After seven movies, the Spiderman franchise has divided itself into three neat categories: the really good (Spiderman and Spiderman 2), the okay (Amazing Spiderman and Spiderman: Homecoming) and the godawful (Spiderman 3 and Amazing Spiderman 2). I’m moderately happy to say that this latest entry is firmly in the “okay” pile. Essentially just like Spiderman: Homecoming, I have some issues here that prevent it from being a top-tier superhero movie. But this movie also pissed me off less than Homecoming, so I suppose it is in the upper echelon of mediocrity. So that’s something.
Following the events of Avengers: Endgame, Peter Parker is on a summer school trip to Europe. Amid trying to have a social life and finally express his feelings to MJ, Peter also has to deal with constant interference from Nick Fury regarding a new threat that has popped up. Elemental monsters are appearing and destroying Earth, and the only defense has been Mysterio, a hero from another dimension that has already seen his world destroyed by these monsters. Vacation be damned, Spiderman must team up with Mysterio to take down these threats.
That’s the story from the trailer and is the story for the first 45 minutes or so. However, if you know anything about Spiderman, you know that’s all bullshit. Look, I really don’t think that this is a spoiler. Mysterio is the villain. This would be like going into a Batman movie and not realizing that The Riddler is a villain. This lame-ass plot twist wouldn’t be such an issue if the film’s trailers didn’t present it as a twist, as anybody that has ever read a Spiderman comic or watched a Spiderman cartoon could see this reveal coming from a mile away.
Aside from that marketing oddity, Mysterio is the highlight of the film. I have to give this to this current Spiderman series: they have done a good job with the villains and have showed admirable restraint with only having one villain per movie (aside from the Shocker nonsense in Homecoming). While not as intimidating and lacking as compelling of a backstory as Michael Keaton’s Vulture, Jake Gyllenhaal’s Mysterio still steals the show here. Although his back story is drastically altered from the comics, the character retains the spirit of the comic origin and Gyllenhaal somehow makes the character threatening, petty and charismatic at the same time. While not as menacing as Vulture, Mysterio brings some truly trippy sequences and visuals that serve as a nice contrast to the purely physical fights in the previous movie.
Much like Homecoming, though, the film largely starts to fall apart whenever the villain isn’t onscreen. It isn’t Tom Holland’s Spiderman, either, but the irritating supporting characters that he is surrounded with. I didn’t find these people as annoying as I did in the previous film, but this still often feels like a teen Disney Channel show that is sometimes interrupted by a Spiderman movie. I get that Spiderman movies are supposed to be fairly lighthearted, but these movies have taken that to an annoying level. Even when under a serious threat, these characters take things so lightly that I expect Victoria Justice to show up and break into a musical number with them. Also, and I know that I harped on this in my review of Homecoming, but that character just isn’t MJ. Before my politically correct readers call for me to be exiled from society for having an opinion, I should mention that I don’t care that she is black. The actress is fine. The problem is that the character that she is playing isn’t MJ. MJ is not a cynical, pseudo-intellectual downer that probably spends her time looking through used book stores and thrift shops in Brooklyn. If they had called this character anything else, I could just find her mildly annoying and move on. But they called her MJ, and that pisses me off.
I don’t have much else to say because I’m running out of ways to say “this superhero movie is okay” a dozen fucking times per year. Gyllenhaal is good, Holland is good and the rest is forgettable. It’s a decent Spiderman movie, so its not a waste of time if you want to check it out in theaters. I do recommend, though, that you stick around for the end credit sequences. Especially the first one….never thought I would see him doing this again.
Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Man:_Far_From_Home#/media/File:Spider-Man_Far_From_Home_poster.jpg
