Spider-Man: Far From Home
I got to watch this a couple of days before opening day, thanks to some friends of mine. Woots!
As with Homecoming, I loved all the high school stuff. The opening scene with the student-run newscast returns hilariously with Betty Brant, looking at the wrong camera, low production values, and one of the best uses of I Will Always Love You. The movie dispenses with the fallout of the Snappening (now called The Blip in the MCU) in a quick five minutes, focusing on the humor and glossing over the insane repercussions that would really ensue if you put any kind of thought into it.
Aside: As horrible as the idea of half the world’s population disappearing is, it may be just a nightmarish to consider all of them returning after five years. So many legal issues with everyone having been pronounced dead. Previously widowed spouses would have moved on with their lives. Imagine waking up tomorrow and finding out that your wife had been remarried for the last four years to someone else. Where are these people going to live? Have their old homes been resold/rented? How would the world’s infrastructure deal with an overnight load doubling?
And seeing how everyone popped back where they disappeared, what about the people who disappeared in cars or planes? Did they poof back midair with no plane around them? How many people died immediately upon returning? It’d be a total clusterfuck.
Back to high school. The kids are amazing. Ned and Betty are a couple of old souls. Flash is hilarious as the harmless bully, and his moment of pathos at the end is effective despite its laziness.
And then there’s Zendaya as MJ. I can’t express how much I love her portrayal. It’s very similar to Aubrey Plaza’s April Ludgate in Parks and Recreation - A young woman with a sarcastic, dark wit who hides the sweetest interior imaginable. Her confidence and razor sharp wisecracks are so strong that they make her moments of vulnerability that much more powerful.
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| Loves the Black Dahlia Murders and Spider-Man. |
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| Loves Satan and Starlord. |
Her scenes with Peter crackle with chemistry and likability, I would have watched a whole movie of that. Now that the characters are all firmly established, I wish that Marvel would lean waaaay more into the teen rom-com side of this, with only ancillary action. Something along the lines of Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane.
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| Looking forward to this reread. |
Which is really the problem with Far From Home. It has the standard MCU not-very-exciting-fight-scenes issue. I like Jake Gyllenhaal’s Mysterio, and he does some neat stuff with his tech, but when I watch this movie again, I’m more than likely to skip the fire elemental fight and the final action set piece.
I also HATE what happens in the post-credits scene - Why can’t anyone let Peter be happy for just a little bit? Let him have fun being MJ’s boyfriend! I get why it’s necessary for plot purposes, and such is Peter’s lot in life. But it’s just so damn unfair.
Final point: Captain America saying “Avengers assemble,” will always be my favorite MCU moment ever. Ever. But coming somewhere in the top 5 has to be the joy I felt when JK Simmons showed up on screen. The majority of MCU casting has been flawless over the last decade, but thank god they knew not to mess with perfection from the Sam Raimi trilogy. Perfection.
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| Best moment. |
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| A close second? |
Regret watching: No
Would watch again: Yes
Will buy on DVD: Yes
Rating: Pretty good
Updated MCU rankings:
- Avengers: Endgame
- Captain America: Civil War
- Captain America: Winter Soldier
- Avengers
- Ant Man/Wasp
- Spider-Man: Homecoming
- Black Panther
- Avengers: Infinity War
- Spider-Man: Far From Home
- Captain America: First Avenger
- Thor 3
- Avengers: Age of Ultron
- Captain Marvel
- Ant-Man
- Iron Man 1
- Iron Man 3
- Iron Man 2
- Guardians 1
- Doctor Strange
- Guardians 2
- Thor
- Hulk
- Thor 2
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