SPIDERMAN: FAR FROM HOME. A review.
In SPIDERMAN: FAR FROM HOME, Peter Parker and his science class take a trip to Europe, and for us diehard fans of the MCU, this film is like our own movie vacation after the emotional intensity of AVENGERS: ENDGAME. We get to focus on one hero, and one super villain, and the fate of the universe, is for the most part, not on the line. This lifelong Spidey fan has enjoyed all of the Wallcrawler’s previous movie incarnations, but I’ve been realistic enough to see that all of them never quite captured the spirit of my favorite comic book hero: Toby Mcguire’s Peter Parker grew up too fast, and was saddled with a less than satisfactory Mary Jane, while Andrew Garfield always looked like he should going for his master’s degree, even when he was still in high school. But Tom Holland gets it right with Peter Parker’s fumbling attempts to do the right thing, fight bad guys, romance Mary Jane Watson, and keep his sense of humor. And while FAR FROM HOME might not have hit the ball as far as HOMECOMING (mainly because the former doesn’t have Michael Keaton in it), it still scores.
As the first post ENDGAME movie of the MCU, FAR FROM HOME has to tackle the aftermath of Thanos’ finger snap, or The Blip as it is called in this movie, where half of the earth’s population was decimated. Conveniently for the story, nearly all the principles, including most of the students at Midtown High, blipped, and then returned five years later. Seemingly, the most pressing problem is that the kids had to start the school year over, and then there is that little geeky kid who didn’t blip, and now five later, has grown to be a dream boat and hitting on Mary Jane much to Peter’s consternation. A world wide holocaust that would have brought civilization to a halt, and crashed the world economy for generations, is just laughed away, but it is a comic book movie, and they get a break.
A comic book movie lives and dies on the strength on its villain, and in FAR FROM HOME we get one of Spidey’s classic old school foes, Quentin Beck, aka Mysterio, the self titled Master of Illusion. I know the trailer presented this character as an ally of Spider-Man, but I’m not spoiling much when I say that was all misdirection. The script gives Beck’s character origin some 21st Century tweaking, but other than that, they nail it. The casting of Jake Gyllenhaal as Beck is spot on, carrying off the feat of playing him as a sympathetic hero for half the movie, before he reveals his true motives in a expository scene (that does a couple of great callbacks to IRON MAN 1 and CIVIL WAR) that might have been much more clunky in the hands of another actor. You’ve got to wonder if Tony Stark could just not have been such a jerk a few times, the world might have been minus a couple of super villains.
Of course there is a lot of CGI, but it never overwhelms the actors or the story, and if the pacing in the early part of the movie seems a little leisurely, it does give the film makers a chance to establish Peter’s circle of friends and family better. Aunt May and Happy Hogan apparently are more than acquaintances, Ned Leeds has a summer fling, Flash is still a jerk, and Mary Jane is not only hot, but she is smart. What FAR FROM HOME does have that many other comic book movies don’t, is an exceptionally strong third act, where Peter, having made a bad error in judgment, must now confront Mysterio and put things right in an epic battle in the streets of London, where we are treated to a recreation of one of the comic book’s classic scenes when Mysterio attempts to trap Spidey in one of his illusions, and our hero can’t discern what is real and what is not.
If ENDGAME disappointed in that there was no post credits scene giving us a hint as to where the MCU is going next, FAR FROM HOME MORE than makes up for it. We get a mid credit scene that not only shakes up the status quo of Spider-Man’s world in a most dramatic way, but brings back a most welcome character from the Toby Mcguire franchise, and played by the same actor – clearly somebody was listening to the fans. The post credit scene pulls the curtain back further, and contains a big reveal concerning Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury and the Skrulls from CAPTAIN MARVEL, and raising the possibility that the MCU is going cosmic in an even bigger way.
What is clear is that with Tony Stark, and Steve Rogers, no longer the center of the MCU, Peter Parker is being groomed to step up, hopefully with a role in a reconstituted Avengers. With Mysterio, The Vulture, and the Scorpion on board, Kraven the Hunter seems like a logical next Big Bad for Spidey to face, maybe a movie adaptation of Kraven’s Last Hunt, with this villain going after Peter, along with his friends and family. Reboot Doc Ock, and The Sandman, and we’ve got the Sinister Six. Then there is Norman Osborn, no Spidey universe is complete without him and his son, Harry, and though he’s been used twice before, their appearance has got to happen sooner or later. Hopefully, in the next phase of the MCU, they will finally do right by the Fantastic Four, and we might get a version of the original Secret Wars series, which highlighted Spidey and FF. Though they hint at the possibility of the Marvel MultiVerse, let’s put the brakes on that for awhile, as it has been used too many times in the comic books by lazy writers and editors.
