Film Review: Spider-Man Far From Home

Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019)

Director: Jon Watts

UK rating: 12A

Length: 129 minutes

Cast: Tom Holland, Zendaya, Jake Gyllenhaal

If you know anything about me, you’ll know that I am a massive Marvel fan. I would happily sit for hours watching the films or tv shows, they’re that good! With that in mind, I may be biased. However, in my opinion, Spider-Man: Far From Home is the film to beat this year. 

I was able to go see the first showing of Spider-Man: Far From Home in Odeon at midnight which is always a fun thing to do as you’re usually surrounded by other mega fans of the franchise. The screen we were in was actually quite empty and basically silent throughout the film which was kind of sad but I think I reacted enough for everyone in there to be honest!

There’s so much to talk about with this film that I honestly don’t know where to start. Please be aware that there will be spoilers in this post! Don’t read unless you’ve seen the film!

I have to begin with praising the casting department at Marvel for such a diverse cast, just take a look at Peters classmates on the trip! I’m pretty sure Peter and Betty are the only straight, white kids there. The other kids are of many different races and one of the kids, Zach (played by Zach Barack) is actually transgender (Zach is trans in real life too, he is the first openly trans actor and character in the MCU!). As far as I’m aware, there are no disabled kids there but there may be invisible illnesses that I don’t know about.

The whole cast is so talented, it’s something that Marvel really excels at. Tom Holland once again proves to be the perfect Peter Parker and Spider-Man, Jacob Batalon is great as Ned Leeds, Zendaya is incredible as Michelle Jones and does not deserve the racism she receives for being cast as a traditionally white character. The supporting cast has absolute gems in. Tony Revolori, Remy Hii and Angourie Rice are stand outs.

One of my favourite funny bits of Spider-Man: Homecoming was the school news channel. It’s done really well where it’s actually terrible, but they are a couple of high school kids so what can you expect? After the Marvel logo comes on screen we hear I Will Always Love You by Whitney Houston playing and the video shows an In Memoriam screen, we see pictures of Tony Stark, Steve Rogers and Natasha Romanoff along with some of candles and flowers, complete with a Getty images watermark. Personally, I think these bits are quite funny and I know not everyone agrees but I’m glad we got another one of these scenes to start the movie.

The film sees Peter and his classmates going on an European school trip which starts in Italy, while there a water elemental attacks the city of Venice, Peter tries to help fight the elemental and soon after it’s defeated he gets picked up by Nick Fury in his hotel room. There’s a nice little scene of the two of them on a boat and Fury gives Peter glasses left to him by Tony Stark. From there we get a scene where Peter meets Mysterio, introduced to him as Quentin Beck, and Mysterio claims elementals destroyed his Earth and everyone on it. Peter denies helping fight the other elementals because he just wants a normal summer. I love that Peter stood up for himself in this scene, after witnessing the death of his mentor in Avengers: Endgame I can totally understand that he’d want to take a step back from the whole superhero thing.

Fury ends up hijacking the trip and the trip gets sent to Prague, on the way there Peter tried on the glasses that Tony left him. He finds out that there’s an AI in them called EDITH (pretty sure it stood for “Even in Death I’m The Hero”). In Prague Peter end up having to fight the fire elemental with Mysterio and he has to save Ned and Betty too. Peter seems to be overwhelmed by the responsibilities he has and gives the EDITH glasses to Mysterio. After this it’s revealed that MJ (kind of) knows that Peter is Spider-Man. She shows him some tech that she found in Prague to support her theory and it’s then we find out that Mysterio isn’t who he says he is. He is using illusions and the elementals (and multiverse) aren’t real. The audience then finds out that Beck apparently created the BARF technology that we see in Captain America: Civil War and he and other old Stark Technologies employees are working together. It’s a great scene where we see clips from old Marvel movies with some of the Stark Technologies employees played by the same actors.

The class moves onto London without Peter, he goes to Berlin to meet with Fury to tell him that the whole thing is fake. It’s then revealed that since meeting with Fury in Berlin’s everything he’s experienced was fake. This scene was one of the best things I’ve ever seen. The CGI is incredible. So much is happening and it’s honestly an amazing sequence. The scene sees Peter go through multiple illusions including one where he has to fight clones of Spider-Man and another where a decaying Iron Man suit and what is meant to be Tony’s body inside it come crawling out of Tony’s grave. I was sat in the cinema feeling amazed, sad and anxious all at once with this scene and I loved it. When he finally gets out of the illusions, Peter gets hit by a train. He wakes up in a jail cell in the Netherlands where he breaks out and calls Happy Hogan who rescues him.

All of the scenes of Peter and Happy on the plane are incredibly sweet to me. I cried watching that scene which won’t come as a surprise to most. If you’ve ever lost anyone you love, everything that Peter (and Happy) does in that scene is so relatable. They leave to go to London after their heart to heart and on the way there Peter makes himself a new suit. This suit may be my new favourite. It’s a lovely scene where the audience and even Happy are watching Peter try and live up to Tony and he does in the end.

Peter fights Beck in London and manages to shut down the illusion which leads to him being shot at by drones. He uses his Spidey Senses (or Peter Tingle if you’re Aunt May or Happy) to break through a second illusion after this he gets back control of EDITH and defeats Beck. Beck dies and Peter calls off the drone strike on his friends. Peter is walking over Tower Bridge when MJ runs up to him and hugs him, it’s a sweet moment since they’ve been pining for each other since the start of the film. They end up awkward,y kissing a couple of times before MJ leaves to meet up with the rest of the class again. Everyone gets back to New York and Peter takes MJ around the city by swinging then the film ends. 

The first set of credits played and I loved how they looked. The mid credits scene consists of Peter and MJ just after swinging around New York seeing a breaking news segment on a giant screen where J Jonah Jameson shows a video where it appears that Spider-Man kills civilians and then Mysterio but not before Beck can reveal that Spider-Man is Peter Parker. I gasped so loud when that happened, and even though Tom Holland’s face was completely covered he is that good of an actor that you could see how Peter felt underneath the suit.

The end credits scene is a little confusing to me, I’m not going to lie. It’s revealed test all through the film that Maria Hill and Nick Fury are actually Skrulls, the Skrull Talos who we meet in Captain Marvel is fake Fury. He calls the real Fury to give him the lowdown on what happened and we then see real Fury sat on a deckchair at an obviously fake beach, the camera pulls back and we realise he’s in space. For a moment there I thought maybe, just maybe, they’d bring the tv show Agents of SHIELD into it but no, do the Avengers or anyone else know Coulson is alive yet? They should. 

I really enjoyed this film, it’s definitely in my top 3 MCU films, it may even be my top. It’s the perfect end to Phase 3 and I can’t wait to see what Marvel does next. Phase 4 here we come!

If you made it this far, let me know what your favourite thing about Spider-Man: Far From Home is in the comments or on my Twitter (@sjamesphotog)!

Shannon x