Spider-Man: Far From Homehas no shortage of twists018 Archivesturns, but it saves one of its biggest shocks for the very end: J.K. Simmons reprising his role of J. Jonah Jameson from the Sam Raimi Spider-Man trilogy.
At the screening I attended, the moment elicited gasps from the audience. But behind the scenes, producer Kevin Feige revealed, the casting was a long time coming.
"To bring to life a new version of J. Jonah Jameson was pretty exciting, and was a plan, at least a dream, that we've had from the very beginning of working with Sony on the MCU Spider-Man," he said on a call with Mashable.
To be sure, this Jameson seems a bit different from the one Simmons played previously -- making it, as Feige pointed out, "the first time that an actor is doing a new incarnation of a character they’ve played before" in the MCU.
"It seems pretty resonant and pretty close to home in some ways -- not so far from home, as one might say."
The Raimi films portrayed the character as a fast-talking, cigar-chomping editor with a hardass attitude and a nose for scandal. But the Jameson of Far From Homeis closer to an Alex Jones type, a blowhard conspiracy theorist all too eager to spread anti-Spider-Man lies through his website, TheDailyBugle.net. Apparently, not even the MCU is free from the scourge of fake news.
"It's pretty hard to avoid as an American these days," producer Amy Pascal told me over the phone.
"It seems to be the most important question that we are all asking ourselves," she continued. "It seems like this was the right time to tell this story, because it has some actual historical significance to the world we're living in, and it was the right story to tell about Peter having to grow up, because that’s something that you have to deal with as you get older."
Or, as Feige put it: "It seems pretty resonant and pretty close to home in some ways -- not so far from home, as one might say."
But actually getting Simmons on board? "Oh God, that was very easy," said Pascal.
According to Feige, all it took for Simmons was one meeting with Pascal, with whom he'd worked on the Raimi films, and one with director Jon Watts, in which the Far From Homedirector explained the idea. "He was totally up for it," gushed Feige.
SEE ALSO: 'Spider-Man: Far From Home' stars were given redacted scripts to avoid spoilersFor Watts, Simmons wasn't just the best man for the role, he was the only one. "There was honestly no question. It just had to be J.K. Simmons," he told Mashable in a phone interview.
"It was such an iconic performance, and it’s so satisfying to see him step back into that role, that there was never talk about it being anyone else. It was the easiest decision in the whole movie."
As usual for a big surprise in a Marvel movie, part of the challenge was keeping it under wraps long enough for moviegoers to discover it on their own. "We did it very late in the process, to try not to have it leak or be revealed, which, knock on wood, it didn't," Feige said.
Simmons' return proved to be the perfect final touch for Far From Home, dovetailing with the film's overarching themes of deception and disillusionment.
"He loved playing the character in Sam's movies, and he was thrilled and understood that him coming back and being a different version of J. Jonah Jameson was the absolute right thing for this time and the right thing for this story," said Pascal.
"The nice thing is that the tags at the end, Mysterio, what Peter is going through -- all those things are connected."
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