{"id":4962,"date":"2016-06-25T07:54:53","date_gmt":"2016-06-25T02:24:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=4962"},"modified":"2016-06-25T07:54:53","modified_gmt":"2016-06-25T02:24:53","slug":"spider-man-far-from-home-marvel-superhero-film-fake-news-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=4962","title":{"rendered":"Spider-Man: Far from Home is a Superhero Film for the Fake News Era"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A<\/span><\/p>movie that features an unusually smart high school kid with the mutant powers of a <\/span>spider<\/span><\/a> (and the adorable factor of Tom Holland) has no real business making a serious point about real-world issues. Aren\u2019t comic book movies supposed to be escapist fun? But <\/span>Spider-Man: Far from Home<\/span><\/i>, the first <\/span>MCU<\/span><\/a> film to release after the epoch-closing events of <\/span>Avengers: Endgame<\/span><\/i>, perfectly straddles the line between blockbuster entertainment and current affairs commentary, by making our friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man go toe-to-sticky toe with one of the most difficult adversaries he has ever faced: Fake news.<\/span>\n\n(Spoilers ahead for those who haven\u2019t watched Spider-Man: Far from Home.)<\/span><\/i>\n\nThis wouldn\u2019t be the first time that superhero films, despite their reputation as mindless CGI-fests, have surprisingly held up a mirror to society by taking very real fears and transplanting them into a fictional universe. Marvel in particular is especially good at this. <\/span>Captain America<\/span><\/i><\/a>: Civil War<\/span><\/i> dealt with unwarranted government surveillance at a time when we were all coming to terms with the fact that our privacy had been repeatedly breached online, and we were not as secure as we thought we were. <\/span>Avengers<\/span><\/i><\/a>: Age of Ultron<\/span><\/i> saw Earth\u2019s Mightiest Heroes strive to overcome a malevolent AI created by Tony Stark, just as we were beginning to learn about the implications this new technology might have on the world as we knew it.<\/span>\n\nFar from Home<\/span><\/i> follows in the tradition of these earlier MCU films that grapple with realism. In it, Jake Gyllenhaal plays the antagonist Mysterio, but the real villain is misinformation. Mysterio is a trickster, like Loki, except instead of superpowers he uses science in his deceptions. He presents himself as a hero, but the villains he vanquishes are of his own making \u2013 enemies made to seem real with projectors and attack drones. His aim is to be seen as Earth\u2019s saviour, a successor to <\/span>Tony Stark<\/span><\/a>, as it were. Even though his staged showdowns cause real damage, so strong is his grasp on the narrative of events that his myth starts to seem real. Peter Parker doesn\u2019t just have to fight against Mysterio and his drones, he has to fight against the widely accepted idea that Mysterio is one of the good guys.<\/span>\n\n\u201cPeople will believe anything,\u201d Mysterio tells Spider-Man during one of their confrontations. He could just as easily be talking about people in our world as the MCU.<\/span>\n\nJust last month, Amitabh Bachchan<\/span> tweeted<\/span><\/a> a video showing a NASA-designed machine that generates rainclouds to provide water to drought-stricken areas, and Big B thought that <\/span>India<\/span><\/a> needed such a machine ASAP. While his intentions were noble, the video was in fact fake, but by the time that was pointed out it had already reached his 37.6 million followers.<\/span>\n

Far from Home follows in the tradition of these earlier MCU films that grapple with realism.<\/blockquote>\nThere are darker implications to fake news as well. Last year, the IT Ministry<\/span> rebuked<\/span><\/a> WhatsApp for the harmful and false content that was being broadcast on its platform and leading to incidents of violence, lynching, and even death, from Maharashtra to Assam. Fake news reared its head again early this year, in the wake of the <\/span>Balakot<\/span><\/a> airstrikes. Images circulating on <\/span>WhatsApp<\/span><\/a>, supposedly of the damage left behind by the Indian Air Force, were proven to be photos of the aftermath of a suicide attack in Pakistan by<\/span> BBC<\/span><\/a> fact-checkers.<\/span>\n\nIn an age of rampant misinformation, Mysterio is the perfect villain, and a well-told lie can be harder to beat than any flesh-and-blood foe. <\/span>Far from Home <\/span><\/i>is self-aware of its subject matter, leaning into the fake news motif by updating <\/span>The Daily Bugle<\/span><\/i> from a tabloid to a conspiracy theory-peddling vlog in the mould of Alex Jones\u2019 <\/span>InfoWars<\/span><\/i>. The post-credits scene tips this hand entirely when a doctored clip of Spider-Man ordering drones to kill civilians is broadcast in Times Square. In a way, it\u2019s reminiscent of the outrage against <\/span>Kanhaiya Kumar<\/span><\/a> when doctored clips of him and other <\/span>JNU<\/span><\/a> students shouting anti-India slogans began circulating, and turned him into public enemy number one for a few weeks.<\/span>\n\nAfter the intergalactic scale of <\/span>Avengers: Endgame<\/span><\/i><\/a>, an MCU film that\u2019s more grounded in its plot is a welcome palate-cleanser. <\/span>Far from Home<\/span><\/i> also proves that the MCU still has fresh stories to tell, even as the curtain comes down on its most successful period to date. A lot of that is due to how well it pits Spider-Man, one of our favourite superheroes, against one of the greatest threats of our times. In the first film of Marvel\u2019s Phase Two, Spider-Man might be far from home, but he\u2019s closer to reality than ever before.\u00a0<\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spider-Man: Far from Home is proof that the MCU still has fresh stories to tell, even as the curtain comes down on its most successful period to date. In the first film of Marvel\u2019s Phase Two, Spider-Man might be far from home, but he\u2019s closer to reality than ever before.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":4963,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[1619,7670,4234,1448,8569,1745,4235,1451,4236,4237,2023,4467,8099],"class_list":["post-4962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop-culture","tag-avengers","tag-balakot","tag-captain-america","tag-dc","tag-far-from-home","tag-hollywood","tag-iron-man","tag-marvel","tag-marvel-cinematic-universe","tag-mcu","tag-movie","tag-spider-man","tag-tom-holland"],"yoast_head":"\nSpider-Man: Far from Home is a Superhero Film for the Fake News Era<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Spider-Man: Far from Home is proof that the MCU still has fresh stories to tell, even as the curtain comes down on its most successful period to date. 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