Spider-man, Spider-man
Don’t wanna go cause he’s
spider-man
Turned to dust, snapped to life.
Mentor goes to the afterlife
Look out, off goes the Spider-man!
One thing I’ve praised about the MCU’s Spider-man is their willingness to offer new elements, most of the supporting cast are original or have been drastically changed from the source material. That being said, putting such an emphasis on Peter’s relationship to Tony Stark is a double-edged sword, especially when the sequel takes place after an event which kills him off.
Jon Watts is back in the director’s chair and 2/6 of the writing staff of the last film are also here, Chris McKenna, who alongside the Spider-man movies also co-wrote the Lego Batman Movie, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and Ant-man and the Wasp, and Erik Summers, who has a similar resumé.
The film had a bigger budget, nearing $200m and, in part riding the wave from Avengers Endgame became the first $1bn Spider-man movie. And has pretty favourable ratings with both critics and audiences (90% average 7.44/10 and 95% average 4.63/5 respectively) so where do I stand, I guess it’s on guilty pleasures so I must like it to some degree but let’s analyse and make fun of it anyway.
So, we start with Nick Fury and Maria Hill investigating an unnatural storm, they come across the earth elemental, which apparently is modelled after sand-man? Please tell me these CG monsters aren’t being used to replace actual Spider-man villains. That’s kinda sad. Anyway, the fight is brought into their favour with the addition of Quintin Beck. There is a massive problem with how they handle beck but more on that later.
Next we get some Endgame catchup, it’s been around 6 years since the snap happened (they refer to students having to restart the school year after the blip, and now it’s summer vacation) referred to comedically as the blip by the school news guys. Whilst it seems most of our mainstay characters endured the Thanos snap, there are a few that survived and are now older. There’s also a touching tribute to Tony Stark, why are we doing in a school a full year after he died, did Tony build the bloody place or something.
Clearly, the last year of constant Tony worship has taken its toll on Peter, and yeah, despite this being a Spider-man movie, Tony Stark, despite not appearing in it, ends up being a more important player in it. Still, Peter does have a plan, to ask out MJ during their European ‘science’ trip. Ned wants to explore being a bachelor in Europe, setup for his main running gag for the film.
Spider-man has to make an appearance with Aunt May doing a fundraiser for the homeless shelter. There are so many missed opportunities here, but why the heck isn’t this named F.E.A.S.T.? You don’t even have to introduce Martin Li, it could just be a cute comic reference, but they could easily draw upon it in a sequel.
Peter is awkward as you’d expect, Happy arrives because he has a massive cheque from Pepper to donate. Also, because there’s some passion between Him and May, ok. Another thing, he warns Peter Nick Fury is about to call him, why is Happy a go-between here? Peter ghosts Fury, and goes to take questions from the Press but their questions about Iron Man bring on a panic attack.
He’s really looking forward to his vacation and doesn’t pack the Spider-man suit. May throws a banana at him, and wonders why his ‘Peter tingle’ and yes, they’re going to call his Spider-sense the Peter Tingle for the entire movie.
So, one problem of the major time-jump that happened between films, which was partly necessitated by the MCU structure, is that we never got to see the fallout between May and Peter over her discovery of his identity as Spider-man, and now she’s incredibly chill about her nephew getting into life-threatening situations on an almost daily basis, even packing his suit for him. Why did Peter ever think it would be a problem?
Of course, taking Spider-man away from New York means her role is minimised further, further adding to the problem. Still, from a story aspect, this is the first movie where that has happened, once again, I like that they’re adding something new.
Onto the plane ride, Peter wants
to sit next to MJ on the flight and shenanigans happen, long story short, it
doesn’t work. MJ ends up to next to Peter’s ‘rival’ Brad Davis.
So, they arrive in Venice and whilst it wasn’t productive for Peter, it has been for Ned, who’s now with Betty Brant. So, they copied every nerdy aspect for Ganke from the Miles Morales books for Ned except his sexuality. Because heaven forbid, we upset our Chinese overlords.
Peter finds to his surprise that May has packed his Spider-man suit in his suitcase, just in case (get it?) and they’re taken to their sh*thole of a hotel. This is a school sanctioned trip, presumably parents chipped in towards the cost of this, this hotel isn’t really healthy. But we’re going to see several instances where the 2 teachers are the WORST. TEACHERS. EVER.
