Spider-Man: Far from Home (2019)
July 2, 2019 8:49 PM - Subscribe

Following the events of Avengers: Endgame, Spider-Man must step up to take on new threats in a world that has changed forever.
posted by LobsterMitten (86 comments total) 7 users marked this as a favorite
 
Just saw this; man they are good at making these movies. Tom Holland and Zendaya are adorable. That opening montage about the fallen heroes was such a great opener. The casting continues to be impeccable.
posted by LobsterMitten at 8:55 PM on July 2, 2019 [5 favorites]


It's not just that the casting is impeccable. It's the continuity of the characters that makes it possible for them to be so good at making these movies. They're like old friends and the movie can just tell a story and have fun. They've really reached a peak of comic-book movie storytelling over there at Marvel Studios. My biggest problem with it was just that the Mysterio reveal isn't really a surprise, to, I think, anyone (except Peter obviously), but it doesn't end up mattering that much. The first post-credits teaser is like my favourite thing ever now.
posted by wabbittwax at 9:29 PM on July 2, 2019 [8 favorites]


I completely agree, wabbittwax. Sure, Mysterio was sort of inconsequential, but they still managed to make him more threatening than I ever found him in the comics. And on a level of pure craft, the way they worked his origin and his team's story into the MCU was flawless.

I think my only minor quibble is...OK, I like John Favreau. I think he deserves MASSIVE props for being one of the architects of the MCU. And I like Happy Hogan as a character. But I don't think that every major event in the lives of every MCU character needs to revolve around him in some way.

And yeah, I think my heart exploded during the mid-credits scene.
posted by MrBadExample at 10:51 PM on July 2, 2019 [1 favorite]


I enjoyed the hell out of the movie. Really fun, and the mid-credits scene, I yelled, "YEAH!" and might have weirded out the teens sitting near me.
posted by Fleebnork at 6:16 AM on July 3, 2019 [1 favorite]


The one thing that I love and hate with MCU!Spidey is how much he's intertwined with Tony. (Uncle Ben gets a ref via the initials on that suitcase I guess yayyy....) And this movie has it in buckets. Missed the quipping too. And yet, I totally enjoyed myself and for the record, WHAT??? WHATTTT??? WHATTT??? lol if that's the direction I suspect they're going with Secret Invasion, then brb I'm laughing for a thousand years.
posted by cendawanita at 8:53 AM on July 3, 2019 [2 favorites]


I don't think that the last teaser was indicating anything like Secret Invasion, just Talos temporarily subbing while Fury is otherwise occupied. I think for most of the MCU continuity we have had Genuine Fury™.
posted by wabbittwax at 9:53 AM on July 3, 2019


Oh no no I totally agree only this outing is Fury is Talos*. I meant onwards if they're teasing with their version of a Skrull 'invasion'.

*I mean for one thing Fury is noticeably more incompetent than he could logically be haha
posted by cendawanita at 9:57 AM on July 3, 2019 [3 favorites]


I would just like to note this previous comment of mine in an earlier thread, as an indicator of how delighted I was by the appearance of J. K. Simmons on the screen.
posted by Ipsifendus at 8:09 PM on July 3, 2019 [7 favorites]


I liked that mysterio was essentially still mysterio and not some fake out re-imagining of the character.

Didn't love that the villain was yet again a genius once slighted by tony stark.. sigh... But I liked the way they recycled that trope. If that makes any sense.
posted by French Fry at 8:20 PM on July 3, 2019 [2 favorites]


Yeah, revealing at the end that Fury was a skrull the entire time felt odd. Could they not get Samuel Jackson for this movie?
posted by chrchr at 10:21 PM on July 3, 2019 [16 favorites]


But they did?
posted by cendawanita at 10:54 PM on July 3, 2019 [6 favorites]


Talos-as-Fury says something about a Kree sleeper cell which just feels like general scene setting spy chatter, but I've seen other forums speculate that marvel could do a version of secret invasion where a bunch of people are actually kree in disguise and the skrulls are the good guys working with the heroes to help detect fakes. I'd be into this.


I really liked the movie, thought it was hilarious that the villain is literally wearing a mocap suit the whole time, and honestly the two big mysterio fights are some of the best in the MCU. The street fight beside the train tracks was really unsettling and made the next half hour of the movie kind of hard to watch as I waited for Happy to explode into spiders and yell PSYCH WE'RE STILL FIGHTING or some shit.

