After the early ’00s saw the rise of the superhero movie as cinema’s most dominant genre, they quickly became a staple of the big screen. It’s not hard to understand why, either: the fantastical action lends itself perfectly to big-scale blockbusters, with the screen offering an excellent platform to bring comic book heroes off the page. Seeing the epic struggle between good and evil played out in such remarkable fashion affords thrills that are hard to deny.
However, just because our heroes fight for the side of good (well, most of them, at least – some heroes are secretly villains), that doesn’t mean that they’re infallible. The vast majority of our favorite heroes are human – or close to – and therefore prone to make mistakes just like the rest of us. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be very relatable, and their movies would hardly seem as fun, would they?
Even so, the typically high stakes of superhero stories mean that most of these stupid decisions result in death and/or destruction. The potentially dire consequences of their poor judgment mean that superheroes should ultimately be held accountable for their stupidity, even when it would otherwise be understandable. So, although we’re still generally pro-hero, let’s call out some of the dumbest things superheroes have ever done in movies.
9. Giving EDITH To Mysterio – Spider-Man: Far From Home
The story of Spider-Man: Far From Home is an important one for both Tom Holland’s Spider-Man and the MCU as a whole. After the events of Avengers: Endgame and Tony Stark’s death, Peter Parker finds himself without his mentor. Even while he’s trying to discover who he is as both a person and a hero while traveling through Europe, his Spider-Man duties don’t end.
Enlisted by SHIELD to work with a previously unknown “hero” called Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) who claims to have traveled across the Multiverse, Peter learns that Tony Stark bequeathed him a set of incredibly powerful glasses with the EDITH interface installed. This piece of technology is described as potentially the most advanced equipment in the world, putting an even greater responsibility onto young Peter’s shoulders. At the end of the film’s second act, however, Peter simply gives them to Mysterio, believing him to be a greater and more trustworthy hero.
What makes this particular decision so incredibly stupid is that Peter barely knew the man. He simply appeared, fought a few fake monsters (which he had conjured using holograms), and manipulated Peter into giving up the glasses. Then, he used them to wage war on Spider-Man and Tony Stark’s legacy. Giving someone you barely know access to one of the most powerful things on the planet is pretty dumb, and as Mysterio then directly contributed to the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home and Peter eventually losing his friends and family, Spider-Man certainly paid the price for his stupidity.