Ever since Avengers: Infinity War saw half the world’s population vanish in a single snap, there’s been the joke that a great Disney+ Marvel series could delve into the little details of just how the world logistically deals with such a monumental population shift. Turns out, it might not need a TV show, because Spider-Man: Far From Home will be digging into that.
As yesterday’s new, Endgame-spoiler-laden trailer showed, Far From Home is set in the immediate aftermath of Tony Stark’s final act: Snapping back the vanished people and heroes of Earth five years after they were first taken away by Thanos. That doesn’t just mean Peter Parker’s alive again for his next solo movie — it’d be a bit of a downer if he wasn’t! — but it means a whole bunch of logistical questions about just how life operates in the wake of such a cataclysmic shift even works.
We’ve already been wondering what it means for Peter’s school life — and the fact that he and his friends are still there, despite the fact that five years have passed. But on that ground level, what does such a radical population upheaval do to society?
According to director Jon Watts, speaking to Fandango about the trailer in a new interview, we’ll actually get to see some of that in the film’s premise, although with some New York sensibility thrown into the mix too:
So we get to see the neighbourhood from the first movie dealing with the implications of all of the crazy fallout of Endgame. And, you know, in classic New York style, everyone is just moving on and getting on with their daily lives. Ya know, half the people that disappeared are now back, so let’s move on.
So many things happened in Endgame, but you don’t see any of the fallout. So I used Peter Parker/Spider-Man as an opportunity to get that ground-level perspective to show you what it would look like if all these crazy things had happened. What would day-to-day life be? If you were snapped away, you’d have to work backwards and retake your midterms…
What about the little details of life and relationships and even banal things like, as Peter had to do in Far From Home’s first trailer, picking up a new passport? Well, according to Watts, that actually becomes a thing too:
That was one of the most fun things — just talking through what the most mundane implications would be. Like, your birthday on your driver’s licence or passport would say that you are five years older than you technically are. Those sorts of questions are just so fascinating to me, and I really wanted to get into the minutiae of it and really explore that.
It’s fun to see one of these movies actually attempt to get into the fannish nitty gritty of the impact behind the usual superpowered bluster. Typically that’s saved for fans to wonder themselves, while the movie itself focuses on the spectacle. It’s not all fun and games for Peter specifically though, because Watts also revealed one extra detail we’d been unsure of ever since Infinity War’s climax — poor Aunt May got got by the snappening:
She disappeared and came back.
Womp womp. Guess there’s gonna be a lot more sadness alongside the wry humour of the vanished’s return when Spider-Man: Far From Home hits theatres July 1.