Also, in the comics Peter is has been a member of the Defenders. Movie Peter now has a kickass hallway fight scene, the most important part of every Defenders TV show. Coincidence? Yes.
posted by fomhar at 2:55 AM on July 4, 2019 [7 favorites]


Just got back from seeing this. It's the most fun a Spider-Man movie has been, well, since Spiderverse actually. It's a movie about funny awkward teens. They're at a science magnet school! They're all dorks!

I was really curious to see how Mysterio was going to play out and seeing that he actually is in a mocap suit most of the time was such a fun twist on his character and that fishbowl he wears. Did anyone else notice that in the mocap suit Jake had a little bit of a paunch?

And any plot hole I noticed (especially giving Peter access to a deadly weapons system without actually explaining what it does then getting mad at him for using it) were explained away in the end credits.

My screening was full of teens and they loved it - every bit of flirting between Peter and MJ received whoops and cheers and it made the whole thing a lot of fun to watch.
posted by thecjm at 8:07 PM on July 4, 2019 [1 favorite]


This movie worked on so many levels, not the least of which had to do with Mysterio's mocap suit, very much like the ones that you'll see in just about every behind-the-scenes and blooper video for the MCU movies; even though Mysterio's end game isn't made very clear (he'll pretend to be a hero and... what? Make out like a bandit on action figure sales?), the implicit social critique--of people preferring a fake-but-convincing hero to a real one--is daring as it has Marvel at least nibbling the hand that feeds it. It also ties in neatly with both of the stinger post-credit scenes; Peter is now the subject of a fake-news campaign, spearheaded by the updated-for-social-media JJJ (although, of course, the revelation of his secret identity is genuine, which might mean, of course, that Peter will have to do some fake newsing of his own to counter it, if he ever wants a semi-normal life, if he doesn't just try the "Ben Reilly" route), and, possibly foreshadowing one route for re-establishing his secret identity, the Skrulls are back on earth--but the big spaceship/space station that Nick and the other Skrulls are on, plus talking about that Kree cell, might also be a harbinger of Phase 4/MCU Cosmic.

But it wouldn't have been a fraction as fun as it was if it were merely a big metaphor for Our Current Situation or setting up the post-Endgame franchise, and except for a few relatively minor quibbles (Mysterio setting up the contingency plans for his own death (he seemed way too egotistical to consider that possibility), the unlikelihood of the drone damage to various European landmarks being unlikely to pass as the work of elemental forces, the even unlikelier unlikelihood of no one recognizing Beck from his previous work), well worth a rewatch even if I wasn't desirous of seeing if Not-Nick-Fury had any tells only obvious in retrospect.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:32 PM on July 4, 2019 [2 favorites]


The more I sit with my feelings on the movie, the more bifurcated I feel. I totally agree with all the positives about the movie, and they are tremendous. But we're two movies in and MCU!Spidey will never leave the shadow of Tony Stark. Like, even literally the first stinger, where it's basically a remix of how Tony chose to out himself. And yes, I am choosing to read it that way, but it's a reading that's incredibly well-supported by the movie:

- Mysterio being essentially, another Iron Man villain, ie the backstory has more to do with Beck's relationship with Stark Industries than anything to do with Peter. Like, of course I laughed very hard when William the Scientist came on ("Tony Stark!! Built this!! With a box of scraps!!"), but at no point Peter found out for himself, textually, that these are all disgruntled SI staff.

- Peter repairing/rebuilding his suit, but now with a SI twist. Happy playing Back in Black. Yes, that got a cheer from me, but agh. In fact this played more like a Tony moment (needing to lose the tech to prove himself), than a Peter one.

- Happy being there.

- Talos!Nick Fury-as-Fury continuing the paternal relationship that Fury had with *Tony*. (still I can read it as just Talos, since Ben Mendelsohn had a cameo in Endgame as one of the teachers in Peter's school)

and yes, this is incredibly clever fanservice, but I *would* like a Peter Parker to have his own thing. But then again, I've never been a great fan of MCU's version of the Tony-Peter relationship.

And on another note, since I've been thinking of IM anyway, honestly the cleverest, most subversive thing ever introduced by IM1 in this regard was having a male-voiced, non-threatening AI in that Jarvis recasting. So it's disappointing that subsequent Stark AI perpetuates the soft misogyny of AI being women-voiced, and hereeeee's EDITH. (what happened to Karen?)

