Movie Review: "Spider-Man: Far From Home" Proves There’s Life After "Endgame"

It’s the twistiest Marvel movie… ever?

I’m not allowed to tell you why Spider-Man: Far From Home is so, so good. Well, it’s not that I’m not allowed; the film is in cinemas now and the security guards that stalked my preview screening’s aisles don’t have my home address, I don’t think. Still, it would be a shame to ruin the many happy surprises in this latest Spider-Man for those who have no earthly idea what they may be. It’s true that you can’t spoil a good movie—only a bad one—but you can also not be a d*** about it and let people discover its pleasures for themselves.

So a d*** I shan’t be! I’ll tell you the bare bones of the plot and applaud a few of the actors without revealing what it is exactly that makes the narrative and their performances so fun. Mostly, you’ll just have to take my word for it that Spider-Man: Far From Home is a damned delight; an improvement on its predecessor (2017’s live-action Homecoming, not December’s game-changing animated feature Into the Spider-Verse), and a refreshing blast of joy in the wake of Marvel’s grave sob-fest Avengers: Endgame. Believe me, it’s not a backhanded compliment to call Far From Home the second-best Spider-Man flick released in the last six months.

Cheerful naif Tom Holland returns as Peter Parker, five years after his and half the planet’s disintegration in Avengers: Infinity War. Helpfully, most of Peter’s classmates were among those who were snapped out of existence by Thanos too, so there are no questionable age discrepancies now that they’re all back in high school, thanks to Tony Stark’s self-sacrificing un-snap in Endgame. Peter has resumed serving as New York’s friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man, but given everything he’s endured recently—the death of his mentor; his own death; puberty—he’s looking forward to a holiday. His plan is to leave the Spider-suit at home and confess his love to MJ (an endearingly suspicious Zendaya) during their class trip to Europe. Unfortunately, the similarly undusted Avenger-wranglers Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) put the kibosh on his R&R, recruiting him for another planet-rescuing mission, seeing as all the other, better heroes are currently off-world.

("Off-world" is a nice way of Nick Fury saying, "They belong to Disney, and we’re only being temporarily lent to Sony Pictures, who own Spider-Man, as part of a complicated rights package that allows us to play in each other’s sandboxes every couple of years.")

So, once again, Peter Parker is confronted with the 'great responsibility' that was lumped on Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man back in the day. Here, however, he gets the opportunity to relieve himself of the burden, thanks to the arrival of a hero from another dimension: Quentin Beck (Jake Gyllenhaal). Holland and Gyllenhaal have a nice rapport, with Beck serving as an understanding older brother compared to Tony Stark’s cool-yet-firm father figure. As the be-caped Quentin flies around saving the day, defeating "Elementals" rising up from the ground in Venice, Prague and London, Peter sees a better hero to take up Iron Man’s mantle. Can he finally walk away from this 'super' stuff? Thankfully, the second-half establishes a much more interesting ethical quandary for Peter Parker than the ol' 'Should I or shouldn’t I?' Should I get into it? No, I really shouldn’t.

Director Jon Watts and screenwriters Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers develop an intriguing answer to the question, 'What's life like after Endgame?', though, the logistics of half the population returning are only ever gestured to jokingly. Instead, they indicate how the mood of their world has changed. Most disturbingly, it’s more like the mood of our world: full of fearful paranoiacs and grifters eager to take advantage of the terror. As was hinted at in Captain Marvel, the next phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe will deal with distrust and deepfakes. Who'da thunk the goofy, younger-skewing Spider-Man franchise would set the scene for that threat so well?

Happily, it remains a fun and zippy teen comedy at heart, with hilarious support from Jacob Batalon as Peter’s bestie Ned, Tony Revolori’s Flash Thompson, and Angourie Rice as Betty Brant. Gyllenhaal has also become such a dizzying oddball since Nightcrawler, and we welcome it. The early action sequences don’t quite pop, perhaps intentionally, but the finale is thrilling, elevated by nifty drone-cams that give it a first-person feel, and fans of the PS4 Spider-Man game will appreciate the similarities between it and the climax’s more psychedelic and unsettling sequences.

And even though I’ve come to begrudge having to wait in the cinema for the inevitable post-credits button teasing a thing I don’t understand, or providing us with a perfunctory extra 12 seconds of nonsense, I have to admit, Spider-Man: Far From Home may have the two best mid- and post-credit nuggets of any Marvel instalment. They’re certainly the meatiest. Spider-Man movies sometimes look like an offshoot of the MCU, but remember, looks deceive. This one's the real deal.

4/5

In Australian cinemas now. Rated M for action violence.