So, they head out to Venice with a brief montage, it’s got a few gags I didn’t laugh at and ends with Peter buying a necklace to give to MJ in Paris as part of his plan. But trouble doesn’t stay quiet for long as the Water Elemental begins its attack, the first attack was in Mexico, why is the next one in Venice of all places. 1 Elemental attack in America, 3 in Europe… we’ll get back to that once the other shoe drops.
Peter hasn’t taken his suit with but for some reason did take his web-shooters, go figure how that works, so he sneaks off and begins doing damage control. Mr Beck comes in and tells Peter to get it away from the water, which he does, although taking a few blows from a bell in the process. That night, Peter gets a visit from Nick Fury, who acts kinda like himself but also kinda not. I was going to put that down to Sony vs Disney writing but what’s actually happening is a little cleverer than that and we’ll get to it at the end.
Though Nick Fury saying he lost all his intelligence access after Thanos is a lie, he lost it after S.H.I.E.L.D. went down in Winter Soldier. Anyway, Peter is taken and it’s confirmed that Quintin Beck is working with Fury, one of Peter’s friends earlier called him Mysterio. Anyway, he says he’s from a parallel Earth, one where he tried and failed to stop the elementals which then destroyed his Earth. Peter is given a set of glasses which were apparently a gift from Tony Stark though why he used Nick Fury as his go-between as opposed to Happy is... questionable.
Peter says no for a bunch of reasons but he does make one legitimate point, it would compromise his secret identity to be fighting in the Europe, especially since that happened once already in Washington in the first film. But Nick Fury is not taking no for an answer and his vacation is rerouted to Prague, the believed next site for the next attack.
To deal with the secret identity issue, one of Fury’s people has a suit for him, and demands he undresses in front of her. A 16-year-old boy… Yikes. Compounding this moment and honestly making it even creepier, Brad stumbles on this and takes a photo of Peter with his trousers down, again, yikes.
Desperate for MJ not to see that, Peter uses his glasses. Brad could just show MJ the photo and be a massive creep, but he decides to go one step further and send it. Still, this buys Peter some time. The glasses have an AI called EDITH – Even Dead I’m the Hero. I have a few more choice names for it, but my personal one is a message from Stark Himself, CUMMs – Clean Up My Messes!
Peter tells Edith that Brad is a target and EDITH takes this as a kill target. I know Tony trusted Peter but this is really badly programmed for him. Peter destroys the drone set to kill Brad, as the teacher fall for the ‘look over there’ trick, yeah, they really are that bad… And he knocked out Flash briefly… Genuinely almost forgot Flash was in this film. He serves for a couple of jokes but despite being in probably more of the runtime than the last film, he actually does less. Brad really takes over as social antagonist for the film, and does a fairly lousy job at it, EDITH eventually does delete the photo.
They arrive in Prague and Peter gets another briefing, they’re up against the Fire elemental, supposedly based of Molten man, though not really. Mysterio, now having embraced the name, warns to keep it away from metal, good job metal isn’t used in construction or this would be an impossible task. I mean, they’re in the middle of a carnival and Nick Fury can’t get the city evacuated because he doesn’t have the clout anymore.
To try and keep his friends out of harm’s way, Peter uses Edith to arrange them to go to the Opera, which none of them find particularly appealing. It’s another time Peter has to ditch MJ as he feigns sickness and heads off. His attempts to keep them indoors fail anyway, as the worst teachers ever let Ned, Betty and MJ all leave. Ned and Betty are on a Ferris wheel as the action begins. The fire elemental easily absorbing the metal around him. Whilst Peter tries to keep the monster at bay and away from his friends, his webbing catches onto something and it heads down an alley where MJ notices.
Ned calls the very Spider-man-like vigilante Night Monkey, which makes it to the mainstream media somehow. Anyway, Mysterio wins the fight just as the creature goes critical by flying inside it and detonating from the inside or something. He survives and isn’t even singed, this is a massive clue, people.