And on THAT note, it's true. MJ is barely a character 2 movies in, and I attribute it to the fact they played coy if Michelle is this verse's MJ, wasting all the potential character setup and now that you can't use narrative shorthand from other canon.

But! I very much did enjoy the movie. But what it ended up saying about Peter as a character in MCU is :(
posted by cendawanita at 10:31 PM on July 4, 2019 [2 favorites]


Isn't J. K. Simmons the voice of J. J. Jameson in the Spider-Man the video game? Has he appeared in the Holland Spider-Man movies before or is this a neat crossover?
posted by 80 Cats in a Dog Suit at 2:30 AM on July 5, 2019 [1 favorite]


He was JJ Jameson in the Raimi movies only I think? I totally clapped and laughed.
posted by cendawanita at 2:41 AM on July 5, 2019 [4 favorites]


J.K. Simmons' appearance is, for me at least, an acknowledgment by Marvel of a fundamental law of the universe: J. Jonah Jameson must always and forevermore be played by J.K. Simmons. Even the Jameson in the 1960s cartoon was just doing a crappy imitation of Simmons (the voice actor didn't know this, it just happened that way because of quantum physics or something).
posted by wabbittwax at 5:19 AM on July 5, 2019 [26 favorites]


I can't believe no one has mentioned NIGHT MONKEY. Was that in the comic books or just a hilarious invention for the movie?
posted by emjaybee at 7:51 AM on July 5, 2019 [7 favorites]


Den of Geek says that it's not. I figured that it was just a sly reference to the Secret Wars/Venom suit.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:05 AM on July 5, 2019


JK Simmons made me sooo happy. He's the definitive JJJ (and I saw him in the revival of Guys and Dolls so I have a very soft spot for him). I was hoping he would show up sooner or later, but I wish he still had his buzz cut.

That mid-credits scene made me so anxious. That was a hell of a way to end Peter's story.

I'm assuming Mysterio isn't dead. Peter never asked EDITH if he was, and she only said that there were no illusions running. She never said he was dead either. And Talos may never have thought to get his body, although Nick certainly would have. So maybe he's alive?
posted by ceejaytee at 11:26 AM on July 5, 2019 [1 favorite]


I thought I was reconciled to the fact that Spider-man stories in the MCU are soooooo big but I was troubled by it all over again in this movie. Which I guess I need to just grit my teeth and get over. It's not like they're not fun movies and Holland is wonderful and I like the much more multi-cultural makeup of Peter's orbit in these movies with just the minor quibble of the fact that that's fucking Ganke no matter how many times you call him Ned and he's Miles' friend dammit. So basically I'm there with you, cendawanita, but I don't see how we ever get out from under the way this Spider-man came to the movies. He's a Stark protege and on the world stage and the best possible outcome is they lean into it a la the more recent Parker Industries level stuff from the comics world.

Which is too bad, because Holland is a great young Peter Parker and I think there could have been some pretty fantastic smaller stories. But my silver-lining hope is this leads them to get us more Miles Morales as the actual neighborhood Spider-man. *shrug*

I didn't mind Mysterio as the of-course-he's-a-bad-guy because it played just plausibly enough to make me wonder if they'd actually play multiverse nice guy with him. And when that wasn't it, the structure they came up with worked well enough, I thought. Like for example:

the even unlikelier unlikelihood of no one recognizing Beck from his previous work

The fact that this is a shenanigans team makes this work better, I think. On his own of course people would go "hey wait a minute," but a number of well-placed Stark Industries folks could have scrubbed a lot of evidence of his Stark connection from records. It's not impossible to think they faked the death of "this universe's" Beck. Now some of the powers that be are aware of what things really are, but can they convince the larger world?

Just don't unwind it all by selling away his marriage to the devil. Still pissed at that, JMS and Quesada.
posted by phearlez at 12:50 PM on July 5, 2019 [1 favorite]


I stopped reading the comics not long after Peter and Mary Jane got married (mostly because I hated the visual direction they were going in -- Todd McFarlane I could handle but Erik Larsen just took it a bit too far for me) but had I stuck around long enough for the marriage-ending devil bargain, I have a feeling my reaction would have been similar to Fury's when he heard Mysterio's spiel on the Tower Bridge, "Now, that's some bullshit." For the most part, I'm glad I checked out when I did. But the version of me that was reading those comics back in the day, the one that's still living inside my head, is overjoyed by all the MCU movies, especially the Spider-Man ones. There's so much right with them I'm more than happy to overlook anything that might be wrong.
posted by wabbittwax at 6:51 PM on July 5, 2019 [1 favorite]


Big MCU fan, but I thought this one was kind of off. The comic timing wasn’t quite there, and it seemed overall less charming than Homecoming. I spent the first half of the movie at a remove since I knew Mysterio would turn, and the proceedings became much more fun once he did.

