Spider-Man: Far From Home

Dir Jon Watts, US 2019 On UK release

How do you follow the cataclysmic events and sombre tone of Avengers: Endgame to wrap up ‘Phase 3’ of the Marvel Cinematic Universe? With a complete tonal shift, of course, into the more light-hearted territory of Spider-Man: Far From Home. The far-reaching effects of Thanos’s ‘snap’ (here rechristened ‘the blip’) are briefly and amusingly addressed from the perspective of students at Forest Hill High, and then we’re whisked off to Europe on a school trip, which a grieving Peter Parker (Tom Holland) believes will help him to get over the loss of his mentor, take a break from all that great responsibility, and give him the chance to express his growing feelings for fellow student MJ (Zendaya). Needless to say, things don’t go quite to plan, and Peter soon finds himself drawn into a globe-trotting adventure, reluctantly teaming up with a grumpy Nick Fury (Sam Jackson) and the mysterious Quentin Beck (Jake Gyllenhaal) to fight a quartet of giant elementals leaving Europe’s prime tourist destinations in ruins.

Nothing, of course, is going to be quite what it seems in a film featuring classic Spidey villain Mysterio (complete with fishbowl helmet!), and the film offers a timely parable about the way our very need to believe in powerful saviour figures helps create a malleable reality highly susceptible to deep fakery of the most nefarious kind. Mysterio’s particular brand of tricksiness is here smartly updated for the CGI age, introducing an appropriately and vertiginously self-referential dimension to the film, as well as some highly inventive visuals worthy of Steve Ditko’s original pages.

It’s a hugely enjoyable romp of a summer movie, switching deftly from touching to hilarious and back again without any noticeable grinding of cinematic gears (although it is, perhaps, 15 minutes too long). The young leads are all deserving of praise, and it’s they – despite the welcome presence of old Marvel hands like Jon Favreau, Cobie Smulders and Marisa Tomei – who really carry the film. I, for one, am thoroughly enjoying this current iteration of a young and relatively inexperienced Spider-Man, and while making Far From Home a cross between a teen comedy and a Roger Moore era Bond travelogue sounds like an odd decision, it pays off. The film’s conclusion leaves us in more traditional Spidey territory familiar from the Raimi/Maguire trilogy; the final post-credits scenes are both jaw-droppers. David Sutton

★★★★★

Nothing is going to be quite what it seems in a film featuring Mysterio