Peter decides in his infinite wisdom to hand the glasses over to Quintin and we get the reveal that everything was in illusion and this whole stunt was a ploy to get the glasses. We even later find out he has an entire crew of disgruntled Stark Employees. OK, so things to unpack here. Tony Stark, a guy who would freak out at the idea of his weapons being in the wrong hands, allows Peter to transfer control to just anyone? Not buying that one at all.
His plan was to use drones with hologram projectors, similar to the ones Stark has used in the past, to trick Peter into giving him the glasses. OK…where did you get the drones, how did you afford them, how did you finance any of this? His agenda is to make himself the hero but to what end? Just to spite a dead man? Is there money in this? Feels like if you’ve got this tech, there are easier ways to make money.
Then there’s the fact the Mysterio has become a twist villain. Guys, no-one fell for Mysterio being good, a quick google search tells you he’s no friend to Peter. Sure, you could buy his ‘I’m from another dimension speech’ but that google search would likely also tell you Mysterio specialises in fake magic and illusions and you’ve pretty much got the gist of his entire plan.
And yes, this is all from a meta-perspective. Peter trusting him I can understand to an extent, so it’s not that it doesn’t make sense in-universe. In fact, I understand entirely what they’re going for. Peter looking for technically his 4th father figure and this one being the one he needs so desperately he ignores possible red flags.
Peter returns to the swanky hotel his class is now staying, this being the second monster attack they’ve been caught up in, angry parents want the class to come home. Peter decides to make his attempt to get with MJ and the 2 agree to sneak past the world’s worst teachers and talk on a bridge. MJ has guessed that Peter is Spider-man.
And I need to get this off my chest, since her role is considerably expanded in this one, I freaking love MJ. Sure, she’s no Mary Jane Watson but every line that comes out of her mouth is comedy gold. And she’s not an idiot, I don’t think any supporting character in the films has worked out Peter is Spider-man without turning into a villain immediately afterwards. (And I mean, through actual deduction, not stumbling upon it ala May or Ned)
She also found the tech which soon reveals itself to be hologram tech belonging to Mysterio, clueing Peter in that he isn’t who he seems. Unfortunately, the loss of the tech hasn’t gone unnoticed, as Mysterio wants all witnesses silenced, including Peter. He’s also training the drones to do more collateral damage to increase media attention, and this film’s take on ‘fake news’ is coming. I guess it makes sense given that Mysterio is an illusionist.
Peter was invited to Berlin to meet with Fury to join… I don’t know, his new Avengers team? Mysterio was also, but now Peter excuses himself from the trip by arranging to have Aunt May want to have him stay with relatives in Berlin. He arrives in Berlin and is greeted by Nick Fury, or so he thinks. What follows is a series of Mysterio’s illusions and it’s honestly among the best bits of the entire film.
Peter’s sense of reality is completely warped and it exhausts him to the point where when 'Nick Fury' asks who else knows about the drones, Peter tells him, but it’s Mysterio again and the only reason Peter gets away is because Mysterio was stupid enough to bring the fight to the train yard. Man, it’s a good thing Peter has a healing factor because he gets battered in this one.
He passes out on the train and wakes up in a holding cell in the Netherlands, somewhat far from the trainline. Is there a stereotype that people from there are nice or did the Netherlands Tourist Board pay them a bunch because Spider-man, now sans costume escapes the prison, though the other prisoners shut the cell behind him, yeah…
He calls Happy and finds out that Mysterio has altered his class’ flights to stop off in London, where he plans to make his next move. “Your friends are in trouble, your equipment’s gone, you’re all alone, what you gonna do?” well, 1/3 anyway. As it turns out Happy's Quinjet has a suit-generator for Spider-man that can add features he wants, including taser webs to knock out the drones, the web parachute and glider-webs.
And here’s where the major complaints about the ‘Iron Manification of Spider-man’ stem from. Peter isn’t using his intelligence and ingenuity to solve the issue; he’s gifted the resources he needs by Tony Stark. My problem isn’t this moment specifically but that this whole movie is more about Tony Stark than Peter. We open with a tribute to Tony, Tony gifts Peter the glasses, Peter spends the entire film mourning Tony, the villains are a bunch of people with a grudge against Tony. And maybe it’d work if it were like a Rose Qwartz situation where these people’s complaints against Tony were more legitimate, putting a dent in the Stark hero worship. But Beck was fired because he was unstable and his actions since have rather proved that point and he’s jealous because he didn’t get the glasses? No sh*t you weren’t going to get the glasses, since when do Billionaires gift creations like that to their employees, even less so the fired ones.