I believe the MCU version of Spider-Man is the best one so far, even though I loved both the Raimi films and Spider-Verse. (Those other ones, blech.) But I have a huge complaint, which is that MCU Spider-Man is way too dependent on Stark tech. Back in the Pleistocene when I was reading comics, Spider-Man had his web shooters, his spider tracker, and sometimes glider wings. I guess a dune buggy too. I know that Iron Spider was a thing in the comic books long after I stopped reading, but it doesn’t sit well with me that Spider-Man’s abilities and inventions are so overshadowed by shit Tony built for him. Even after Tony’s death, Peter builds a customized suit from Stark tech. It cheapens him!

Both the mid credits scene and the post credits scene were jaw dropping. I’m excited for how Phase 4 is going to shake out.
posted by ejs at 12:17 AM on July 6, 2019 [3 favorites]


I wonder whether Samuel L. Jackson and Cobie Smulders knew about the Skrull gag going into filming, so they could have fun playing slightly off-character.
"Don't invoke [Captain Marvel's] name!"
posted by cheshyre at 2:23 PM on July 6, 2019 [5 favorites]


One thing I noticed that I appreciated was that the Edith-specs required confirmation to go to Mysterio, and made a point of saying a transfer would always require confirmation, but when Peter took them back, Edith transferred immediately, no confirmation needed. Made me think that maybe Tony knew Peter might give them away and need to get them back and built that contingency in.
posted by sixfootaxolotl at 6:39 PM on July 6, 2019 [5 favorites]


COMICS: Tony Stark is a genius inventor.

HOLLYWOOD: Right. He can create fusion reactors, develop strong-AI, synthesize a new element at the nuclear level, and build entire armies of armor, robots, and weapons, all by himself in his basement.

COMICS: Mysterio is a stuntman who uses movie special effects to fool people.

HOLLYWOOD: Well, obviously he's got a whole team behind him. I mean it would be ridiculous to imagine an entire blockbuster movie made by one guy.
posted by straight at 12:45 AM on July 7, 2019 [23 favorites]


A lot of the beats in this movie didn't land right for me. Peter doesn't get a chance to do much of anything heroic until the very end. Did he actually accomplish anything or save anyone during the fight in Venice? It makes sense that he would be ineffectual fighting the fake monsters, but like one of his big hero moments was...destroying a drone he accidentally sent to kill a kid. I wanted a little more Spider-Man in my Spider-Man movie.

The Mysterio reveal was very well done -- having the whole bar in on it was a nice head spin and the sense of "Cut! That's a wrap," was so good and so appropriate and it makes sense he is part of a team -- but the whole scene after that seemed really As You Know Bob. Quentin's speech didn't sound at all like what he'd be saying to his team at that moment (including the hoary, "they said I was unstable!"), and his explanation of their motives and goals didn't make any sense. Although the B.A.R.F. and "in a cave" bits were funny and clever callbacks.

And while I know as a comics nerd what the explanation is, the movie didn't convince me that Spider-Man was doing anything in that final fight that would enable him to dodge bullets from that many drones. There were just too many of them. It seemed like the movie was setting up a problem needing a clever solution -- he can't dodge bullets from an entire wall of drones, so he'll have to...swing around and the drones will always miss. The hallway bit with his spider-sense was very good, but most of the action in the final battle fell flat because it seemed like there weren't any rules.

And the pacing seemed off in a bunch of places. That long talk with Happy hovering over the tulips seemed completely out of place when Peter should be desperately zooming off to find his friends before Quentin can kill them. And I agree with others who say the shadow of Tony Stark got too long in this movie. It's hard to know what is and isn't a problem for Peter when he can just call Happy and get picked up in a quinjet full of Starktech.

But the entire cast was endlessly charming and I think I would have enjoyed spending time with them even in a movie that was not as good as this one. The jokes all landed, and like the previous movie they were pretty generous in letting everybody take a turn doing funny stuff.