The best compliment I can give SPIDERMAN: FAR FROM HOME is that it plays out like one of those great collaborations between Stan Lee and Steve Ditko; that is especially true in the credit’s scenes. The movies have finally done right by Spidey; let’s see if director Jon Watts and screen writer, Chris McKenna can keep it up.
I am an indie author and my latest novel is ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964. It is available at the following:
http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m on Amazon
http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH at Smashwords
Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmgS
As the first post ENDGAME movie of the MCU, FAR FROM HOME has to tackle the aftermath of Thanos’ finger snap, or The Blip as it is called in this movie, where half of the earth’s population was decimated. Conveniently for the story, nearly all the principles, including most of the students at Midtown High, blipped, and then returned five years later. Seemingly, the most pressing problem is that the kids had to start the school year over, and then there is that little geeky kid who didn’t blip, and now five later, has grown to be a dream boat and hitting on Mary Jane much to Peter’s consternation. A world wide holocaust that would have brought civilization to a halt, and crashed the world economy for generations, is just laughed away, but it is a comic book movie, and they get a break.
A comic book movie lives and dies on the strength on its villain, and in FAR FROM HOME we get one of Spidey’s classic old school foes, Quentin Beck, aka Mysterio, the self titled Master of Illusion. I know the trailer presented this character as an ally of Spider-Man, but I’m not spoiling much when I say that was all misdirection. The script gives Beck’s character origin some 21st Century tweaking, but other than that, they nail it. The casting of Jake Gyllenhaal as Beck is spot on, carrying off the feat of playing him as a sympathetic hero for half the movie, before he reveals his true motives in a expository scene (that does a couple of great callbacks to IRON MAN 1 and CIVIL WAR) that might have been much more clunky in the hands of another actor. You’ve got to wonder if Tony Stark could just not have been such a jerk a few times, the world might have been minus a couple of super villains.
Of course there is a lot of CGI, but it never overwhelms the actors or the story, and if the pacing in the early part of the movie seems a little leisurely, it does give the film makers a chance to establish Peter’s circle of friends and family better. Aunt May and Happy Hogan apparently are more than acquaintances, Ned Leeds has a summer fling, Flash is still a jerk, and Mary Jane is not only hot, but she is smart. What FAR FROM HOME does have that many other comic book movies don’t, is an exceptionally strong third act, where Peter, having made a bad error in judgment, must now confront Mysterio and put things right in an epic battle in the streets of London, where we are treated to a recreation of one of the comic book’s classic scenes when Mysterio attempts to trap Spidey in one of his illusions, and our hero can’t discern what is real and what is not.
If ENDGAME disappointed in that there was no post credits scene giving us a hint as to where the MCU is going next, FAR FROM HOME MORE than makes up for it. We get a mid credit scene that not only shakes up the status quo of Spider-Man’s world in a most dramatic way, but brings back a most welcome character from the Toby Mcguire franchise, and played by the same actor – clearly somebody was listening to the fans. The post credit scene pulls the curtain back further, and contains a big reveal concerning Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury and the Skrulls from CAPTAIN MARVEL, and raising the possibility that the MCU is going cosmic in an even bigger way.
What is clear is that with Tony Stark, and Steve Rogers, no longer the center of the MCU, Peter Parker is being groomed to step up, hopefully with a role in a reconstituted Avengers. With Mysterio, The Vulture, and the Scorpion on board, Kraven the Hunter seems like a logical next Big Bad for Spidey to face, maybe a movie adaptation of Kraven’s Last Hunt, with this villain going after Peter, along with his friends and family. Reboot Doc Ock, and The Sandman, and we’ve got the Sinister Six. Then there is Norman Osborn, no Spidey universe is complete without him and his son, Harry, and though he’s been used twice before, their appearance has got to happen sooner or later. Hopefully, in the next phase of the MCU, they will finally do right by the Fantastic Four, and we might get a version of the original Secret Wars series, which highlighted Spidey and FF. Though they hint at the possibility of the Marvel MultiVerse, let’s put the brakes on that for awhile, as it has been used too many times in the comic books by lazy writers and editors.
The best compliment I can give SPIDERMAN: FAR FROM HOME is that it plays out like one of those great collaborations between Stan Lee and Steve Ditko; that is especially true in the credit’s scenes. The movies have finally done right by Spidey; let’s see if director Jon Watts and screen writer, Chris McKenna can keep it up.
I am an indie author and my latest novel is ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964. It is available at the following:
http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m on Amazon
http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH at Smashwords
Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmgS
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