Newest Spider-Man’s got some legs
Warning: If you haven’t yet seen Avengers: Endgame, there are spoilers ahead.
There’s life in the old MCU yet. Just two months after the release of Avengers: Endgame — and mere days after the crafty “re-release” tries to push it over the top to become the highest-grossing film ever — comes this zippy, trippy chapter in the life of teenage mutant Avenger Spider-Man.
Spider-Man: Far From Home — which really should have grabbed its title from the line of dialogue “I think Nick Fury just hijacked our summer vacation” — does get off to a creaky start. We watch Peter Parker (Tom Holland) and his classmates awkwardly coming to terms with “the Blip,” a mild term for a five-year stretch when half the universe ceased to exist.
Now they’re back, leading to oddities like a former pipsqueak classmate Brad, who sprouted during those 60 months, and now looks like Chinese-Australian hunk Remy Hii. Fortunately for Peter’s nascent love life, he and crush MJ (Zendaya) remain the same age, as does Peter’s pal Ned (Jacob Batalon) and classmate Betty (Angourie Rice).
And despite the dispatch of Thanos, the Marvel Cinematic Universe remains a dangerous
place. Far From Home finds Avengers’ head-office staff Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) investigating a series of attacks by a quartet of powerful beasts linked to the four elements, but minus any sense of humour.
This is one of those movies where the whereabouts of the other Avengers is left vague, but help arrives in the form of Quentin Beck, a.k.a. Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal), a soldier from an alternate universe where the Elementals have already triumphed. Other versions of our planet come with handy area-code designators. This is Earth-616 (the lower Michigan of alternate universes), while Mysterio comes from a toll-free Earth-833.
It’s not long after Mysterio’s arrival that Far From Home finally gets its groove on, with a crazy dream sequence that rivals any of the shenanigans from Doctor Strange a few years back. And thanks to the “European vacation” plot of the film, we get to watch waste being laid to landmark cities including Prague, Venice and London.
All the while, Peter remains conflicted by his planet-saving obligations, which keep getting in the way of his plans to reveal his true feelings to MJ. The late Tony Stark saw great potential in the kid, but Spidey senses that as a 16-year-old, he’s not up to the task. Nick Fury, living up to his last name, is prepared to agree.
Writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers and director Jon Watts, returning from the previous Spider-movie, Homecoming, nicely balance the humour of this one with the more serious beats. On the humour front they’re helped by Martin Starr and J.B. Smoove as the reluctant chaperons for Parker’s globe-trotting class trip, and by Jon Favreau’s Happy Hogan, whose work with Stark Industries still leaves time for a little romance on the side.
As to the serious side, the less said, the better. This is probably the most problematic of the Spider-Man films when it comes to potential spoilers, right down to the mid- and post-credit scenes.
The fight scenes are a bit choppy but not irredeemably so, and I was mildly distracted by the gladiator-with-fishbowl-helmet look of Gyllenhaal’s character. (He also bears a weird resemblance to the Atomic Monster logo that precedes the Conjuring/ Annabelle movies.) But Far From Home really connects in its quieter moments. After the crowded bombast of Infinity Wars, it turns out a summer vacation was just what the franchise needed.
Spider-Man: Far From Home
★★★ 1/2 out of 5
Cast: Tom Holland, Jake Gyllenhaal, Zendaya
Director: Jon Watts
Duration: 2h9m
Opens: July 2