***NO SPOILERS FOR FAR FROM HOME, BUT SPOILERS FOR PREVIOUS MCU FILMS, ESPECIALLY HOMECOMING, INFINITY WAR, AND ENDGAME, ABOUND HEREIN. FURTHER SPOILERS ABOUND FOR AGENTS OF SHIELD, AS WELL AS NON-MCU SPIDER-MAN FILMS, INCLUDING THE RAIMI TRILOGY AND AMAZING SERIES. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.***
Just like Ant-Man three years ago, here we get a more lighthearted coda to a phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe to follow a bombastic, intense, unremitting actioner of an Avengers movie. And after the bittersweet ending of Endgame, what better antidote than Tom Holland getting, once again, to be the sunniest exemplar yet of doing whatever a spider can?
But then again, this is Holland's second solo outing, which means he's got the trauma of past events to cast a pall on his Spidey. And more than Maguire!Spidey having to fight his best friend's daddy Green Goblin to the death, more than Garfield!Spidey witnessing the death of Captain George Stacy (and his subsequent breakup with Gwen, not that that lasted long), Holland!Spidey has the trauma of the Thanos Snap in Infinity War and Tony Stark's death in Endgame to give him pause in his efforts to do anything more than be a Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. His neighborhood, that is, which is why he's super reluctant to bring the suit with him to Europe - and super ready to ghost on Nick Fury's calls to action, which let's face it, only a teenager could pull off.
But against the backdrop of multiple lovely European locales, trouble just follows Peter Parker wherever he goes. And Nick Fury needs his help. Like, really needs it. So once again, we get a mixture of John Hughes teenage rom-com dramedy and high-action thrills, carried by Tom Holland and his impeccable stuntwork - not to mention Jake Gyllenhaal as MCU newcomer Mysterio. As I said about Mordo in my review for Doctor Strange, "traditionally a villain, but prepare for some surprises."
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| Aside from the Swiss Alps - they went through Austria instead - these stamps a pretty accurate who's who of places visited. |
Also going back to my Doctor Strange review, I'd initially described the magic of Strange and all the other sorcerers as having a very MCU aesthetic due to its resemblance to Stark's holograms - like, the kind that he would use to simulate having his armor in place around his hands. Mysterio's magic offers a new spin on that, a pastiche of more Westernized stereotypical magic symbols (creepy eyes, triangles like Bill Cipher, a crystal ball helmet, emphasis on the color green) as opposed to Kamar-Taj's distincitive, chakra-like style, but still projected in such a way from his hands as to be just as Stark-tech-like as any spells cast by Doctor Strange and his people. This unique magic, as well as the unique spin on Mysterio's character - a backstory to help introduce the multiverse to the greater MCU (though of course Agents of SHIELD did it first in the still-airing Season 6, not that anyone besides me even noticed, eh?) and his potential for becoming the latest to fill in the ever-vacant role of father figure for Peter (though of course Gyllenhaal plays him more as a "cool uncle" than even Stark) keeps us viewers as on our toes as ever, watchful for any further shifts in the storyline.
Without getting into spoilers, though, I'll say this: not for nothing did I open this review with a reference to Twin Peaks. As the movie runs on, it becomes clear that we're closing the third phase of the MCU with this Infinity Saga coda as an enormous, epic Mind Screw to destroy what status quo was left going into Phase Four. It's a pretty effective mirror held up to those in our real-world government and media willing to spin the truth any six ways to Sunday with cherry-picked alternative facts, and just like Homecoming, the foreshadowing game is scarily on point, with a lot of scenes and lines readable through a completely different lens in hindsight from only an hour later. All this Mind Screw also helps to give the film not so much a central peak of action as Homecoming did with the Washington Monument scene (though it also had a two-thirds-of-the-way-in peak of epic suspense with the reveal that Liz's dad, the guy taking his daughter and Peter to the dance, was the villain all along), but a central peak of suspense with the info-dumping reveal of this film's true villain, and the action peak saved for much, much later, for a far more rewarding experience.
Let's just say that as stellar as the visual effects always are - the threat of otherworldly elementals brings back some pretty great memories of Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Electro, and the first one we see is supposed to be the MCU version of Sandman - in this movie, there's a case to be made that for some of these scenes, they're supposed to look weightless and unrealistic.
Just like Homecoming, we get a lot of teenage drama - and even that's amped up into the stratosphere, with a greater emphasis on love stories. In particular, Peter's grown a crush on Zendaya's MJ, and he's playing a lot like Harry Potter's sixth-year crush on Ginny Weasley and his immense jealousy for Dean Thomas. Whereas MJ currently isn't dating anyone - her abrasive personality and brutal honesty serve as effective deterrents for most potential suitors, though it's made even more obvious in this movie that those are just masks she wears for psychological self-defense - but there's the possibility of Brad Davis trying to ask her out too, which could work wonders because he's just as handsome as Peter but nowhere near as awkward. But then, over time, he starts looking increasingly like he's jealous of Peter's chances, because he's really just coasting on his looks - enhanced as they were by his having not been Snapped (or Blipped, as the students of Midtown School have come to call it since none of them know the true reasons behind it) and so he's aged up five years relative to nearly everyone else - and not doing like Aladdin or Peter must learn to do and be himself.
And on a more ludicrous front, there's the unlikely romance between Ned and Betty, who go out of their way to be as gushy and overly romantic as they can, as if to make viewers in-universe and out nauseous at all times. Or perhaps to give Peter an example of what not to do if he's to have a long, fruitful, truly loving relationship with MJ? Knowing Ned, that's my interpretation.
But Peter and MJ, this incarnation of the characters and their relationship is, for me, far more interesting than they were portrayed by Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst back in the day. No shade to the OGs, but Holland and Zendaya have terrific chemistry, playing characters just opposite enough to properly balance each other out. It's a super different style of ship than Peter and Gwen in The Amazing Spider-Man, boosted as Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone's chemistry was by their real-life relationship off camera. But I'm still hoping that the next Spider-Man movie sees further evolution of Peter's love life to get him to the level of he and his significant other having TASM Peter and Gwen levels of being two halves of one superhero.
Though just as much a sequel to Infinity War and Endgame as it was to Homecoming, Far From Home is truly its own masterpiece, an A+ experience that finally closes the door on the first decade of the MCU while opening tons of other doors and windows for the next decade's saga to pass through.
Till next time, Pinecones...
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| #FeedTheRightWolf |
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| Remember: Denis Leary is always watching. Always. |
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