Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019) | Far From the Best or the Worst

While Avengers: Endgame was the messy climax of the entire Infinity Saga, Spider-Man returns with his own story to act as the resolution to tie everything up. Unfortunately, his story answers a few questions about what happened after Hulk Ruffalo snapped his fingers and created more questions in the process. However, his story also does what the other MCU movies that immediately followed an Avengers movie did previously: bring the scale of the conflict and story back down to Earth…to some degree. At first, it seems like the stakes are ratcheting up with the introduction of the idea of multiverses, but by the end, it’s proven to be a much smaller story that is more focused on the characters involved. When the movie is focused on the characters like its hero and antagonist, Far From Home shines. When it’s focused on many of the side-characters, well…

Pros

Action scenes were fun and entertaining
Dynamics between Peter and Mysterio are interesting and tied to the plot in a good way
Jake Gylanhal does a great job as the villain
Cool interpretation of Mysterio’s powers

Cons

The explanation of the Snap & Blip
Zendaya is insufferable
How and why Peter inherits Tony Stark’s tech is not believable
Post-credits scenes cap things off in a bad way
Spider-Man is made a little too resilient

Plot & Thoughts

The Avengers are gone, having broken up or sacrificed themselves during the Endgame battle. The world is coming to grips with the deaths and disbandment of Earth’s mightiest heroes, as well as with the sudden return of billions of people who disappeared five years ago—a very significant event that the movie doesn't really address with the realism or gravity of its impact that is needed, but I won’t digress here about that…yet. Peter Parker (Tom Holland) is still in high school, pining after MJ (Zendaya), and hoping to make his move on her during their school trip to Europe. It’s not something he can easily do, however, as many distractions keep getting in his way. Some involve other classmates, some involve Nick Fury’s (Samuel L. Jackson) ceaseless phone calls, and some involve mysterious monsters that are attacking major cities that he must fight as Spider-Man. A man the public is calling Mysterio (Jake Gyllanhal), claiming to come from another dimension in the multiverse, arrives to fight the creatures and prevent the same catastrophe that befell his own. Or, there could be more to him than the hero story he’s telling.

First of all, I have to address the problems I have with Far From Home, starting with the main thing that bothered me about this movie. I have several issues with the casting for MJ, some of which I brought up in my Homecoming review, but I feel the need to reiterate. I know that they never explicitly call her “Mary Jane,” but that feels more like a cop-out excuse to try to keep fans from comparing her to the fiery redhead from the comic books that Peter Parker calls “MJ” for short. Zendaya, obviously, looks nothing like the character whom Peter is supposed to adore, which is only half of the frustration about having her play the role. As of this review, I have never seen Zendaya in anything but the Spider-Man movies, and…well…she sucks. I don’t want to have my opinion of an actor be too negatively skewed without seeing more of their abilities later, but I could not help but cringe in every scene she was around. Her acting is stiff and unbelievable. The way the character is written, mixed with her performance, was incredibly grating to me and was something I could not get over. It was more tolerable when she was mostly in the background in Homecoming, but with her being the main love interest in Far From Home, her wooden performance is much more on display.

I also didn’t care for the after-credits scenes that undermined the events of the movie for the sake of setting up the next Marvel project. Instead of allowing Peter Parker to enjoy some success after a hard-fought battle, we have to undo his efforts in the third act with a preview for the next movie. It also makes the motivations for Mysterio a little more convoluted than they were in his previous scene in the film. Mysterio was a decent villain with some human motivations that made him deeper than just “evil.” Yet his last act in the mid-credits scene shows that he was just an irredeemable dick. In the post-credits scene, it gets even worse. This scene then goes so far as to insinuate that several of the important side characters that Peter interacted with weren’t even who they said they were. Instead of having all the meaningful interactions he had with certain characters throughout the movie, it turns out that they were just shape-shifting aliens in disguise—Skrulls from Captain Marvel. It doesn’t completely make the adventure feel like a waste of time, but it still left a bad taste in my mouth.

Nonetheless, there were also plenty of details in Far From Home that I liked. Up until the mid-credits scene, I enjoyed Mysterio as a villain, due in no small part to Gyllanhal’s performance. He is an unhinged man on the edge of stability and sanity. He and numerous other individuals are helping him with his plot for similar petty reasons—we learn this through a rather clumsy and overt exposition sequence that I don’t care for. He and his entourage have all been slighted by Tony Stark in some way, and they’re seeking revenge by making Mysterio an Iron Man replacement in the wake of Stark’s death. Gyllanhal brings enough charisma and enthusiasm to the character to make it believable that he’d be able to convince so many people to help him on his insane plan, at least, to a point. When he gets a little more murderous, it gets less believable that they’d stick around as long as they do. Still, it’s that character’s personality and Gyllanhal’s performance that make all the small moments more meaningful, particularly when you can tell he’s trying to manipulate Peter Parker to do what he wants.

Speaking of Peter, I enjoyed the scenes that continued to focus on him as a teenage superhero who was struggling to figure out how to balance everything out. The scenes in which he had conversations that were filled with either disappointment or encouragement were well-acted and had meaningful exchanges between the characters to help Peter grow as a hero in a way that was believable and inspiring. The film treats him like a character who got in over his head with the events of Infinity War, who wants to go back to some level of normalcy, but he simply can’t because of his responsibilities. Some of this creates some contrived situations with the script that are annoying, but my bias allowed me to look past some of them.

As for the action, most of it is fun to watch. There are plenty of moments in which Spider-Man gets to show off his agility and creativity with his webslinging. Some of his efforts confused me at times, like when he’s trying to save the top of a building in Venice when there are no people below him. Spider-Man may be a hero, but property damage is a common occurence in his actions, and I don’t see why the Venetians deserve better treatment than people in New York. Also, while I enjoyed the mind-bending moments in which Mysterio messes with Peter’s perception of reality with illusions because of how cool they look and how creative the camera work is, it still seemed like he conveniently lost his spider senses in that moment for no apparent reason other than so the movie could happen. Nonetheless, he does manage to remember his abilities by the end, and the climax in London manages to be an exciting conclusion to everything as he faces off against Mysterio.

The last thing to mention is something meta to this movie that ties into the events of the last two Avengers films: the Blip. It’s not explained in Endgame what exactly happened when Mark Hulkalo snapped his fingers with the Infinity Stones, but Far From Home explains it. Apparently, every living thing that had been wiped out of existence when Thanos snapped his fingers reappeared exactly where they were when they vanished; Far From Home shows people running into them as they come back to reality. This isn’t so much of a problem for this movie, but it further undermines Endgame and the decision the Avengers made when they chose to bring everyone back five years after the fact. What about all the people who were aboard airplanes when they were snapped? Do they fall from the sky? What about those who were undergoing surgery at the time? Are their bodies still cut open on the operating table, regardless of whether something else is there? What about those who were in cars that crashed? Do they reappear in car wreckage or in traffic? How do countries and governments deal with the sudden disappearance and reappearance of more than 4 billion people? Is there enough food for everyone, or has it all been scaled down to half the population that existed? It’s a bad detail that creates too many questions and only further cements in my mind that Endgame sucks.

TL;DR

Spider-Man: Far From Home manages to be a mostly fun experience with a few drawbacks. The acting from the cast is solid, excluding my least favorite character. The action is fun and exciting, even if Spider-Man forgets his own abilities from time to time. The villain is complex and interesting until the mid-credits scene undoes some of that complexity. I have some gripes with it, and it wasn’t until the latter half of the film that I was finally on board with it, but Far From Home is still a relatively fun time.

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