Jay Gyllenhaal saves Mysterio from being among the Mediocre Marvel villains with his performance. Anyway, the trip arrives in London, and they’re taken on a bus tour. We also get resolution on Brad as he brings up the photo again and MJ points out how creepy that is. An ‘amalgam of the elementals’ rises and begins its attack. The guy driving the bus abandons the bus, leaving everyone in a panic. Spider-man, in his new suit dives from the Quinjet and glides into the illusion, using his taser webs to take out the drones. The drones decloak as part of Beck’s back-up plan and several of them go after Ned, MJ and Brett, Flash is also with them for some reason.
Happy calls in a coded message to Fury, making me wonder why Peter went to Germany instead of… say, calling Happy using Ned’s phone (Peter suspected his own was being bugged but at this point, but Mysterio didn’t know about Ned, especially since his role is somewhat reduced in this one) Even with the upgrades Peter isn’t having an easy time facing this ‘Avengers Level Threat’ his advantages are slowly ripped from him and eventually he does have to use his wits, using a downed drones sonic cannon to propel himself into the building Mysterio is in.
Nick Fury finally catches on to the fact that Mysterio was lying, with Maria Hill destroying the kill drone aimed for them. Happy comes to the aid of Ned, MJ, Flash and Brett and they seek refuge in the Tower of London. Peter has to rely on, *sigh* Peter Tingle to see through Mysterio’s illusion and whilst Mysterio still gets in a few hits, Peter begins to turn the tide. Beck orders the drones to fire, even though he could potentially be hit, and basically signs his own death sentence, like so many Spider-man movie villains before him. Peter recovers EDITH and orders the drones shut down, ending the threat.
So the film begins to wrap up, everyone returns home, Betty and Ned broke up in the flight, MJ and Peter are together, Flash is greeted by his butler, as his parents aren’t there (anyone else get Osborn vibes from that?) and May has a happy reunion with Peter, laughing off that his bags got blown up. We find out that May and Happy had different ideas as to what their relationship means as Spider-man swings off in footage that looks like it was filmed on a go-pro.
But it’s not over yet, in the mid credits sequence, MJ and Spidey swing about but we get a news bulletin telling us that footage showing Spider-man controlling the drones (he told Edith to execute the drones – poor choice of words) and being responsible for Beck’s death. This footage was uploaded to the Daily Bugle and with a cameo from J Jonah Jameson. I kinda wish he’d been scattered throughout but I’ll take what I can get, as Joel Simmons reprises his role (he was a saving grace of the Raimi trilogy) moreover, Mysterio outs Spider-man as Peter Parker. Now, this is a problem that can’t wait 6 years, this is a dramatic shift in the status quo and will need to be addressed properly in the sequel.
And at the very end we find out that the Nick Fury and Maria Hill we were following were actually Skrulls in a move that makes so much sense given their slightly off behaviour and allows for these 2 amazing characters to be in some cosmic stuff as we see they’re now in space.
Spider-man Far From Home has issues, it’s humour can be a little cringey and I don’t deny that by giving Peter Stark level resources it does take away from his every-man persona. Still, like it’s predecessor it tried to cover ground they shied away from in previous Spider-man iterations, helped somewhat by its integration into the wider Marvel universe. Tom Holland is still a good modernised Peter Parker, and his spider-man is good also.
Tony Stark is hugely integral to the plot, and it serves to the film’s detriment however, to some extent I do feel their hands were tied. The connection between Peter and Tony started in Civil War, not a Sony Film, this in turn lead to him being a co-star in Homecoming, and then the two were together in Infinity War which again, is not a Sony Film. The death of Tony Stark in Endgame couldn’t have not been addressed, though the saturation of this is a little distracting
Still, it accomplished what I feel the intent of this film was, get Peter and MJ into a loveably awkward relationship and have Spider-man face up against an Avengers level threat. Mysterio was definitely the right villain for that, despite his somewhat lower status among Spider-man villains.
Praise Rating – 70%
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