"Spider-Man: Far from Home” Review
Spider-Man: Far from Home is the third second Spider-Man movie and the twenty third movie in the MCU and takes place after the events of Avengers: Endgame. But I'm sure you know all this by now. Spoilers for everything up to this movie.
After the exhausting nature of its most recent release, I was ready to return to Peter Parker and his adventures away from the main MCU story. Frustratingly, Far from Home forces Peter and me back into the Marvel lore whether we want it or not. We're dealing with Tony Stark's death and the Snap and ignoring the fact that since time travel is a big element in the recent phase of these movies and that whatever happens can be immediately fixed by this plot-breaking mechanic, I still enjoyed the crap out of this movie (also Spider-Man is my favourite fictional character of all time. So no bias here!)
The first act catches you up with some of the recent story arcs. The cold open feels out of place and the first act just doesn't look that great or feel like it was paced as constantly as the rest of the movie. I saw this in IMAX and a lot of the action just looked off and unfinished from a VFX standpoint (which gets a significant upgrade towards the second half in what is one of the best IMAX presentations I've had so far despite a bunch of problems I had in the theatre: 3D not working, previews being set in a warped aspect ratio, a smudge on the projector, and an interruption by the staff during its first 5 minutes- despite all of this, the movie was great enough to make me forget all this and that takes a very special movie for it do that).
There's a struggle of balance between Peter's need to have a normal life for once and being a responsible super hero. This is nothing new and it's always been Spider-Man's bread and butter. But the slice-of-life element of Far from Home is rocky to say the least. Since its anchored by his feelings for MJ (a character that we didn't really get to know at all in Homecoming). Its love story is a huge flaw in the movie. We get no mention to Peter's previous crush and at no point did I believe that he and MJ were actually attracted to each other despite Tom Holland and Zendaya's excellent and intentionally awkward chemistry. It felt much more like an after thought than anything that was arrived at through logic. One thing I thought that does work very well is his relationship to Jake Gyllenhaal's grounded and multi-dimensional take on Mysterio. But I'll let you find out what happens with that when you go watch it.
Compared to Homecoming, Far from Home feels more confident in its execution. The set pieces (excluding the ones during the first act are amazing. Specific sequences were inspired by the visuals of Into the Spider-Verse and Looney Tunes. I'd never thought that I would have the pleasure of seeing Spider-Man action put together in this way -yet here we are! I also can't stress enough how great Tom Holland is as Peter Parker and Spider-Man. He's grown as a character yet he feels just as awkward and vulnerable and lovable as you'd expect, more so than most of Marvel's big screen super heroes. He's easily one of the most relatable characters in fiction and through the writing, his relationships, and Tom Holland's portrayal, this version of Spider-Man continues to preserve pretty much everything from its traditional comic book counterpart. Although I'm not a big fan of the Peter and MJ relationship in this movie, I think Zendaya's version of that character is so unique and coded in cool such a specific way that people have never seen before and it feels exciting. She's great to watch and Marvel has the potential to tell one of its most iconic love stories. With a little bit more character development, they can really do a lot of justice to this romance but it's just not quite there yet. Instead the movie has a bit of an identity crisis with the Spider-Man character (I guess this was what it wanted to focus on after all). Since Uncle Ben has yet to be explicitly mentioned (as annoying as it would be to see that part of the story again, I do think he's necessary to Peter Parker) and since they swapped him for Tony Stark, Spider-Man is a mix of the Iron Man character in the story and in the meta narrative. Since Iron Man is gone, they clearly want Spidey to be its new poster boy. But every turn it takes, Peter Parker is never able to escape the shadow of Tony Stark. It goes way deeper than just Peter Parker and it's beginning to feel very very repetitive. I'm down for this new version of Spider-Man in the MCU but I can't help but want Spider-Man to do its own thing and be his own person.
Although I sound a bit harsh on the movie, I still really enjoyed it. It's one of my favourite MCU movies and I enjoyed it more than Homecoming (which was already a very a good movie). I can't really talk too much about specific parts of the movie without going into spoilers. Far from Home has 2 end credit sequences and in traditional MCU fashion, one of them is a major plot development and the other is just for the shits and giggles, in my opinion. But the one that does matter is probably my favourite post-credits scene since the first Iron Man. Don't miss it because you will never let yourself live it down if you do.
Far from Home is my favourite Spider-Man movie after Into the Spider-Verse. It's currently my fourth favourite MCU movie after the Russos' movies. It's a must-see in IMAX for Spider-Man fans and fans of the MCU.