Spider-Man moves from '80s comedy to 'spy mission' in Far From Home

The first full trailer for Spider-Man: Far From Home teased plenty of exciting new twists and turns for the webslinger to take on after the epic events of Endgame. Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) is around pretending to be a hero (c’mon, we’re all thinking it) while his crush on MJ is reaching maximum capacity. But now that he’s galavanting around in Europe, Peter Parker is going to be more James Bond than John Hughes.

Shifting genres completely from Homecoming takes a lot of nerve — especially when that film was so well-recieved — but it’s indicative of just how much is going to be different in the MCU’s first Spider-sequel.

Fans knew that Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury and Jon Favreau’s Happy Hogan were going to be Spidey’s odd couple chaperones during his time abroad, but not in a full-blown 007 situation. Fandango reports from the film’s London set that the thrills are here to stay as the series’ tone has shifted.

“This film is kind of like if Spider-Man: Homecoming and Spectre had a baby,” star Tom Holland said. “It has the sexy aspect of being in Europe, of having the spy mission undertone, but at the heart of it is still a very similar film to Spider-Man: Homecoming in the sense that it's really about Peter and his friends and the kids and the lighthearted humor that they have.”

Yet there’s not much lighthearted about the black stealth suit Holland will be wearing during his adventures. In fact, Spider-Man “wears it right up until the third act of the movie,” said executive producer Eric Hauserman Carroll. “By that point, allegiances have shifted and so on, so maybe he's decided he doesn't want to wear Nick Fury's costume anymore. It is a big part of the movie, and he is wearing it for more or less the second act of the film.”

And that allegiance-shifting (or spy-like two-faced trickery) could also have something to do with Mysterio, a villain in the comics and...a big brother in the film? “It's very much big brother/little brother” relationship between the two, according to Holland. “Mysterio is always the one sort of sticking up for me and patting me on the back and telling me I'm doing a good job.” As Spider-Man helps him beat the various elementals that may or may not have been created by the special effects wizard Mysterio, it could just be setting Gyllenhaal’s character up for a fall.

“Similar to what we did with Mordo in Doctor Strange, we wanted to give [Peter and Quentin] time to have a relationship so that when, if we get into doing something different with Mysterio, it really feels like a betrayal,” Carroll said. And yes, much of the film will still be small-scale personal drama. Peter’s still a high schooler, after all.

That’s why Brad (Remy Hii) is almost as big a baddie as those monsters: he makes Peter jealous over MJ. Since Peter is kind of a chaotic mess, when he’s flustered by this, it gets amplified fast. “Peter has some technology after meeting up with Nick Fury and tries to use that to make Brad look bad,” Carroll teased. “He almost blows up his bus with some weaponized drones.” This is also at a time when Ned has a girlfriend of his own in Betty Brant, so there’s that added pressure on Peter too.

But all the personal stuff becomes paramount, like in all spy thrillers, when the heroes realize just how deep they’re in. In fact, even Nick Fury might not be as safe as he seems, since Carroll refused to deny that Numan Acar’s Dimitri is actually the Chameleon. How sure are we that that’s really Fury?

Spider-Man: Far From Home hits theaters on July 2.