BEFORE: I probably could have waited, but I went to see this movie on the Monday after it opened, so really during the first week of release. I was counting on the big crowd seeing it over the July 4 holiday week/weekend, and from the look of things, that's what happened. But I picked the Monday after the four-day holiday, because for nearly everyone, that was "back-to-work" day - who thinks of seeing a movie on their first day back from break? Nobody, except me, really. If everyone's going to zig, I'm going to zag.
The main reason to get to the theater in the first week was the chance to appear on a podcast to discuss the film, to give the POV of an "older" comic-book geek who remembers what reading Spider-Man comics was like in the 1980's and 1990's, even though the movies don't resemble those comics, except for the names of the characters. But the Monday after the holiday was the only day that all three commentors were free, so it had to be that day, or else I would have had to give up a day of MY weekend to see it, and that just wasn't going to happen. I see movies after work, on Mondays or Wednesdays, the theater is a few blocks from my office, and I've got a good system going, why mess with it?
It means I have to sit on my review for a couple weeks, but that's OK, I'm sitting on a couple of reviews - the only way I'll have a "perfect year" is if I cheat, I realize that now. But it will be perfect if I say it is, at least I'm honest about the fact that I'm cheating, which I guess is something.
Jake Gyllenhaal carries over from "Enemy" - that's the plan, anyway. Massive Spoilers ahead, if you haven't seen "Spider-Man: Far From Home", please turn back NOW.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Spider-Man: Homecoming" (Movie #2,686), "Avengers: Endgame" (Movie #3,217)
THE PLOT: Following the events of "Avengers: Endgame", Spider-Man must step up to take on new threats in a world that has changed forever.
AFTER: Time for the second "Spider-Man" film, or the fifth, or maybe it's the seventh or the tenth, depending on how you count these things. It's the second film of the third iteration of the character in Marvel movies, it's been 17 years since the first film with Tobey Maguire, and somehow this character is still in high school. Man, he's been held back for a long time - and he was dead for five years, along with half of the people in the MCU. But what does that MEAN? How can a character be there, and then GONE for five years, and then come back - sure, they do it all the time in comic books, but doesn't it stretch things just a bit too far? How do we know that all the heroes (and regular people) who came back are exactly the SAME? It's Infinity Stones magic, probably best not to question it too much - but you just know I've got to.
(I'll try not to repeat TOO MUCH of what I said on the podcast, but, frankly, it's inevitable...)
Like, how strong is the Infinity Stones "Snap" effect - where people turned to dust and blew away - five years later, another person wears Thanos' gauntlet, and "Blip", all those millions of people come back - how? Tony Stark couldn't possibly have KNOWN all those people, how are they all back with their memories restored? Did he just have to make an all-encompassing wish, like "everybody comes back", it's just too pat, too easy. I might have believed it more if it was, "OK, bring back Spider-Man, just like he was five years ago. Now, bring back Black Panther..." and so on. You can't just say, "bring back 4 billion people", can you? OK, I guess that's what we're doing...
"Far From Home" is more concerned with what that MEANS - people came back just as they were five years ago, before they disappeared. But the people left behind are five years older, they've moved on. They've moved into the nice apartments vacated by the disappeared people, took over their jobs, maybe they got remarried if their spouse turned to dust and blew away, that's probably complicated. "Jesus, Harold, I was only gone out of existence for five years, and you didn't wait for me? Did you meet your new girlfriend the following WEEK or what?"