Mysterio was a perfect modern update of the "stunt man using movie magic," his costume looked great, his illusions were inventive and trippy and scary, and his Elementals story was some good solid comic-book tropes ("keep it away from metal!"). I thought they handled the whole five-year Blip really well. I'm glad they didn't get bogged down in some explanation for why Peter's entire supporting cast happened to have been among the Snaptured.

It's definitely in my top 3 movies with Spider-Man that I've seen in the theater this year.
posted by straight at 1:33 AM on July 7, 2019 [9 favorites]


(Mysterio setting up the contingency plans for his own death (he seemed way too egotistical to consider that possibility)

I got the sense that some of that was faked by Team Mysterio, although I don't know what their motive would be at this point to frame Peter.
posted by straight at 1:37 AM on July 7, 2019 [3 favorites]


I really like that we have a way for the occasional "They were Skrulls the whole time!" surprise without making the entire MCU about being paranoid about who is an evil Skrull for the next few years.

But again there are so many ways for other characters to swoop in and solve Peter's problems. Those Skrulls could easily set up a public "Of course I'm not Spider-Man, look, I'm standing right next to him. Whoa, look at him go! That's obviously the real Spider-Man."
posted by straight at 1:43 AM on July 7, 2019


I knew going in that Mysterio was a liar and a hoax, but when the trailer had the line about him being from another dimension, I was mad about that getting spoiled. I figured Far From Home would end up having a double meaning -- Peter visiting Europe, but also Peter visiting a whole 'nother universe.

I just realized it didn't even occur to me that the alternate universe was one of Mysterio's lies probably because Fury said he was from another universe and he wouldn't be wrong about something like that. Ha!
posted by straight at 2:03 AM on July 7, 2019 [2 favorites]


It was fun but I feel like Spider-Man is kind of a rough fit for the MCU. The plot just seems too big for your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man who should still be in New York fighting bank robbers. They seem like they're trying hard to make him into the next Iron Man.
posted by octothorpe at 6:54 AM on July 7, 2019 [4 favorites]


I got the sense that some of that was faked by Team Mysterio, although I don't know what their motive would be at this point to frame Peter.

Right, there was a shot with Mr. Box of Scraps downloading something onto a USB drive before taking off, probably the drone footage.
posted by rewil at 6:54 AM on July 7, 2019 [6 favorites]


As we were watching the final bits of the movie with him swinging through the city with MJ, I was thinking about the Daily Bugle and wondering when/if it'd pop up. And then I was thinking "but there's no way they can re-cast J. Jonah Jameson!" The mid-credits scene made me so happy.

I think it took too long to get to the Mysterio reveal. Anybody who's even slightly familiar with Spider-Man knows about Mysterio. So I spent way too long waiting for the Face-Heel Turn instead of being immersed in the movie. Though the multiverse thing... man, I was sort of hoping they were really going to go with that.

The fights with Mysterio once Peter realized, though - those were so well done, visually. That's when I really was totally absorbed in the movie.

Have they really addressed his, erm, "Peter tingle" before? I don't really recall if the Spidey sense has been played up in any of the other films, and one of my perpetual beefs with superhero movies is how fast and loose they play with super powers in relation to their usefulness in the plot.

I do wish they'd frikkin' do a movie or something where Cobie Smulders gets more to do, dammit. It's such a waste to have her for, what, five minutes of screen time and half a dozen lines?

It feels weird that there's no solid schedule for MCU movies past this one. The Black Widow movie is TBA, I think, and there's vague plans for sequels for Black Panther, Doctor Strange, and Guardians - but right now it feels sort of unsure. What they've accomplished with the run of films from Iron Man through Far From Home is amazing. If they can pull off another series like this, I'll be deeply impressed.
posted by jzb at 8:08 AM on July 7, 2019


Marvel is doing a big panel at Comicon on July 20th, and there’s good speculation they’ll announce more about Black Widow and the next year or two of movies.
posted by adrianhon at 8:21 AM on July 7, 2019 [1 favorite]


Maybe this isn't right (I'd have to watch the contents of the video again to be sure), but I didn't get the impression that Mysterio's message was a contingency plan for his own death, and I don't think his team faked it. After Mysterio decided to decloak the drones in the middle of the battle, his tech buddy said something like, "I sure hope you have a plan to explain all this." Unmasking Spider-Man and pinning the drones on him was the plan. Mysterio expected to beat Spider-Man on that bridge, so while Spider-Man was fighting the drones, he quickly constructed a video of his fake defeat to immediately release. Unexpectedly, he was actually defeated. When his tech buddies got their hands on that recording (they were shown downloading a recording, not creating a fake recording), they released it in order to deflect blame from themselves.
posted by painquale at 9:51 PM on July 7, 2019 [1 favorite]


Have they really addressed his, erm, "Peter tingle" before?

