Movie Reaction: Spider-Man: Far From Home

Formula: (Spider-Man: Homecoming * European Vacation) / Iron Man 3

When it came out in 2017, Spider-Man: Homecoming was praised for its back to basics approach. After a decade of misfires featuring, perhaps, Marvel's most popular hero, Sony agreed to team with Disney to bring Spider-Man into the MCU. Rather than tying the story immediately into their Endgame, Homecoming decided to emphasize the "neighborhood" part of "friendly neighborhood Spider-Man". It was a refreshing decision. The stakes were small and local, and the story was able to focus on how damn likable Tom Holland was. The sequel, Far From Home, had me worried. Sequels, almost by definition are "the same, but more". It makes sense. If you have a hero, it doesn't make sense for his challenges to get easier. No, you want a bigger threat that shows the hero has honed his powers. This kind of works against the new Spider-Man ethos though. Friendly neighborhood Spider-Man vs. global threat. And, Far From Home has the added challenge of being the first MCU movie since Endgame changed everything.

To its credit, Spider-Man: Far From Home addresses all the these concerns head on. The five year time jump? They cover that immediately. They don't do it gracefully. Rather, they handle it definitively, and that's as much as could be expected. The dead Avengers? Also covered right away. Tony Stark's death appropriately hangs over the movie. The inherent desire of a sequel to go bigger? It make that a feature, not a bug. Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) may be the nominal villain, but Peter Parker's (Tom Holland) real struggle in the movie is his desire to just being a kid competing with the world asking more from Spider-Man in a post-Iron Man world.

Perhaps I should back up. Far From Home takes places some time after Endgame. The five years that half the world population disappeared has been termed "the blip", and everyone is attempting to go back to normalcy. Conveniently, all the important characters from Homecoming blipped along with Peter, so Ned (Jacob Batalon) isn't suddenly a Senior in college hanging out with highschoolers or something like that. Peter is bristling against his increased responsibilities as Spider-Man and tries to get away from it all by going on a school trip to Europe. In particular, he hopes to use the trip to woo MJ (Zendaya). Of course, trouble has a way of finding Marvel heroes, and Spider-Man gets roped into a McGuffin of a conflict that teams him with a wizard they call Mysterio. I'll assume we're all intelligent enough people. If you know anything about the comics, have listened to any of the press about this movie, or are remotely familiar with the conventions of superhero movies, then you know Mysterio is a villain. So, he has a big plan that Peter has to shutdown while keeping his friends safe and maybe hitting on MJ. It's a lot for a 16-year old to handle.

The strength of this iteration of Spider-Man movies is still the casting. Tom Holland's boyishness is damn, near weaponized by now. He's convincing as an overwhelmed kid, but then there's the inevitable "look how much I've worked out" shirtless scene that reminded me that he's actually in his 20s and built like a superhero. It's impossible to root against him. Zendaya's MJ is this beautiful darkly sarcastic take on the Mary Jane character that I'm all about. She's under-served in the movie. As much as I enjoy Peter's BFF Ned, who is given a silly relationship storyline with Angourie Rice's Betty, I would've happily disposed of him and given all his scenes to MJ. But maybe that's just me. Marissa Tomei as Aunt May continues to be understandably underutilized. May doesn't need to do much, but it is an annoying reminder that Marissa Tomei isn't in more movies. Happy (Jon Favreau) and Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) try to fill the Tony Stark mentor role in thier own way. They've been playing those characters for a decade now and know what they're doing. The only major new actor is Jake Gyllenhaal. I'm a huge Jake Gyllenhaal fan. This isn't peak-Gyllenhaal, and it's not entirely his fault. Mysterio is one of the harder villains to visualize in live-action. The movie has to bend-over backwards to 'science-splain' his powers. I liked him a lot early on. I kept hoping he wouldn't reveal himself as a villain, because I like the idea of a mentor for Peter who says things like "Never apologize for being the smartest person in the room". Later on, he turns into a non-clever wannabe Tony Stark and it's not something he pulls off. I'm just writing this movie off as a bad use of Jake Gyllenhaal.

The plot is silly and convoluted. It just is. In my own parlance, it fails my One Big Leap test by repeatedly putting characters in conveniently key locations and giving easy-outs for conflicts. The movie is almost self-aware that it's a superhero movie. It can't help itself from commenting on its own tropes, such as the scene already spoiled in the trailers, where MJ figures out that Peter is Spider-Man. The movie even seems disinterested in the monsters that pop up early on, like a tired baseball player who just hit a home run, hitting each base because he has to to get credit for the run.They are a required story beat, not an interesting one.  And, this makes sense. Co-writer Chris McKenna has background working on shows and movies that deconstruct story conventions (I'm thinking of Community in particular), so having to work within the conventions isn't ideal for him. The other writer Erik Sommers has a similar background. Far From Home is the sequel I'd expect from guys like them working for the MCU machine.

With a few notable exceptions (Looking at you, Into the Spider-Verse), all Marvel movies exist in the same 7-9 out of 10 range for me. I enjoy them for what they are and recognize their issues. I never hate the movies. I also have trouble sliding any of them into my top 10 for a year. I'm very happy to be entertained by them then be done with them. With that in mind, I liked Spider-Man: Far from Home. I laughed. I got a few performances I liked. It had a few action set pieces that were enjoyable. It has problems, but none of them were the kind that really bother me.

One Last Thought: Does Robert Downey Jr. deserve royalties for this movie? Tony Stark is all over this movie without actually being in it. They found ways to give him zingers without even showing as much as a flashback. I'm trying to think of another movie that was this much about a character who isn't in it. Did Waiting for Godot ever get made into a movie?

Verdict: Weakly Recommend