At the end of "Endgame", I turned to my fellow geek movie companion and the first thing we discussed was the shot of Spider-Man reuniting with his high-school friends - how was that possible? They'd be five years older than him - unless, of course, they blipped out of existence, too. Somehow all of Peter Parker's friends and family, and the girl he's got a thing for - they all blipped. You'd think the chances for each one of them to blip would be 50/50, but that's apparently not how this works - every single person he was friendly with was a victim of Thanos' purge. There's that old Parker luck, you betcha. Isn't it JUST a bit too convenient that everyone in his social circle, everyone who would be needed for the sequel, was a blipper? And they're all still 15 or 16, they all have to take junior year (?) over again, even though they took the midterms already - hella unfair! God, that would also be really confusing, too, if half the people in the world had an age that didn't jibe with the calendar - or if you were born 25 years ago, but technically were only 20 years old. You'd be reminded every DAMN DAY of your life that Thanos disintegrated you and you lost five years - but are you even YOU at that point, or just some cosmic magically-imagined replacement copy of you?
And that's not to even get into the tougher questions like, "Where WERE they?" Were the vanished people in heaven, hell, limbo, or some plane of non-existence, which I think doesn't even exist. How could it? And how does it FEEL for a character to know that they didn't exist for five years? But Marvel would probably prefer that I not even ask such questions - our favorite characters are back, and we should just be happy that the stories can continue, so, please try to not get bogged down in the details. It's more important that we remember the four Avengers who died so that the four BILLION could come back.
Top of the list is Iron Man - who was serving as a sort of mentor to Peter Parker before the events of the Infinity War + Endgame. A surly mentor, but a mentor nonetheless - and it's debatable I suppose whether Spider-Man was made an Avenger, or just came REALLY close. Again, Parker luck. He can't ever get ahead, because Stan Lee created the character to represent the common man, the tendency we all have to fail when we're juggling too many things. Like, he can beat up the muggers, but he'll have to ruin the date that he's on. He can help save the world, but that means missing his aunt's birthday dinner. Something about what comes with great power and all that. But let's be honest, he's also a fuck-up, because we're all fuck-ups, and we all were socially awkward in high school in some way.
He also represents that confusion we all have when we want to be in a relationship, but we're not quite sure how to get there. Or if we do get there, and we're not quite sure how to maintain it. Or we can maintain it, but we've still got the option of screwing it all up later on. See? We're all just big balls of Peter Parker-like anxiety in the end, or he is us and we are him and we are all together. Right? Goo goo ga joob.
The problem becomes, when keeping Peter Parker confined to high school, to connect with the teens, the film still has to be written by an adult (or several adults) who've forgotten what it meant to be in high school, (and forgotten what it means to date, if they ever knew). So here's my other big problem with "Spider-Man: Far from Home" - this is NOT HOW HIGH SCHOOL WORKS. There's simply no such thing as a "class trip" that takes place during the summer. Summer is when teachers go on vacation (their union contracts even demand it...) and so a class trip HAS to happen during the school year. That's been my experience anyway, but this "class trip" is also called, at various times, both a "vacation" and a "science tour". So, umm, which is it? It can't be all three at once, it just can't. My experience of summer as a teen, and sure, yours might vary, is that this is when FAMILIES go on vacation together. Or, if not, this is when teens get a SUMMER JOB, or if their grades were terrible last semester, they might have to take summer classes. But Parker & co. are the SMART students, not the dumb ones, so school in the summertime, even in the form of a class trip, simply makes no sense...
(Yes, it's POSSIBLE, however unlikely, that these kids are in some kind of Montessori or magnet school that doesn't take a summer break, and this is a special case, or some kind of pre-arranged annual trip, but I'm just not buying it. A much more likely explanation is that some screenwriter didn't do any research about class trips, and just ASSUMED that they take place during the summer, so as not to interrupt classes. But there's no school infrastructure during the summer to support such a trip, and plus I guarantee I've already thought about this more than the screenwriter did - so by explaining it, I'm doing his job for him, and that's not cool. Show me the school system that has a class trip during the summer, and I'll recant, but until then, I'm holding firm that this is a giant NITPICK POINT.)