There is the bit in “Infinity War” where Peter is on the school bus and the hair on his arm stands straight up. He turns around and sees the Children of Thanos’s space ship hovering over the city. That’s the only things that comes to mind.
posted by chrchr at 10:47 PM on July 7, 2019


It feels weird that there's no solid schedule for MCU movies past this one. The Black Widow movie is TBA, I think, and there's vague plans for sequels for Black Panther, Doctor Strange, and Guardians - but right now it feels sort of unsure.

They may have been waiting to see how this movie did before setting their plans in stone; of course Endgame was huge, but it took out a couple of their biggest stars, and they've had to change plans before (IIRC, there was an Inhumans movie planned, besides the IMAX showing of the series pilot, before the series tanked). Black Widow is filming right now, and James Gunn is confirmed back on GotG 3 (with, I think it's a pretty safe guess, Chris Hemsworth along for the ride), although he'll finish Suicide Squad 2 before starting that, and Eternals is being cast. So, even without necessarily having ballpark release dates yet, they're moving ahead, and with Far From Home having done better-than-decent box office against pretty stiff competition (especially from the parent company's other big sequel, Toy Story 4), we'll see some more projects and maybe even some dates announced.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:35 AM on July 8, 2019


In Homecoming, they seemed to be opting to use Peter's suit AI as a substitute--for the sensible movie-making reason that he can't talk with his Spider-sense. Luke Skywalker needed a ghost to tell him to close his eyes, turn off the computer, and trust his feelings.
posted by straight at 6:41 AM on July 8, 2019 [1 favorite]


In Homecoming, they seemed to be opting to use Peter's suit AI as a substitute--for the sensible movie-making reason that he can't talk with his Spider-sense

I think the other problem with Spider Sense is that it can make the character too powerful too quickly. There are plenty of times in these films where this Spider-Man gets caught off guard that the comic book level of Spider Sense would have prevented. I'm pretty sure the traditional Spider Sense would have even warned him when dealing with/working with Beck before it's revealed Beck is the bad guy.

Although I don't think it was deliberate, I think they way they have set it up works fairly well narratively. If a teenager all of a sudden gets super strong and can stick to things and flip/swing around and also gets some weird new sense at the same time, it's not surprising they might focus on the more obvious abilities. So in Homecoming we don't see Spider Sense come into play. In Infinity Wars, we see it in Peter's first scene (illustrated with his hairs going up; again this works better for the movies vs. wavy lines surrounding his head per the comics). No doubt it is helping him subconsciously as he fights, but he is never calling it out as is often the case in the comics.

By the time of this movie he would have had more time to experience his new sense, maybe try some experiments with it. The early mentions of it were a bit clunky setting it up for later, but necessary given how little it has been mentioned/shown before. But he's still not going to be proficient in it the same way as a sense that someone grows up with and he's not going to rely on it or trust it fully at this point. That's why when he fabricates his new suit, he builds in the mode that blacks out his eyes and activates it for the hallway confrontation - he knows he has to force himself to rely on this sense to fight Beck. When at the end of the scene he blocks the real Beck's gunshot attempt without looking, that's sending the message (to us) that Spider Sense is now fully operational.

I enjoyed this movie! As a parent of a teenager, I felt all the high school stuff was spot on. I might have laughed loudest during the video montage tribute to the fallen heroes when the candle video image still had the iStock watermark on it. The other teens in the theater were absolutely freaking out during any Peter / MJ scenes so they are hitting their target demographic there.

Did MJ keep the mace as a souvenir? I feel like we should see it subtly hanging on her wall in the next movie.

Considering how much CCTV coverage London has, I feel Peter was pretty reckless in how often he took off his mask.

We see in the school news video that then "snaptured" return in context - marching band missing return into another marching band performance instead of an empty gym or their own homes, etc. Be interesting to see how that happened around the world.
posted by mikepop at 8:50 AM on July 8, 2019 [3 favorites]


I feel Peter was pretty reckless in how often he took off his mask.

