Nerd Processor
Marvel’s Spider-Man Has an Iron Man Problem
Spider-Man may take center stage for now, but someone’s going to need to put on that armor eventually
(This post contains spoilers for Avengers: Endgame, but come on.)
Avengers: Endgame may end up as the highest-grossing movie of all time — it’s very close to edging out Avatar — but it hasn’t earned all that money without a cost. It marked the end of Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, and now the Marvel Cinematic Universe has a Robert Downey Jr.-shaped hole that needs to be filled. In Spider-Man: Far From Home, Tom Holland’s Peter Parker is clearly being groomed for the position. Here’s why that won’t work.
Although Endgame was the conclusion to Marvel Studios’ first 11 years of cinematic storytelling, it turns out that Far From Home isn’t as much the beginning of something new as it is an epilogue to Robert Downey Jr.’s reign as Tony Stark. While the world mourns the loss of its biggest hero, Peter mourns the loss of his mentor. That is, until Stark’s right-hand man Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) arrives to give Peter the metaphorical key to Tony Stark’s kingdom of enhanced technology, i.e. Iron Man’s A.I.-enhanced sunglasses. In Far From Home, Peter is predictably wishy-washy about stepping into Tony’s shoes at…
