A web of endearing sincerity

WORDS like “goodbye”, “ending” and “closure” are merely notional in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where it seems like just yesterday we were bidding a damp-eyed adieu to some of the MCU’S most-beloved characters. Just in time to reassure bereft fans comes Spider-man: Far From Home, which might be the sweetest Iron Man movie the metal-sheathed icon never starred in.

As the film opens, the late Tony Stark is still being mourned at the Queens high school where Peter Parker (Tom Holland) is preparing for an upcoming summer trip to Europe with his science-geek friends.

Now it looks like Parker’s alter-ego, Spider-man, will take on the saviour of the free world mantle, just as his mentor intended. But Peter has other plans, which centre on MJ (Zendaya), an unrequited crush and a dramatic admission of his feelings atop the Eiffel Tower.

Both plot lines, Peter accepting the adult responsibilities that Tony prepared him for and finally getting on MJ’S vibe, unfold and intersect with chipper efficiency in Far From Home. The best parts of the movie aren’t the action sequences, which by now can’t help but feel rote and metronomically explosive, but the teasing banter and goofy peer-group dynamics that are injected with lifeor-death stakes thanks to Peter’s stillkinda-secret identity.

Jake Gyllenhaal shows up as a cool, cape-wearing strongman who shoots potent green something-orothers out of his hands and shows a brotherly interest in Peter. But, like the post-blip world it takes place in, Far From Home is still in Tony’s thrall, paying homage to the fallen industrialist in everything from that opening montage to bits of background graffiti and near-constant invocation on the part of Peter, Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson) and Tony’s former right-hand man Happy (Jon Favreau), who still has a thing for Peter’s impossibly hot Aunt May (Marisa Tomei).

But big-m messages and spectacle aren’t the point in a series that, two movies in, has already distinguished itself in being endearingly sincere, playful and self-effacing. Viewers who stay for the end-credits will see that Peter’s escapades are far from over: Maybe by the next instalment, he’ll be ready to swoop, sail and spin into action all on his own.