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MCU designer Ryan Meinerding deliberately made Mysterio into a rip-off of famous costumes

Mysterio’s a dramatic fraud all right, and that follows through to his costume design

News by Caroline Cao, Contributing writer

Published on Fri Nov 22 2024

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There's an argument to be made that 2019's Spider-Man: Far From Home is an allegory about the plight of VFX workers, laboring for hours and crunch time to bring to life the cinematic Marvel imagination, only to be under-appreciated while the movie star - Tom Holland’s Spider-Man in this case - gets the glory.

For those who haven't seen the movie, here's a brief synopsis: Motivated by disgruntlement against his former employer Tony Stark, Jake Gyllenhaal’s Mysterio sets out to make a name for himself as a superhero using stolen and repurposed technology and faked threats... and, in the process, becomes one such symbol of the under-appreciated worker plight I mentioned above. His villainous folly, though, is that the dramatic Mysterio also replicates and reinforces the kind of oppression he despises, exasperating the subordinates he claims he’s saving, while weaponizing deepfakes for nefarious means.

When Ryan Meinerding, Marvel Studios’ Head of Visual Development talked about his Mysterio design during his New York Comic Con 2024 spotlight panel, he reinforced this interpretation - and revealed a secret design hack that underscored the character's own lack of originality.

Meinerding mentioned that he purposefully designed Mysterio’s wardrobe to be a rip-off composite of several Marvel heroes, like Thor, Iron Man, and Doctor Strange. "Maybe you don't see that as an audience member [at first],” Meinerding explained, “until you figure out that he's a fraud and be like ‘Aw man, he just copied Vision's cape and Iron Man's chest piece.’”

On multiple levels, then, Mysterio was intentionally a derivative fraud. And the clues were right there in front of us the entire time.

Keep up to date on Popverse's Marvel coverage, with these highlights:

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Caroline Cao: Caroline Cao (she/her) is an NYC-based writer and Earthling who won’t shut up about cartoons, film, tv, and musical theatre. Her film/tv/theatre writing has popped up on /Film, Polygon, JoySauce, The Amp, and more. She also engages in writing chamber opera librettos. Ramen, pasta, and fanfic writing are some of her true loves.

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MCU designer Ryan Meinerding deliberately made Mysterio into a rip-off of famous costumes