Now, it's obvious WHY this unlikely trip was shoehorned into the plot, it's all about getting Spider-Man to Europe, which is where someone decided that the villains would be attacking - it's more scenic, I guess? Plus we did Washington DC in the last movie, so we've got to up the ante somewhat? And somehow Venice, Prague and London fit the bill? Or were those just the cities that were available, or said yes? Or because United Airlines is a prominent sponsor, these are three cities that they fly to? Man, I'm just too cynical for my own good, it seems.
This leads me to NITPICK POINT #2, which is that the improbable "class trip" was supposed to go to Paris, and then suddenly the plot decides that Spider-Man has to be in Prague. So Nick Fury, super-spy, makes some calls and suddenly the whole class is on a bus to Prague instead of on a flight to Paris. What? Do you know how hard it was to get those plane tickets, and how much they cost? Those parents are going to be FURIOUS! You don't get a refund for those tickets, so how is that an "upgrade" in any fashion? Sure, this is played a bit for laughs, but on a practical level, if you have a plane ticket for Paris and you don't use it, you are up shit's creek. (Unless, of course, you paid for trip insurance, or you bought the refundable ticket, but there I go, doing the screenwriter's job again.).
(The teacher who keeps trying to make the best of things, who falls for the "upgrade" scam, again and again, might be my favorite character here - that's Martin Starr, who was on "Freaks & Geeks" back in the day, and since then I think he's made every TV show and movie that he's been in much better. Mad props. The actor who played Ralphie in "A Christmas Story" is in here too, all grown up as one of the villain's henchmen, but he's no Martin Starr.)
Yes, there is a villain, or a few of them at first. Mysterio appears as the new hero on the scene, also trying to fill the void left by Iron Man. He claims to be from a parallel Earth, one where these elemental creatures (Earth, Air, Fire, Water) destroyed the planet, and he shifted over to our reality to battle creatures just like them on OUR Earth. Umm, OK? There's something like a germ of a good idea here, because in the comic books Spider-Man has villains like Sandman (earth), Hydro-Man (made of water) and Molten Man (guy on fire). If you just add an air-based guy, that's a great team of super-villains for Spider-Man to fight, why hasn't anyone written a story like that? There was a comic book a few years back called "The Deadly Foes of Spider-Man", which followed the adventures of a group of second-rate Spidey villains like Boomerang, the Beetle, Rhino, Shocker and Speed Deman all teaming up, sort of like the Sinister Six, only more comic. And this was followed by another mini-series, "The Lethal Foes of Spider-Man" - why not a follow-up called "The Elemental Foes of Spider-Man"?
But if you've read the Spider-Man comics for any length of time, you probably know what's coming here, since Mysterio is a villain in the comics, usually part of the Sinister Six, but he also fights Spidey solo. He uses movie-level special effects when he fights Spider-Man, things like smoke bombs to disappear, disguises, even hologram technology to distract, disorient and confuse Spider-Man. So it's easy to put two and two together here, and realize who's behind all the bad nastiness - but for a comic book fan like myself, the reveal took way too long, I spent an hour waiting for the other shoe to drop, and for people to figure out that he was using tech to create problems that only he can solve - you know, like our President does with immigration and tariff issues.
So this means that the audience is seeing a villain who uses special effects, and if you think about it, his special effects were created for the movie by people who create special effects - it's just a bit too "meta" for me, it feels like cheating, almost. What happens next, the Vulture gets distracted by some audience member's cell phone, and then Spider-Man punches him out? Is the Lizard going to remind us that popcorn and soda is sold in the lobby?
But somehow Spider-Man figures out the plan, with the help of the new MJ, who doesn't seem or act as smart as he does, so how the hell does she figure anything out? She (somehow, it's not explained) also figures out that Peter always disappears a few minutes before Spider-Man shows up, but again, she doesn't seem to be THAT SMART. The comic-book Mary Jane was a model, they're notoriously vapid and air-headed, and this new MJ seems dumber than that, if that's possible (so how is she in a class with the smart kids? Pick a lane - is she smart or not?) The actress is clearly out of her league, she mumbled every single line of her dialogue and also delivered them with no emotion whatsoever, and in a movie with people who know how to act BIG in a comic-book movie (Sam Jackson, Marisa Tomei, Jake Gyllenhaal) someone with no acting ability at all is going to stick out like a sore thumb. What, exactly, does Peter Parker even SEE in her? She just comes off like a typical, disaffected, disconnected sullen teen, and the movie doesn't even give her a back-story or any internal conflict or really, much of anything to do at all, so she's just a big blank. I don't get it.
