Spiderman: Far from Home but not too far from Marvel's movie formula

The marvel superhero movies were the films that defined my college years. I remember going with my friends to midnight showings, when that was still a thing. We were all in college and came home for the summers and we’d hang around at Applebee’s and then go see a marvel movie. But then like most things we outgrew the Applebee’s and life kind of took over and while we did still see the movies the fun kind of faded almost like the movies themselves. In the beginning the movies were new and interesting but with each new film, they started to follow this formula that grew tiring. Hero fights big bad, big bad beats hero up, hero must train or find some power that helps them overcome, they find power overcome big bad. They’re still great summer popcorn movies but nothing special like they were in the beginning. So, when Avengers: Endgame finally came out it was almost a relief that they finally reached the climax that I’m sure many people who grew up with the marvel movies had hoped for. As far as superhero movies go it was a fitting end for many of the characters that we’ve been following for nearly a decade.

After Endgame I said I would stop watching superhero movies but then of course the Spiderman: Far from Home trailer comes out hinting at an exploration into the aftermath of Endgame and seeming to serve as the first film to an entirely new phase for the marvel universe. And honestly let’s face it with AMC A-List why not go see it; all I’m losing is time after all… But I digress, in the trailer we see Peter Parker (Tom Holland) grappling with the death of Tony Stark; and then trying to reconcile with being chosen by Tony as his superhero successor. I was sold on the idea. When I was a kid, Spiderman was my favorite hero and the idea of seeing him take over as the anchor for the marvel universe had me excited.

The actual film was in a way disappointing. I was hoping for a lot of interesting story since this is the first movie after the events of Endgame. But the movie doesn’t even bother to talk about it. There’s some mention of it at the very beginning where they refer to the events as “the blip” (an awful fucking name if I’m being honest). But after that it just goes back to the tried and true marvel formula. And of course, all the characters from Homecoming were conveniently “blipped” away so they could all come back for this film and all be the same age.

The movie sees Peter Parker going on a field trip to Europe with his classmates and then being contacted by Nick Fury to help deal with threats from elementals, which are these creatures based on the classical elements of earth, air, fire, and water. Nick Fury has Parker team up with Quentin Beck aka Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) and of course things go awry. Like I said same old formula. That’s not to say the movie wasn’t entertaining. I tend to say this a lot regarding movies, but I wasn’t bored, which is about the highest praise I can give Spiderman: Far from Home. The big problem with this movie, and marvel movies in general, is that there is never any real tension since you know from the get-go that nothing horrible will happen to the hero, i.e. die. You basically watch the movie to see how the hero will prevail, which gets old when it’s always a similar method.

With the amount of money Disney throws at these movies they tend to always look polished but that wasn’t the case with Spiderman. The movie looked bad. There were a lot of CGI Spiderman scenes and they all looked like something out of an early gen PlayStation 4 game. There was also a scene when the students are all on a tour bus and it is painfully obvious that they used a green screen. I don’t know if they just wanted to rush and get this thing out or if they genuinely thought it all looked good.

The writing has never been a strong suit for marvel movies and this case was some of the worst. It feels like after the success of Guardians of the Galaxy every movie needs to have these funny moments and sometimes it works but most of the times it doesn’t; for Spiderman it doesn’t work. The lines are always awkwardly placed and took me out of the movie. The acting in general was good but the script wasn’t. On a bit of a tangent, I think Tom Holland has been the best Spiderman so far and I like Zendaya as MJ.

But the most egregious thing this movie does involves the after credits scenes. With Marvel movies we have all been conditioned to expect scenes during and after the credits. These scenes have always just been little bonuses or quick set ups for the larger universe and never anything crucial to the movie that I just watched. But with Spiderman both the during and after credits scenes were vitally important to the movie; the after credits scene especially. It felt like they didn’t have any after credit scenes planned for the movie but knew they needed something because it was expected so they cut off the last 2 to 4 minutes of the movie and just made it the after-credit scenes.

I wasn’t impressed by Spiderman: Far from Home and have little interest in the future of the Marvel universe. I’ll still go see them if I have some sort of pass to see movies for “free” but if I had to pay, I wouldn’t waste my money. I feel like the events of Endgame had huge repercussions on the world in the movies but it just feels like Disney is going to gloss over it and want the audience to pretend like it never happened unless they need a tug at the heart strings “hey remember Tony? Remember Cap?” moment; cheap pop guaranteed. Maybe things will pick up but I doubt the Black Widow movie will be the one to do it unless they magically bring her back from the dead for her movie, which would be fitting for the comic book trope of heroes never dying even when they are killed. Spiderman was a paint by numbers marvel movie so if you like that kind of thing, you’ll enjoy it; just don’t expect anything more.

TL; DR: Spiderman does Spiderman things; Tony Stark is still dead. People disappeared for 5 years but no one cares, and it doesn’t matter. 6 “blips” out of 10
HEY DISNEY! EXPLORE THE POST ENDGAME WORLD, YOU COWARDS!