Film Reviews & Movie Analysis

Our friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man slings his web over to Europe on an adventure that may take him far from home, but doesn’t stop the danger from being right on his tail.

The Synopsis
After the events of Avengers: Endgame, Peter Parker (Tom Holland) needs a holiday. And I’m not talking another five years of ceasing to exist. His class trip to Europe seems to be the perfect antidote as it means leaving his alter-ego and his troubles behind to focus on being a kid and getting the girl – specifically his friend M.J (Zendeya).

Unfortunately for Peter, Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) is after his help in putting a stop to The Elementals – an alternate-universe threat that has destroyed one world, and has arrived to annihilate ours.

Saving the world is the last thing Peter wants, however, he’s glad to have found a kinship with Quentin Beck aka Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) a hero who is in a position to hold the weight Peter’s not ready to handle.

Heavy is the head that wears the crown, but F’d is the world with a leader it didn’t ask for.

The Good
Phew. So here we are: on the other side of Avengers: Endgame, in the dawn of new era for the MCU, and we’re all relatively in one piece.

Right – back to the webbed topic; Spider-Man: Far From Home. Considering my views on Spider-Man: Homecoming, my hopes weren’t all that high for its sequel. However, I have to say the movie did really well for itself, and here’s why…

This movie grew up along with its main character. Where most of my peeves with Homecoming was its childishness, Far From Home came with maturity. Peter Parker went from an overeager kid desperate to prove himself as an adult, to a kid desperately trying to stay a kid whilst others were forcing him to be an adult. Having been affected by the past and having learnt lessons the hard way, Peter has come out on the other side the same, but different.

Pretty decent character development if you ask me. Because of this alteration in his characteristics, the movie felt like it was made for adults, even though the majority of the cast were still in school.

Without me giving away any direct information; the mechanics behind the reveal was fascinating. Even though I expected one thing (which was confirmed), the reason behind it, added a lot of depth and intrigue which made the expected, unexpected after all.

The Bad
Strike me down with Mjölnir for saying so, but Nick Fury was a massive annoyance for me in this movie. I understand that his treatment of Peter both came from the fear of having another Thanos incident – as well as being a driving point for the story – but man was he being an absolute prick.

The structure of the movie worked really well and at the end of the day there was only one overindulgent VFX scene where I got a little impatient. Though I find the anticipation of a specific event to be very dragged out. I could be being completely subjective here, but I’ve spoken to a handful of people who agree with me – we were all waiting for it, so the longer it took to come the more ridiculous the wait felt.

I’m not quite sure how I feel about the pre-rolling credits scene (that’s a lie; I didn’t like it). I can’t see what the point was in it, or where it could lead, but most importantly I don’t feel the validity behind it holds up.

Really random, but I thought I’d just share how little I liked the title; Far From Home. I don’t have any other suggestions to throw into the mix – I just wish they’d chosen something else.

The Conclusion
For me, this was a surprisingly enjoyable movie, that doubled as an appropriate post-Avengers continuation into the MCU. The start of the movie went directly to a nice and quick explanation of what is now dubbed as “The Blip”, and though the ending has me less than thrilled about a potential sequel, and Tom Holland still isn’t my favourite rendition – I definitely hold a lot more respect for him and his portrayal as our friendly, super adorable, international, Spider-Baby.