Villain Review-Mysterio (Spider-Man: Far From Home)
Is Quentin Beck a good villain?
In a recent instalment of my blog, Matitya’s Many Musings on a Myriad of Matters,( linked here), I used the supervillain Mysterio (from the movie Spider-Man: Far From Home) as an example of a poorly done villain. I stand by that but it makes me think that I should explain my thoughts on Mysterio as a character in greater detail. Without further ado, here’s my review of Mysterio. (There will be spoilers.)
Character Introduction-4/10
The movie begins with the spymaster Nick Fury and his second-in-command Maria Hill investigating a storm because Fury suspects superhuman involvement. A man in green armour crashes from the sky to the ground, surrounded by green mist. The man gives them a confused look, while heroic music plays in the background, and asks “who are you?”. A monster attacks, so the man says “you don’t want any part of this” and blasts it with green lasers.
Comic book enthusiasts likely recognised him as Mysterio, based on his costume. It just so happens that the character was introduced in a comic book storyline, The Menace of Mysterio, wherein he’s portrayed as a special effects expert who uses his illusions to frame Spider-Man and poses as the ‘hero’ who will stop him. For viewers unfamiliar with the comics, however, it seemed as if writers were using a film about one superhero as a vehicle to introduce another one. The movie later has a plot twist that Mysterio was actually evil all along.
I ordinarily wouldn’t object to a plot twist villain having a misleading introductory scene but it wasn’t a well-done plot twist.
Mysterio is hailed as a hero for fighting against mindless element-themed monsters called the Elementals and that was the first red flag. This is a superhero movie and that means it will have villains, not just antagonists. The absence of any red herring functionally makes it that Mysterio must be the villain. Fury later introduces Mysterio to Peter Parker, claiming that Mysterio hails from an alternate universe. Peter immediately questions how that’s scientifically possible given the Many Worlds Theory doesn’t allow for the possibility of interactions of parallel universes. Fury and Hill give Peter a look, so Peter apologizes and Mysterio tells him never to apologize for being the smartest person in the room.
Meanwhile, Fury gifts Peter a pair of glasses, created by Iron Man, which control a vast array of heavily weaponised satellites and drones because Peter is the person to whom Iron Man bequeathed it. I’ll not focus on the plot-holes that that retroactively creates for the previous movies. (Peter was dead for five years and was resuscitated during the battle wherein Iron Man died, it wouldn’t have made sense for Iron Man to bequeath anything to Peter). Instead, I’ll point out that this is completely out of character for Fury. Fury’s canonically a spymaster who doesn’t trust anyone and whose secrets have secrets. He’s not the kind of person who would pass Iron Man’s technology to Peter simply to honour Iron Man’s wishes. He’d have held onto them to keep them out of the hands of anyone who was untrustworthy or irresponsible.
In any case, Peter (as Spider-Man) helps Mysterio fight the Elementals and Mysterio defeats them rather easily. (That itself would have been enough to know the Elementals were a red herring.) Mysterio goes out of his way to befriend Peter and Peter decides that Mysterio is a better successor to Iron Man than he is and transfers the glasses to him. Mysterio then reveals to his henchmen that their plan went swimmingly. His goal was to trick Fury into introducing him to Spider-Man, trick Spider-Man into giving him the glasses, use the technology the glasses commanded to simulate an “Avengers-level threat”, single-handedly defeat it, and be celebrated as a far greater hero than Iron Man ever was.
My issues with this twist are
1) The lack of a red herring makes it obvious
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2) The excuse Mysterio was using (hailing from another Universe) was too dumb to be taken seriously. Yes, I know this movie’s sequel prominently featured the Multiverse but it featured a scene of Dr. Strange botching a spell and inadvertently summoning people from other universes such that it wasn’t out of nowhere. Likewise, the animated movie Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse had mad scientists working on machines to enable interdimensional travel early in the film such that the Multiverse was set up, here it’s completely out of nowhere.
3) Mysterio has a dumb plan.