(NITPICK POINT #2: There was a much simpler, more elegant way to allow MJ to figure out Spider-Man's secret identity. During the first villain battle in Venice, Peter Parker is not wearing his Spider-Man costume, and instead disguises himself with a convenient party mask from a street vendor. But he doesn't change his clothes, and it would have been so simple to have MJ take this disguised hero's picture, or even to just LOOK at him, and then realize later that Peter Parker was wearing the same outfit. Easy peasy, no need for her to "guess" or make a leap in logic, this was right there in plain sight all along, all she had to do was open her eyes and pay attention. But again, she's apparently not that smart.)
The only reason I think she's there is because she has that "multi-cultural" look, and it feels like in general, someone made an effort to put a little color into Peter's Friends - the white Ned Leeds became an Asian Ned Leeds (why not "Ned Lee"?), the white Flash Thompson became more of a person of Hindu or Arab (?) descent, and while on one level this helps the cast look more like a typical American class (at least in NYC), it also throws all the continuity from the comics out the window, and if they did this JUST to do it, that almost seems like pandering. Do you really want to get cast as Spider-Man's love interest through some kind of cinematic affirmative action plan? Race-blind casting doesn't just mean "Hey, let's cast more brown people..." it means casting the BEST actor or actress for each part, regardless of color, and obviously they didn't do that here, because Zendaya.
I don't know where the story goes from here, for "Spider-Man 3", they haven't made too many announcements yet about the future of Marvel's movies, but it makes sense to do another movie, one that could easily riff off the first of the TWO post-credits sequences here (I saw the first one, but then REALLY needed to get to the restroom, so I missed the second. Mea culpa.) If they follow a trend, then the next film could take place during Peter's senior year, and be called "Spider-Man: Graduation Day". Or they could send him on another "class trip" to Africa where he could fight Kraven the Hunter in "Spider-Man: Home on the Range". Or put him in college and have him return to NYC for winter break in "Spider-Man: Home for the Holidays". Hey, I'm an idea guy, what can I say.
Also starring Tom Holland (last seen in "Avengers: Endgame"), Samuel L. Jackson (ditto), Jon Favreau (ditto), Jacob Batalon (ditto), Marisa Tomei (last seen in "Life Itself"), Zendaya (last heard in "Smallfoot"), Tony Revolori (last seen in "Table 19"), Angourie Rice (last seen in "The Beguiled"), Remy Hii (last seen in "Crazy Rich Asians"), Martin Starr (last seen in "Spider-Man: Homecoming), Jorg Lendeborg Jr. (ditto), J.B. Smoove (last seen in "Movie 43"), Cobie Smulders (last heard in "The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part"), Numan Acar (last seen in "The Great Wall"), Peter Billingsley (last seen in "The Break-Up"), Toni Garrn, Clare Dunne, Nicholas Gleaves, Claire Rushbrook, with cameos from Paul Bettany (last seen in "Solo: A Star Wars Story"), Jeff Bridges (last seen in "Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind"), Robert Downey Jr. (last seen in "Lucky You"), Chris Evans (also last seen in "Avengers: Endgame"), Scarlett Johansson (ditto), Ben Mendelsohn (last seen in "A Place Beyond the Pines"), J.K. Simmons (last seen in "The Gift"), Sharon Blynn (last seen in "Captain Marvel"), Pat Kiernan (last seen in "The Commuter").
RATING: 8 out of 10 lost passports
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