Home Entertainment Jamie Foxx confirms his return as Electro in Spider-Man sequel, says he won’t be blue this time

Jamie Foxx confirms his return as Electro in Spider-Man sequel, says he won’t be blue this time

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When news broke on Friday morning that Jamie Foxx would somehow be reprising his role as Max Dillon aka the villainous Electro from 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2 in Marvel’s upcoming Spider-Man: Far From Home sequel, the whole world went “WHAT?!”. Or, more appropriately, “WATT!” (high five, Original Heretic!). Upon release, the Andrew Garfield-led TASM2 had been so poorly received that it prompted Spider-Man movie rights owners Sony to scrap its planned trilogy two-thirds of the way in and instead sign a historic co-production deal with Marvel, rebooting the character into the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Tom Holland now under the mask of the wall-crawler.

So with the franchise under new co-management and the new films totally unrelated to the TASM franchise, how could Foxx be back? Must have just been a reporting error, right? Well, no. This is actually happening. And we got official confirmation this weekend past from none other than Foxx himself via a post on his personal Instagram account… which he then promptly deleted. Oops. Luckily, nothing escapes the internet and we learned one rather important aspect of Foxx’s return as Electro: He won’t be blue.

Tell Spidey let’s run it back!… super excited to part of the new marvel Spider-Man new installment… can’t wait for y’all to check the new one. And I won’t be blue in this one!! But a thousand percent badass!!!

So what does this mean? Well, firstly, I think Foxx may have let the electric cat out of the bag about the character redesign early when he wasn’t supposed to and subsequently got slapped down by Sony/Marvel. Secondly, maybe we were wrong in our speculation that the upcoming third Spider-Man film would be delving into the multiverse and seeing Holland’s Spidey somehow accessing the universe in which TASM2 took place. Foxx’s Electro [SPOILER ALERT] died at the end of that film, so it wouldn’t actually make sense to bring him back as is.

Instead, this is more than likely going to be handled in the same way that they recently handled the return of J. Jonah Jameson. In Far From Home’s post-credits scene, it’s revealed that actor J.K. Simmons, who famously played the character in the original Sam Raimi-directed Spider-Man trilogy from the early 2000s, would play the fiery newsman again, but a totally new version of him. According to leaked transcripts of Sony emails, Marvel boss Kevin Feige had reportedly been a big fan of Foxx’s iteration of Max Dillon in TASM2 – specifically him being turned into Electro by accidentally falling into a tank of genetically modified electric eels – but had provided Sony with criticisms about certain other aspects of the character’s nebbish behaviour at the time. Sony listened to some of those suggestions (like Electro using the children’s song of “Itsy Bitsy Spider”) but ignored others – the latter to their downfall as those criticisms proved very valid.

So this could just be Feige’s way of getting to work with the Oscar-nominated Foxx and correcting where he thinks Sony went wrong in the past. And that may include not turning Foxx’s Dillon into a glowing angry Smurf in a rubber gimp suit. Sounds pretty good to me as I would have killed for a proper adaptation of Electro’s iconic green and yellow outfit from the comics.

That being said, while Marvel has been far more willing to embrace more faithful adaptations of its characters than others, Michael Keaton’s Vulture in Spider-Man: Homecoming also showed that they won’t hesitate to dramatically redesign a character to have almost nothing in common with the source material if the story and actor warrants it. Give Foxx the type of killer material they gave Keaton and I wouldn’t care if they design his character to be a neon pink and gold Power Ranger.

Recent reports have stated that the still-untitled film, which will see franchise director Jon Watts behind the camera again, will actually start production within the next month or so. That’s very soon for a movie we still know practically nothing about, but hopefully that will be changing as well and we can clear up this whole Electro mystery.

Last Updated: October 5, 2020

4 Comments

  1. I accept your high five!

    Reply

  2. Banana Jim

    October 5, 2020 at 11:34

    It’s not just Jamie Foxx that might be returning but Feige even wants to bring in Tom Cruise as an alternative reality/universe Iron Man, and bringing back Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. There’s even talk off the past Spiderman actors (Maguire and whatsisface) also returning in Dr Strange. A lot of it is exciting, but it also highlights what many of us have been saying about Phase 4. Disney is definitely in crisis mode and they know that Phase 4 lacked star power and the path they were on were alienating their core friends.

    This is a desperation move, more than actually appealing to fans. Marvel/Disney are obviously feeling it, from the Mulan saga, their resorts suffering, Disney Plus not hitting the mark (even though this Covid crisis should mean subs increasing exponentially, and it hasn’t).

    I am interested to see a middle-aged Tobey Maguire as an altenative universe Spiderman though – it would give us some cool Spideyverse feels.

    Reply

    • Kervyn Cloete

      October 5, 2020 at 12:18

      Yeah those other actors are the iffiest of rumours for now. Cosmicbooknews and WeGotThisCovered have an utterly laughable success record with their “scoops”. Grace Randolph is admittedly a bit more successful, but not at the level where I would take this that seriously. Hence why I’m not mentioning them yet.

      And I definitely don’t think Phase 4 lacks star power, definitely not in terms of casting. As far as characters are concerned, look at the earlier films Phase 1 to 3 when they were released. Outside of the geeks like us, most people had very little knowledge about Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Black Panther, Captain Marvel etc. And even among the comic book crowd, something like GOTG was not mainstream. But Marvel made them work.

      Do I think everything Marvel will ever do will work? Hell, no. Nobody is infallible. But their track record thus far grants them the benefit of the doubt.

      Reply

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