"Be ready for anything."
Hello everyone!
I figured that I could at the very least give it a go since these things all connect to one another, somehow.
But of course that presents its own unique challenges along the way as you go, really.
See, there are a few movies in the Avengers lineup - what I call the MCU in my head anyway - that I really just can't be bothered with, no matter how hard the directors and cast may try to make their characters appealing.
And unfortunately, tonight's choice is one of them, as sad as that may sound.
I tried though! I tried my very best to like the movie and enjoy it for what it is, but it turns out that what it is, is ... well, not exactly my cup of tea, regardless.
Shake out those web-shooters, everyone. Spider-Man: Far From Home is where we start.
I'll have links to the other movies in the franchise that I've watched and reviewed for the blog linked at the very bottom of this post, or you can look things up by searching 'Marvel' or 'MCU' really!
Onward.
Peter Parker (Tom Holland), the teenager Tony Stark recruited to the team and who happens to be Spider-Man, is now back to school after the events of Endgame, and still mourning the death of his mentor, but hey, at least he's got a trip to look forward to! His class is headed to Europe for two weeks, and maybe, just maybe, he can take a bit of a vacation from being Spider-Man, and tell his classmate MJ (Zendaya) that he likes her.
That's the plan, anyway, though Stark's former assistant Happy (Favreau, who we're all happy to see return because at least he provides some comic relief, guidance, and continuity in this movie) tells Peter that Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) will be giving him a call.
Which Peter promptly ignores and heads to Venice with the rest of the kids, though his plan to sit next to MJ on the plane is foiled by a teacher that's much, much too helpful, all things considered, and so he has to spend all that trip sitting next to the older guy instead.
Once in Venice, things take the usual teenage drama turn (aka Peter tries to tell MJ, even buys her a necklace made of Murano glass, misses his chance, etc.) when something weird can be seen moving through the water ... and out of it as some sort of elemental force (With a face!) attacks the city that's basically all water and very little ground.
See right at the start of the movie, Fury and Hill (Smulders) were in Mexico where some sort of 'cyclone with a face' destroyed a city, and they ran into a similar sort of elemental force which ended up being defeated by Quentin Beck (Jake Gyllenhaal). Beck shows up in Venice, too, eventually destroying the water thing while Peter tries his best to make sure nobody gets hurt in the process and most buildings are still standing.
Beck is revealed to be from a different Earth (cue Multiverse music!) where these Elementals destroyed the planet and killed everyone, including his family. Fury asks Peter to join the team as they head to Prague to destroy the last of these threats, but Peter the Teen declines, saying he just wants a normal life.
Sure, says Fury. Then promptly hijacks the school trip, diverting it from Paris to Prague and getting Peter a new suit so that Spider-Man won't be seen in Europe (I'm still hazy on the reasons here but I suppose a teenager WOULD want their identity concealed). Anyway, once in Prague, Peter has to be practically bullied into helping Beck, while also receiving a gift from Stark: a pair of glasses that contain the AI EDITH, which offers him a connection to the whole Stark database.
One word: whoa.
Anyway, Beck and he team up to destroy the fire elemental and go to celebrate afterwards, where Peter shows just how much of a teen he is when he transfers ownership of EDITH to Beck ... who turns out to be even worse than a simple fraud. See, he's a disgruntled Stark employee who's been faking all these attacks and staging them with elaborate illusions, making himself an Avengers-level superhero because ... he feels slighted by Stark?
It's a flimsy excuse, okay, and while the class is packing up (because duh, their parents want them home after all that went down), MJ tells Peter she knows he's Spider-Man, which immediately makes the movie ten thousand times better because up until this point, Zendaya is utterly wasted and under-utilized, but once the secret's out her character actually has room to DO things.
She also shows Peter a piece of debris she picked up during the fight, which turns out to be a projector, and Peter figures out just what it is he screwed up over. Making a snappy decision he hurries to Berlin, where Fury and Hill are forming a new superhero team - only to end up being bamboozled by Beck by another illusion, and left for dead under a high-velocity train.
Not one to give up, however, he calls Happy after waking up in the Netherlands, and after a fatherly moment they fly to London where their classmates will be boarding their trans-Atlantic flight home, per Beck's instructions so he can kill the ones who know about his deception (so MJ, Peter's friend Ned and Ned's girlfriend Betty).
Peter arrives mid-illusion and manages to disrupt it, though Happy previously gets a message over to Fury that makes the man suspicious (and, in Beck's own words, Fury is the most paranoid and dangerous person on the planet, so you do NOT want to make him suspicious!), and an actual battle ensues with Happy shepherding the targeted kids away and Peter engaging Beck.
He eventually beats the man because he can't be fooled anymore, and in the shoot-out with the drones Beck gets caught in the cross-fire, dying from the wounds while Peter takes control over EDITH again, stopping the drones.
All's well that ends well, and he and MJ begin seeing one another once back in New York (with a hilarious intermezzo of Happy apparently dating May, Peter's aunt at the moment), but a scene as the credits roll shows that Beck worked the footage from London to make Spider-Man look like the one responsible, and he also reveals to the world who Spider-Man really is.
This all calls for Fury to intervene, right? Well, another scene in the credits reveals that, hey psyche, Fury and Hill aren't Fury and Hill at all - they're two shapeshifting Skrulls (which everyone should remember from previous movies) because the real Fury is chillin' like a villain on a spaceship somewhere up there, getting whatever the heck work he needs to get done, and really not caring all that much for Earth problems at the moment.
Though I have this feeling that, once he gets back home, he gon' be PISSED at the mess he has to clean up!
With that, the movie comes to an actual close, and I'm left wondering what Marvel did to one of its strongest superheroes. Making Peter Parker a teenager may have been a marketing ploy to attract an audience of a certain demographic, but it takes away from the character's integrity, and I swear I don't know half of what's going on with him to begin with. Aunt May, the one who guides him and is his moral compass, is more a hippie than anything else (no offense to hippies everywhere), and is there even an uncle Ben in this version? Or is Stark the one who gets substituted into the story for him?
Either way, it's a bad sign when, only a day after seeing the movie, I already have trouble remembering why characters had to travel from point A to point B and can't figure out the reason why, so I'll be very brief.
The MCU has no clue what to do with Spider-Man, but supposedly there's going to be a fourth movie after No Way Home, the latest installment, which I don't know how they can excuse. Or why people eat this stuff up. Holland and Zendaya do bring a good quality to their characters, and I suppose Holland plays this dorky, all-around teenager well for the teenager he's supposed to be, but it's the teen drama that really throws you off.
Or it should, at least. Because teen drama doesn't really belong in a superhero movie, in my opinion, or should be used wisely, which ... it isn't, not here, let me tell you.
All in all, if not for the bits with Fury and Happy, this would have been a giant flop for me even with the billions it brought in at the box office. But you need it for continuity sake, I suppose, so if you can make yourself watch it, good for you!
Me, I'll stick with the older superheroes please, or the ones like Kate Bishop who at least balance all the drama a bit better, somehow.
10/10 would NOT recommend, but I suppose because it's part of the MCU, it's gotta be suffered.
xx
*images and video not mine
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