Spider-man: Far From Home

Sometimes a movie comes along that you really love but people look at you funny for liking it. This is one of those movies for me, and let’s get this right out of the way: superhero movies are by no means my preferred cup of tea. But every so often, I need to put the old brain box in low power mode and watch a good old action romp. Spider-man: Far from Home (2019), the second Tom Holland starring, Marvel/Sony spider-man film, is a surprisingly well written movie. Despite my hesitancy with Marvel films, the movie managed to win me over despite the bland cinematography and forgettable music.

Starring: Tom Holland, Jake Gyllenhall, Zendaya & Samuel L. Jackson

After the box office shattering success of Marvel’s Endgame (2019), Spider-Man had a lot to live up to being the first film released after fan favorites Iron Man and Captain America bid adieu. Keeping that in mind, the writers made two wise discussions: the first was to keep the Spider-man story feeling small and contained. Gone are the world ending villains and the bland motivation of having to save the world because you must. Instead, the movie keeps the story mostly focused on Peter’s efforts to ask MJ out while balancing his life as Spider-man. There is technically a doomsday plot but the world is never really threatened in any meaningful way and it’s played in a tongue in cheek way. Scaling back the stakes felt refreshing after the exhaustion of Endgame.

The second-best decision the writers made was to focus the story on Peter’s life after Tony Stark, his mentor and father figure died. The villain in this movie is very much secondary to Peter’s growth as a character and that hooked me from the beginning. The first major fight sequence doesn’t come until forty-five minutes or so into the movie. Instead of making the external conflict the center of the story, Peter’s desire for a normal life and feelings of being unworthy of the mantel of Tony Stark are what drives the conflict of the story. It’s incredibly engaging because the movie is shaped from character basic conflict rather than fit into a typical superhero narrative.

The result of these two decisions is that this film is far more thematically cohesive and engaging on a relatable level than almost any other Marvel movie. Some topical elements of Marvel movies also didn’t bother me as much this time around. Like the typical humor doesn’t feel out of place here, probably because there’re high-schoolers making these jokes. If anything, it highlights out how juvenile and out of place a lot of the jokes in other marvel movies are.

The other element that won me over was that the filmmaking felt a little more artistically and personally inspired than usual. Any blockbuster that uses terrible editing preset transitions gets a huge bonus in my book. The opening ‘In Memorium’ scene and it’s meta terrible editing was genuinely hilarious in a way that didn’t feel cheap. For the most part, the action scenes were a bit underwhelming and standard Marvel fare. The film was most engaging when there wasn’t anything visually exciting happening when it was just about Peter trying to be normal. However, there are two short fight scenes in the movie that are the most visually impressive action sequences in all of Marvel. For that alone, I think this movie stands out.

While the movie does focus most of its efforts on character and thematic development, the last third of the movie wasn’t nearly as focused as the first two thirds. While the ending kept up the pace with a mostly engaging action sequence, it veered too far away from the streamlined character goal-driven scenes of the first half to really transcend anything that Marvel has done before. T movie gained a lot of goodwill from the first half, but my eyes glazed over for a bit during the climax. Its thematic elements were wrapped up a little but it felt more like the movie was posing questions with open answers rather than saying anything definitive. Ultimately, Far From Home has the vibe that it’s about something bigger than it is and while it doesn’t really follow through with that it does provide enough intellectual engagement for it to be a step up from most blockbusters these days.

                All in all the movie doesn’t take itself too seriously, it knows what it is and how far it can push it, but it does take the main character and his journey seriously and that’s what makes the biggest difference. For me, this movie wasn’t anything extra special, but it was relatable and that made all the difference. This is easily a movie that I will return to when I need a simple fun action movie to fill a lazy Saturday.