Spider-Man: Far From HomeSave

Cold open. Ixtenco, Mexico. A coastal storm rolls in too fast. Nick Fury and Maria Hill, in a black SUV, pull into a flooded village square at sunset. They walk through the rubble with sidearms drawn. Out of the swirling dust and water a fifty-foot creature rises — a sand-and-water Elemental in vaguely humanoid shape, the same kind of figure from Hindu and Aztec elemental-mythology. The creature is throwing buildings around. Fury fires. Then a man in a green-and-gold cape and a goldfish-bowl helmet flies down out of the sky and engages the creature with green energy bursts. He defeats the Elemental in two minutes flat. He introduces himself to Fury as Quentin Beck, a refugee from an alternate Earth where similar Elementals destroyed his family. Fury hires him on the spot.

Cut to Queens. Peter Parker has just survived Endgame (2019). He's been blipped back from five years of nonexistence. Tony Stark is dead. May Parker is throwing a charity event for the homeless. Happy Hogan has been hanging around the apartment more often. Peter wants to take a break. His school class is going on a summer trip to Europe — Venice, Prague, Berlin, London — and he has planned every single moment around one objective: tell MJ how he feels and buy her a Black Dahlia necklace in Venice. He's brought a tactical playbook in his suitcase. He's left the Iron Spider suit at home. He wants to be Peter Parker on this trip, not Spider-Man.

Venice. Peter spots MJ — Michelle Jones, dry-witted, dark-haired, his lab partner — taking photos at a glass-blowing demonstration. He's about to make his move when a CGI water-elemental erupts from the canal and starts smashing the Plaza San Marco. Peter, with no suit and no plan, scrambles to evacuate civilians while Beck shows up in the green-cape Mysterio costume to engage the Elemental in midair. Beck blows the creature to mist. The European press goes nuts. Peter walks back to the school's hotel where Nick Fury is sitting in his bedroom waiting. "Bitch please, you've been to space." Fury kidnaps Peter onto a private SHIELD jet that night and takes him to Prague. Mr. Stark's executor at Stark Industries has delivered Peter a posthumous gift — a pair of slim black sunglasses with the engraving FOR THE NEXT TONY STARK on the inside. The glasses are called EDITH, an Earth-orbit Stark satellite network with control of every Stark security drone deployed worldwide. Peter wears them around Prague.

Prague. The school class is now staying at a grand hotel that Beck and Fury have arranged. There's an opera house party scheduled for the next night. The next Elemental — Fire — is reported to be incoming. Peter and Beck team up to fight it on the rooftops of Prague's Old Town. Beck flies. Peter swings. They take down the Fire Elemental in front of a cheering European crowd. Beck hugs Peter at the end. "You did good, kid. Tony would be proud." Peter, exhausted, in a borrowed black-and-gold Stark-built Night Monkey costume (because his hotel-room suit is back at the school and Peter has dye-stained it black to avoid identification), is feeling lighter than he's felt since the funeral. He's lost his mentor. He's gained a new one.

Then Peter accidentally hands Beck EDITH. Beck has been telling Peter all night that the only person worthy of Tony's legacy is someone with combat experience, someone responsible, someone Tony actually trusted. Not a kid in a hooded sweatshirt. Peter, feeling unworthy, walks Beck to a quiet bar and gives him the sunglasses. "I think you should have them. Tony would have wanted someone like you to have them." Beck slips the glasses on. EDITH grants him full administrative control of the Stark satellite network and every drone Stark Industries has ever produced. Beck walks out of the bar smiling. The audience watches Spider-Man hand his dead mentor's most powerful weapon to a man Beck just met yesterday.

Beck — alone in his Berlin warehouse — reveals to his team that he is not from another Earth, has no superpowers, and is not a hero. He is Quentin Beck, a former Stark Industries holographic-illusions specialist who was fired in 2016 after he attempted to use his employer-funded holographic prototype (BARF — Binary Augmented Retro-Framing, the same tech Tony used on the kid hologram in Civil War (2016)) to fake his own death therapy. Tony had named the tech BARF on a whim and Beck never forgave him. Beck has assembled a team of similarly-disgruntled ex-Stark engineers — including pyrotechnics expert William Ginter Riva, drone-warfare specialist Janice Lincoln, computer-graphics director Doug — and built a small army of drones with full-spectrum projection-and-pyrotechnic capability. The Elementals were never real. They were drone projections combined with carefully-staged civilian-evacuation pyrotechnics. Beck has staged the entire crisis to make himself the world's new most-popular Avenger. With EDITH he can now project anything he wants anywhere in the world.

