10 Genius Misdirects In MCU Movie Trailers
3. The Elementals Are The Antagonists - Spider-Man: Far From Home
Though even the most casual comic book fan was surely aware of Mysterio's status as a villain in the Spider-Man comics, the trailers for Spider-Man: Far From Home tried their damnedest to convince us that we were getting a benevolent rebooted version.
The trailers played-up the presence of Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) as basically Peter Parker's (Tom Holland) new mentor following Tony Stark's death in Avengers: Endgame - a "cool uncle", if you like.
Given that the MCU has a history of remixing heroes and villains alike in their own image, it wasn't exactly a leap to believe that this Mysterio from an alternate universe could really be a hero, especially with the trailers showing off the antagonistic Elementals for Spidey and Mysterio to contend with.
Yet half-way through the film director Jon Watts violently pulls the rug out, revealing that Mysterio aka Quentin Beck is a disgruntled former employee of Stark Industries who has used advanced technology to depict himself as a superhero, with the Elementals in fact being advanced projections.
Even though some fans suspected Mysterio was the primary antagonist all along, the trailers really worked hard to misdirect us, pointing to the big, bad Elementals as the real villains.
For both audiences and Peter himself, the Elementals were a distraction intended to prevent us from seeing Beck's own villainy.