Between stuff like that, getting picked up in his Night Monkey costume by the Netherlands police, and the whole room full of Team Mysterio knowing about Parker, it kinda seemed like his identity going public was becoming inevitable.
posted by straight at 10:58 AM on July 8, 2019 [1 favorite]


Now that I think about it, given how much time TalosFury spends messing around with trying to get Peter to help, and given the supposedly planet-threatening stakes, it does seem like they needed a little more explanation of why he couldn't call any of the other dozen Avengers that are still around after Endgame (Wanda, Banner, Sam, Bucky, T'Challa, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Pepper Potts, Rhodes, Valkyrie, Strange, Hawkeye). If Talos knows about Peter, he surely had contact information for some of those other folks.
posted by straight at 11:06 AM on July 8, 2019 [1 favorite]


That is addressed in his call to Fury at the end. He says something like, "people kept asking where the Avengers are, and I didn't know what to tell them." So I think the implication is that Fury isn't the only one on the spaceship.
posted by wabbittwax at 1:38 PM on July 8, 2019 [1 favorite]


I was livid when Mr. Harrington dropped his Leica camera into the water.
posted by cazoo at 3:41 PM on July 8, 2019 [15 favorites]


Don't worry, the water was just one of Mysterio's illusions. You can tell because the animated end credits include the photos that the camera took as it fell. How could we see those photos if the camera hadn't been recovered intact, hmmmmm?
posted by ejs at 6:34 PM on July 8, 2019 [5 favorites]


I’d be interested if the Netherlands sees an uptick in tourism.
posted by blueberry at 9:34 PM on July 8, 2019 [2 favorites]


I wish to register a complaint that despite luring me into the movie with the promise of the return of the Bodega Kitty (0:28 in the teaser trailer), Bodega Kitty did not make an appearance in the film.

Other than that, I thought there was a lot to like in this one. Tom Holland and Zendaya are adorbs together (the girl next to me in the theater kept going "Aww!" at every cute interaction they had, which would have been annoying if it weren't also the interior monologue of my inner teenager.)

I also liked that they touched on some of the practical aspects of the Snap / the Blip, like Peter/Ned/MJ being in the same high school class as someone they remembered as a little kid five years ago, the teacher's wife who used the Snap as a pretext to running away, the need to raise money to help out those displaced by being missing, Flash almost getting champagne before someone alerts the flight attendant that he was Snapped and isn't really 21, no matter what his driver's license might say. I had SO MANY thoughts about the practical aspects after Endgame, and I'm glad they touched on a few.

I have to admit, I really hate the "Superhero is falsely accused of a crime, and everyone believes he's guilty" trope, but Holland and co. are so good, that I'll have to come back for whatever's next.
posted by creepygirl at 10:07 PM on July 8, 2019 [7 favorites]


Yeah, but Spider-Man helping people despite them thinking he's weird, creepy, and maybe a crook is as much a core part of the character as web shooters.

In the comics, when Peter was in high school, Flash was considered a weirdo for being the only one who thought Spidey was cool.
posted by straight at 3:18 PM on July 9, 2019 [2 favorites]


WHEN did tony program edith to go to peter? In the like 5 mins peter came back to life before tony died?

Like I can imagine tony making his satellite death drone army in the 5 years of the snap to blip but he didn't know peter would be alive again until moments before his(tony's) death.
posted by French Fry at 8:22 AM on July 10, 2019


It would have made sense for him to do it while he was building the time machine.

He knew that if the time heist worked, Peter would be back, but he was paranoid cautious enough to know that things might go sideways even if it did work, so he wanted to have that in place.

He might also have already done it before the events of Infinity War.
posted by Tabitha Someday at 8:50 AM on July 10, 2019 [1 favorite]


At least by the end of Homecoming, Tony seems to think Peter would be a worthy successor. He probably started programming EDITH in the middle of the night after the engagement announcement.
posted by straight at 9:43 AM on July 10, 2019