Peter — meanwhile, in a Berlin train station the next morning — figures it out partway through a casual conversation with the school's chaperones. He sneaks back to Beck's secret warehouse off the train and finds the projection-drone setup in person. Beck catches him there. Beck spends the next ten minutes running Peter through a full sensory hallucination — Peter is suddenly inside a graveyard digging his way out of Tony Stark's grave, then on a chalkboard, then on a balcony with the dead Tony Stark whispering disappointment in his ear. The illusion ends with Peter unmasked. Beck whispers in his ear "you should have just taken the deal." Beck pushes Peter off the platform into the path of an oncoming bullet train. Peter is hit. The film holds on the impact.

Peter wakes up in a Dutch jail cell. He's been unconscious for six hours. He's bruised, in his civilian clothes, in the Netherlands. He has no phone, no passport, no EDITH glasses, and an entire fake-superhero world believing he is a murderer (Beck is going to use the Berlin drone footage to claim Peter killed him during a battle). He calls Happy Hogan from a Dutch landline. Happy flies a Stark Industries private jet to Holland in three hours flat. They reunite in an industrial workshop in the Netherlands where Happy lets Peter use Tony's mobile combat lab — every piece of Stark Industries combat tech in one room. Peter, to AC/DC's "Back in Black" on Happy's iPhone, builds himself a brand-new red-and-black Stark-engineered Spider-Man suit from scratch in three minutes of montage. The combat lab spits out the assembled suit and Peter slides it on. He calls Karen, the AI from Homecoming (2017). "Karen, plot a course for London."

Tower Bridge, London. Beck has staged a final "Elemental" attack — this time a composite creature of all four elements at once, the most elaborate drone projection of his career, with EDITH controlling thousands of micro-drones across central London. He's about to be photographed defeating it on the bridge and crowned Earth's new mightiest hero. Peter swings in mid-event, breaks the drone fleet's optical projection, and engages Beck directly. The fight is the cleanest superhero/illusionist fight Marvel has put on screen — Peter trusts his spider-sense (which the film names "Peter Tingle," much to Peter's mortification) over visual evidence, because Beck's drones can fake any visual but cannot fake the tingle. He fights through illusion after illusion — Mysterio holograms multiplying, the bridge dissolving, Beck appearing in a thousand places at once — by closing his eyes and trusting the feeling in the back of his head.

He breaks Beck's drone control. He pulls EDITH off Beck's face. Beck, in his own drone-fire crossfire, takes a shotgun-pellet hit from a friendly-fire drone and goes down on the bridge. He grips Peter's collar with his last breath. "Spider-Man… I never even got to tell you my real name. People need someone to believe in. People will believe whatever I want them to believe." He dies on the bridge. Peter takes EDITH back. Peter saves MJ and Ned and the rest of the field-trip class who have wandered into the climax. Peter and MJ kiss on the bridge in the rain.

Back in Queens. Peter and MJ — now together — are on a date in midtown Manhattan. Peter has bought her the Black Dahlia necklace. He's in his Stark-issued tux. He picks up MJ and swings her down the side of a Manhattan office building. She screams at him on the way down. "WHY DID YOU DO THAT?" "I thought you'd think it was romantic." "Don't EVER do that again." They land in the middle of Times Square at noon. The two of them are mid-laugh when every billboard in Times Square — and every billboard in every major city — simultaneously starts playing a Daily Bugle exclusive video broadcast.

J. Jonah Jameson — J.K. Simmons reprising his role from Sam Raimi's 2002 Spider-Man twenty years earlier — is on every screen. "HELLO! And welcome to the Daily Bugle, I'm J. Jonah Jameson, and we have BREAKING news on the recent attacks!" The video Jameson plays is a leaked Mysterio recording — Beck, before his death, narrating his version of events at a pre-recorded press-release angle, blaming Peter Parker for the Elemental attacks and accusing Peter Parker of murdering him. The video reveals Peter's full identity to the public. "SPIDER-MAN IS ACTUALLY PETER PARKER!!" Peter, in his Stark suit, in the middle of Times Square, looks at MJ. MJ is looking up at the screens. Every passerby in Times Square is looking at Peter. The film cuts to black on a thousand New Yorkers screaming Peter's name. End movie.