Firstly, Mysterio has an entire plethora of former Iron Man employees working as his henchmen (they were how he found out Iron Man willed the glasses to Peter) so it’s not clear why he couldn’t have used them to prevent the glasses from going to Fury in the first place. Secondly, his plan relied on Fury grabbing the Idiot Ball (ordinarily suspecting a ruse would be Fury’s first instinct.) Thirdly, his plan relied upon Fury reaching out to Spider-Man even though (as Peter points out within the movie) there are more than a fair share of superheroes much more qualified to deal with the situation than he is. Fourthly, even if Mysterio’s plan (somehow) worked perfectly, he would still lose. He lives in a world where Avengers-level threats are real. If Graviton were to attack, guess who people would call, the person who had already staved off an Avengers-level threat. But, considering Mysterio’s a fraud, Mysterio would lose. So, either Mysterio is killed or he’s exposed as a fraud. To quote Iron Man “there is no version of this where you come out on top”. I should hasten to add, and I cannot stress this point enough, this was Plan A! As Iron Man would put it “Not a great plan.” This isn’t a well-done twist.
Evil Deeds-10/10
As I’ve said elsewhere, the most important trait of a fictional villain is morally reprehensible behaviour. Ignoring the property damage and public endangerment Mysterio caused by staging his fights with the Elementals, Mysterio plans to kill Peter for suspecting that he’s a fraud. Mysterio uses his illusions to trick Peter into telling him who else knew and then tries to kill Peter’s friends (and Fury and Hill) to keep the secret. Mysterio even says
“More casualties, more coverage. I gotta cut through the static. London is a beautiful city, and it will suffer, but they can rebuild. I mean, if I’m gonna be the next Iron Man, I’ve gotta save the world from an Avengers-level threat. But, when its new savior descends, all those casualties will be forgotten.”
Mysterio also blames his henchmen for his own mistakes (and threatens to execute them for them) and mocks Peter while using his illusions to fight him. Peter outwits Mysterio, resulting in Mysterio’s death, but a dying Mysterio sends doctored footage to the Internet exposing Spider-Man’s secret identity as Peter Parker and framing Peter for murder.
Characterisation-6/10
Some villains are meant to be sympathetic. Others are meant to be unsympathetic. The writers were (probably) going for the former but delivered the latter. Mysterio claims that he created a “holographic system” that was “revolutionary” and had “limitless applications” only for Iron Man to rename it BARF (Binarily Augmented Retro Framing) to the amusement of his investors and turn it into a ‘self-therapy machine”. Mysterio claimed that he objected to this so Iron Man decided Mysterio was unstable and fired him. For the record, in the scene Mysterio is referencing, Iron Man’s audience is silent throughout the presentation (rather than laughing like Mysterio claims) and Iron Man explicitly says he’s working on a better acronym. That suggests Mysterio is an unreliable narrator such that his being unsympathetic might be by design.
My issue with that is that Mysterio (somehow) gets a lot of Iron Man’s employees to be his henchmen implying that quite a lot of them hate Iron Man as much as Mysterio does. That suggests that the movie is trying to imply Iron Man genuinely was as bad a boss as Mysterio claims he was. Furthermore, the movie tries to imply that Mysterio’s camaraderie with Peter was genuine (since he’s angry with his henchmen when he realises that he’ll likely have to kill Peter to keep his secret). That said it doesn’t make sense to take that at face value considering that he enjoys himself when tormenting Peter with his illusions (while trying to kill him). I don’t have a credible source for this but at least one website claims that the director said he didn’t consider Mysterio all bad (due to Mysterio’s appreciation for his crew). That would make sense considering in the scene wherein his henchmen are introduced, Mysterio sincerely thanks them for their help. The issue is that, in later scenes, Mysterio blames them for his own failures, berates them, and threatens them.
If Mysterio were meant to be pure evil, then the film did a good job characterising him that way but if (as I suspect) he was meant as a sympathetic villain then he very much failed. That’s why I don’t consider him a particularly compelling villain.
Final Score-67 %
