Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019)

Following on from the momentous events of “Avengers: Endgame” (which, at the time of writing this review, is the second highest grossing movie of all time), the 23rd MCU movie, “Spider-Man: Far from Home” has some pretty giant shoes to fill. So did it live up to its predecessor?

My thoughts on “Spider-Man: Far from Home” vary depending on how I view the film; as another fun Marvel movie, it’s far from their best work but I still really enjoyed it, the action sequences are more intense and inventive than those in “Spider-Man: Homecoming” and the cast are great in their roles. But as a continuation to one of the most epic and massive events in blockbuster history, I can’t help but feel a little underwhelmed.

But before I give my opinion on the lesser aspects of the movie, I’ll mention what I liked.

The cast in “Spider-Man: Far from Home” all bring charismatic and compelling performances to the film. Tom Holland is once again terrific as the Wall-Crawler, he’s funny, likeable and delivers some deeply moving and touching moments as Peter Parker grieves for Tony Stark (spoilers for “Avengers: Endgame” but if you haven’t seen it yet, WHY ARE YOU READING THIS REVIEW?!)

Jake Gyllenhaal was excellent as Quentin Beck, AKA Mysterio, he brought a charm to the role, but also a darker edge that payed-off brilliantly in the third act. The “twist” regarding this character will fall flat if you know anything about Spider-Man and I don’t like Mysterio nearly as much as Michael Keaton’s Vulture from “Spider-Man: Homecoming”, but Mysterio was still a welcomed addition to the MCU!

A particular standout here was Jon Favreau as Happy Hogan, he’s always been really good in the MCU, but this might be Favreau’s best performance as this character yet. He has great on-screen chemistry with Tom Holland, which gave the scenes between them some real emotional weight and some of the funniest gags in “Spider-Man: Far from Home.”

The action set-pieces in “Spider-Man: Far from Home” are a huge step-up from those in “Spider-Man: Homecoming”, which were very good, but felt quite lacklustre when compared to other MCU action sequences. The filmmakers did a fantastic job of integrating Mysterio’s abilities into the movie whilst also creating more thrilling ways to showcase Spidey’s skills. I particularly enjoyed the various scenes featuring the Elementals; these moments were highly exciting and felt unlike anything that we’ve seen before in other MCU entries.

My absolute favourite aspect of “Spider-Man: Far from Home” is the ingenious way that the filmmakers tied certain characters and the larger narrative back into previous MCU movies. The major scene where these references were abundant was spectacular (although there was some particularly lazy writing, which we will get back to later), it was such a smart and satisfying way to connect various plot lines and minor characters together, which fleshes-out the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe. I think long-time MCU fans will really appreciate this scene, but it does reinforce the idea that Marvel are moving away from traditional stand-alone stories, so if you haven’t watched all 22 films in the franchise before you see “Spider-Man: Far from Home”, you won’t understand everything that happens in the film.

The last thing I want to talk about before we move onto the negatives is that the mid and post credits scenes here are really amazing, there were several moments that made my jaw-drop and one cameo that made me gasp out loud. I really want to talk about these scenes in more detail but I also don’t want to spoil them for those of you who haven’t seen “Spider-Man: Far from Home” yet!

Now let’s move onto the elements of this movie that I didn’t love.

Firstly, I’ve never liked the title “Spider-Man: Far from Home”, it’s not easy to say, it’s irritating to keep writing in this review and it doesn’t roll off the tongue like a good title should. I understand that they wanted to include the word “Home” in the title somehow (which presumably means that the next Web-Head movie will be called something like “Spider-Man: Home Alone” or “Spider-Man’s Home for Peculiar Children”), but “Far from Home” just doesn’t sound right. This probably sounds incredibly nit-picky but I wanted to address it.

Secondly, there were a couple of moments in “Spider-Man: Far from Home” that dropped big exposition dumps on the audience in fairly uninspired ways. The first time this occurred wasn’t too bad as it happened right near the beginning of the movie after an equally humorous and upsetting gag. But the scene that felt very lazy was the moment when the main antagonist stands up and explains their backstory and nefarious scheme to a group of henchmen who are supposed to know everything their saying anyway. Even though this scene thrilled me with its call-backs to previous MCU movies, I still felt as if this wasn’t the most effective way of conveying important information to the viewer.

And finally, I might be in the minority here, but I wish that “Spider-Man: Far from Home” had been released further away from “Avengers: Endgame” to let that film’s conclusion sink in and breathe more. Even though “Endgame” was released over two months ago, I’m still thinking about it a lot (because it’s my favourite movie of 2019 by about 1 million miles.) If “Spider-Man: Far from Home” had been released in, say, November of this year, I may have enjoyed it even more because the jaw-dropping moments and gut-wrenching sacrifices in “Endgame” wouldn’t have been so fresh in my mind, thus causing me to compare the two films less. Also, the fact that “Spider-Man: Far from Home” ends on a cliff-hanger thanks to its shocking mid and post-credits scenes, undermined the beautiful and poetic finality of “Avengers: Endgame” with promises of future films because, even though we all knew that “Endgame” wasn’t the last MCU instalment, it felt like a definitive end of an era.

To summarise, “Spider-Man: Far from Home” is by no means a flawless film, but it offered up enough witty moments and engaging action to keep me entertained. It definitely isn’t one of my favourite MCU movies, it certainly doesn’t subvert the tropes of the genre, but overall, Marvel have once again crafted another very watchable movie. So if you love the MCU like I do you’ll probably enjoy this one, but if you don’t like this series, “Spider-Man: Far from Home” most likely isn’t going to be the film that will win you over.