Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios presents Spider-Man: Far From Home which will be released on July 2nd, 2019.
Premise: Peter Parker returns in Spider-Man: Far From Home, the next chapter of the Spider-Man: Homecoming series. Our friendly neighborhood Super Hero decides to join his best friends Ned, MJ, and the rest of the gang on a European vacation. However, Peter’s plan to leave super heroics behind for a few weeks are quickly scrapped when he begrudgingly agrees to help Nick Fury uncover the mystery of several elemental creature attacks, creating havoc across the continent.
Directed by Jon Watts
The cast includes:
Tom Holland as Peter Parker/Spider-Man
Zendaya as Michelle “MJ” Jones
Jake Gyllenhaal as Quentin Beck/Mysterio
Jon Favreau as Harold “Happy” Hogan
Marisa Tomei as May Parker
Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury
Cobie Smulders as Maria Hill
Now that we had a few months to recover from the release of Avengers: Endgame, our superhero adventures continue in the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Spider Man: Far From Home. Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios are back working together to bring you the sequel to Spider Man: Homecoming. While this movie is the next solo movie starring the MCU’s version of Peter Parker, it is also a sequel to the events from Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. With that being said, it is crucial that you see both Avengers movies or you will be completely lost with the plot of this movie.
As you can see from the trailer above we catch up with Peter Parker after Avengers: Endgame, he is going on a European school trip with his classmates. We all know how epic the conclusion of Endgame was, needless to say I can only imagine how much of a struggle it is for the people on earth to get back to a normal life. While Endgame beautifully wrapped up the last ten years of movies, there were some questions about life after the big battle. The opening sequence to Spider Man: Far From Home did a quick and fun recap/explanation and answered many of those questions. Through Peter Parker’s eyes, we see how the rest of the world is adjusting to its return to civilization.
As we saw in Homecoming, Peter Parker once again is trying his best to balance life as high school teenage and a superhero at the same time. In the first act of the movie, I wish we got to see more of Peter Parker being a neighborhood Spider Man, fighting street level criminals, instead we see more of him interacting with his friends and classmates. Peter Parker clearly sill wants to be a kid. I do enjoy the fact that Peter Parker is just as stressed out trying to figure out a way to ask out and confess his love to girl he has a crush on, as much if not more to him fighting Thanos.
While the first half of the movie does feel a tad slow, the focus is on the high school students. It’s a high school comedy and coming of age movie in one. However, there were some jokes that could have been cut out. Overall, I did feel it was an accurate portrayal of high school kids in 2019. Some of the dynamics and roles of the students are going to be different to what old school Spider Man comic book fans read back in the day. Since Peter Parker was trying to focus on being a regular teenager and put his superhero alter ego on the back burner, we didn’t get to see Spider Man in action as much as we want, but we still get to see Peter Parker using his powers in other ways to hold us over.
The second half of the movie picks up, we get to see a lot more of Spider Man in action. This movie really shows why Tom Holland is the best live action version of both Peter Parker and Spider Man. Tom is able to nail both characters, he can be the shy but smart Peter Parker and be the wise cracking, confident Spider Man.
The other major highlight to this film was the introduction of Jake Gyllenhaal as Quentin Beck aka Mysterio. Jake does such a great job capturing the different personality traits to the character, we see him deliever a wide range of personalities that comes off very charismatic. For you old school comic book fans, they do slightly change up Mysterio’s origin story, while I’m a comic book purist, the story they tell in the movie fits within the MCU continuity. I still cannot believe we got to see a live action version of Mysterio on the big screen. While Spider Man has a very large selection of villains, I was worried we would never see Mysterio because of the nature of his powers and his look in the comics. But somehow Marvel Studios was able to pull it off, his outfit looked awesome and the way he used his power of illusions was exciting to watch.
I was actually very taken back by Nick Fury’s direction. I felt his personality towards Peter was different then how we saw him in other movies. Fury was more of a prick, but by the end of the film their is an explanation on why that is.
Even though this is the tenth incarnation/movie using Spider Man on the big screen, it never gets old to me seeing Spider Man web slinging through out a city. Visually it always looks so cool and breath taking. In Far From Home we get to see new scenarios and angles involving Spider Man flying through the air, which I can watch over and over. With that being said, the action was amazing. While Spider Man likes to be a neighborhood hero, since it’s a sequel, the stakes are higher, therefore the action sequences are taken up a notch.
I do have to vent for a second, while I love many of the characteristics of this version of Spider Man in the MCU, there are still a couple flaws in his presentation that hurt my comic book purity/fan of the 90s cartoon heart. The lore of Spider Man, the very defining essence of who he is and why he does what he does is because of his relationship with Uncle Ben. What happened to his Uncle Ben is the foundation for why Spider Man goes out there to fight the good fight. With great power, comes great responsibility, remember that quote, that comes from Uncle Ben, that is the motto Spider Man lives by. The MCU Spider Man never acknowledges Uncle Ben or even a reminder of his famous quote. Instead the focus is more on the relationship between Peter Parker and Tony Stark. While it makes sense because of how Peter Parker was brought into the MCU but I still wish they would reference Uncle Ben and use his legacy as the source for Peter Parker’s motivation to be a good superhero. They can easily use both figures as an influence in Peter Parker’s life. Uncle Ben can and should be use as the man who defines who Spider Man is as a human while using Tony Stark as someone he wants to impress and be a superhero like. Once again, as we saw in Homecoming, the MCU is really beating into our heads that this version of Spider Man is an Iron Man 2.0. Which is unnecessary, Spider Man is arguably Marvel’s most famous character, he has plenty of material to use to have him stand on his own. But I get it, the MCU started out with Iron Man over eleven years ago, therefore his character is the connective tissue between a lot of these characters.
FYI, there are two post credit scenes, the first one had my jaw drop. I walked out of the theater very happy to see Spider Man: Far From Home not only the last movie in phase three of the MCU but also the final chapter in the infinity saga. I’m very excited for the future of the MCU and cannot wait to see what’s next in phase 4.
I would rate the film: 8.5/10
Watch the teaser trailer below.
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