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The Perfect Spider-Man Villain
Warning, the following article contains spoilers for Spider-Man: Far From Home
Like any good superhero, Spider-Man has a great pantheon of villains. Many we’ve seen on screen like The Green Goblin, Dr. Octopus, The Vulture, and The Lizard. Many more we’d like to still see like Kraven The Hunter, Hobgoblin, Chameleon, and Carnage. Yet out of all the villains Marvel had at their finger tips for Spider-Man to face in Far From Home, they chose Mysterio and it may have been the perfect villain.
Hindsight of course is 20–20, but Mysterio in the comics differs from the origins of Quinton Beck in the film. In the comics, Beck is a special effects artist who turns his talents towards crime, using illusions and misdirection as his stock in trade against the webslinger. He’s not a physically imposing villain, unable to actually face Spider-Man in an actual fight. Once the illusions are gone he’s more or less a joke.
In the film, we have a similar skill set for Quinton Beck rooted in the modern visual effects and hologram work used to create the appearance of him as a hero. His motivations however, choosing to appear a hero only for the platform it creates, demonstrates a perfect conflict against the very core of who Spider-Man is.
Conflicting ideology between the hero and villain is the driving energy of a film, in Far From…
