speech among the cubicles after a project comes together and I think that was exactly what they were going for. Awkward, yet triumphant.
Exactly my impression. This was the speech revealing how the goodies had been tricked by a bunch of awkward, disgruntled ex-employees, and also the transformation of Mysterio into a real villain - an uncomfortable step for many of them.
Yeah which is weird and silly for villains, but at the same time… this is a different kind of villain/group. The way they move to murder is… well it’s interesting.
Many Spider-Man villains are like Mysterio, though. They’re smaller common folk who have been wronged somewhere along the way and see their villainy as a form of simple retribution for the misdeeds against them and if someone gets hurt along the way, that’s ok with them… until it leads to larger collateral damage and death, when they usually either tip over into full on evil or they start to find their way back (or get locked up and eventually become an anti-hero after their suit has a baby and unleashes a serial killer cellmate…).
Even Homecoming follows this model. Vulture is just looking out for his wife and daughter, right? Yeah, Michael Keaton is a different kind of menacing figure (“I’m Batman!”), but ultimately he kinda likes Pete and he’s not all bad or he’d have given him up to Mac Gargan (future Scorpion) when he got in the clink.
I like Far From Home more and more as I think about it and discuss it with people. Spidey’s a good fish out of water and he did get his ass kicked thoroughly in this one which is classic Spider-Man too. The Mysterio sequence in the middle that ends with him hit by the train is just brilliant. That’s right off the comic book pages. I can’t believe it was in a Sony produced Spider-Man movie tbh given how much they’ve gotten wrong through the years.
The only scene that I really disliked was when MJ came to him on the bridge after the final battle. There’s no one else there and that’s just totally wrong given the scale of the destruction and the conflict we just saw. It was like London suddenly went silent and it was way too Hollywood for this film.
Thing is, both Vulture in Homecoming and Killian in Iron Man 3 were much more effective, because those movies made sure we really felt the resentment of the characters. They did that by devoting some time to exploring where the resentment came from up front and early on.
Here the “And now I’ll get my revenge!!!” speech doesn’t have the same impact, both because we don’t even know what’s going on until the middle of the movie (and so we’re distracted by a host of other things that are on fire at the same time,) The very intentional “I’m giving a kinda lame team-building speech at a corporate event” vibe also tends to undercut any kind of emotion.
Not telling us anything about the villain’s real motivations until the middle of the movie and using the intentionally-stiff speech formula were both conscious choices that increased the degree of difficulty for the writers/director/actors. They didn’t quite stick the landing.
(You can admire them for trying and still wonder whether they should have chosen an easier degree of difficulty.)
I liked the movie. I did, but that villain reveal sucked (to me) for the reasons I already posted and it was a lesser MCU movie overall. I didn’t care about the villain. I didn’t care about Pete’s girlfriend issues. I absolutely didn’t care about his friend’s 48hr crush. In Homecoming I cared about all of that stuff. This just felt like a throwaway adventure with no stakes until the post-credit scene.
On top of all that, the Skrull stuff was dumb as Hell.
But hey, J Jonah Jameson! So it wasn’t a loss.