Spider-Man: Far from Home is entertaining, action-packed, and humorous, but it also opts for a safe Marvel formula over a continuation of Homecoming’s fresh approach.
Spider-Man: Homecoming was one of the standout films of 2017, offering a genuinely fresh superhero movie to the ever-growing Marvel Universe. Homecoming re-energised the Spider-Man franchise after multiple cinematic outings, injecting youthful, hormonal, and electric energy through Tom Holland’s outstanding debut. Hope was therefore high that its sequel would match or exceed the energy of the first outing. However, while Spider-Man: Far from Home is undoubtedly highly entertaining, it never quite rises above the raft of Marvel superhero stories now dominating our screens.
Spider-Man: Far from Home picks up directly where the finale of Avengers: Endgame left off. Like Holland’s first outing, humour initially threads through the High School aesthetic, with some brilliant comedic references to the disappearance and reappearance of millions of people. However, what starts in the same vein as Homecoming, offering us something different and fresh, quickly becomes a continuation of the Endgame story.
While cleverly constructed, this plays to an ever-growing weakness in the MCU, as each film overlaps with the next, never allowing individual characters or stories to shine. As with Captain Marvel and Ant-Man and the Wasp, Far from Home often uses individual characters as a filler for something bigger. However, despite this weakness, Far from Home is a visual treat, with some of the best action set pieces seen in any Spider-Man outing. Much of this is achieved by cleverly relocating the character out of New York, giving the action a fresh feel while giving the character a more global dimension.
Tom Holland remains one of the best actors to have donned the Spider-Man suit, and alongside Jake Gyllenhaal’s delightful and enigmatic Mysterio, Far from Home is bound to win hearts, if not minds. However, in other areas, character development is disappointing and lacklustre. MJ (Zendaya) built a strong feminist character in Homecoming, only for Far from Home to betray this arc as MJ becomes little more than a swooning love interest rather than a strong, independent woman. Meanwhile, Peter’s best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon) has little opportunity to develop his character, becoming a comic sidekick rather than an important wingman to Holland’s Parker. Similarly, Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson) feels out of place as he is parachuted into the story to link up Marvel’s past and future plans.
The result is a movie that feels like a filler and an MCU reset rather than a stand-alone Spider-Man adventure. While the end tantalises more exciting things to come, it reflects a growing weakness in the MCU project as each film becomes more interconnected outside its own universe. Spider-Man: Far from Home is entertaining, action-packed, and humorous, but it also opts for a safe Marvel formula over a continuation of Homecoming’s fresh approach.
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