Yeah I got no problem with the idea that it was something that had been in the pipe for who knows how long, possibly with a list of people in priority order to give to if his AI army notices he's dead. The Avengers movies made a bunch out of this "shield around the world" thing at a few points, contingency planning is was his thing. The acronym isn't specific to Peter, just to Tony being dead. It being some sort of sit-around contingency plan thing that Tony didn't bother to loop the rest of his circle in would actually work a lot better for this false light he's been cast in. Did we establish that CEO Pepper Potts is actually aware of E.D.I.T.H. and the fact that it was handed to a teenager? Because it would totally work for the next chapter for her to be unaware and aghast that Stark Industries' gear had a backdoor hookup for a highschool vigilante.
posted by phearlez at 9:49 AM on July 10, 2019 [3 favorites]


You want Gwyneth Paltrow to act as if she's unaware of something? I don't know man, seems like a bit of a stretch for her lately.
posted by wabbittwax at 2:26 PM on July 10, 2019 [1 favorite]


Meet Zoha Rahman, The Muslim Actor In "Spider-Man: Far From Home" (Ikran Dahir, Buzzfeed)
Rahman's appearance in Far From Home is the first time a hijabi actor has been credited as a main cast member in a Marvel movie.
posted by ZeusHumms at 1:08 PM on July 11, 2019 [5 favorites]


Spider-Man: Far From Home Actor Zoha Rahman on Why We Need Better Muslim Representation in Hollywood and Making the Marvel Film (Sarah Khan, TeenVogue)
"I want to work toward fewer caricatures and more humanity in our representation."
posted by ZeusHumms at 1:11 PM on July 11, 2019 [1 favorite]


So, wait. Tony had satellites full of weaponized drones but didn't use them in Infinity War/Endgame?
posted by kokaku at 3:49 PM on July 12, 2019 [1 favorite]


Well, that movie was ... OK, I guess?

I mean, it was fine. Around Dr. Strange level. Had I seen it right after Thor II or Iron Man II, I probably would be saying, "That was pretty good."

After the string of brilliant movies that preceded it, it felt like a bit of a letdown, though.
posted by kyrademon at 12:49 PM on July 13, 2019 [1 favorite]


The more I think about this movie, the less I think I like it. I really hate the plot element of Tony giving the glasses to Peter, it just makes no sense that he would give all that power to a flaky teenager. And when did he do that? Peter was blipped out until about five minutes before Tony died in Endgame.

The whole thing with Nick and Maria being Skrull all that time I guess makes sense as to why they were so ineffectual and had such poor decision making skills but that whole thing seems like such a cheap cheat and I can't imaging Nick Fury agreeing to let them impersonate him.
posted by octothorpe at 5:29 PM on July 13, 2019


there was a shot with Mr. Box of Scraps downloading something onto a USB drive before taking off, probably the drone footage.

I was kinda hoping for a Mysterio mindstate file, so he can live on the internet and haunt Peter everywhere, but I guess a conspiracy-theory-fuel deathtape is cool, too.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 9:27 PM on July 13, 2019


Did anybody else notice MJ frequently wearing clothes with tigers on them?
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:01 PM on July 14, 2019 [1 favorite]


The mascot at their high school is a tiger.
posted by wabbittwax at 3:43 PM on July 14, 2019


And I agree with others who say the shadow of Tony Stark got too long in this movie.

That is debatable. For this movie, sure, but Marvel is making movies differently than studios generally have for the last century. This one instalment in a much larger story: Stark kicked off the MCU and has largely been the centre of it for twenty-odd movies now. If the first one after his death did not dwell on his absence, it would have been jarring.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:33 PM on July 14, 2019 [3 favorites]


Stark’s presence in the film is in the grand tradition of Marvel Comics having crossover with other comics' characters all the time. We're just lucky the X-men aren't in the MCU, because otherwise one of the teachers would have been Mr. Logan. And he would have been even worse to sit next to on the flight over.
posted by happyroach at 9:59 PM on July 14, 2019 [2 favorites]


Sure. I argued that Peter being firmly connected to the rest of the MCU in the first movie felt very true to the original comics. From the beginning Spider-Man was comparing himself and being compared to heroes like the Fantastic Four.

What is very different from the comics and I think makes this a weaker story is Peter being able to rely on so many resources from his mentor to guide him, enhance his powers, and bail him out. The first movie was all about whether he could be a hero without all that. You could make a big deal about Tony being gone and even do some of the "Can I fill his shoes?" stuff without going backwards in terms of how dependent Peter is on Stark.
posted by straight at 1:54 PM on July 15, 2019 [2 favorites]


Isn't J. K. Simmons the voice of J. J. Jameson in the Spider-Man the video game?

No. My son and I looked it up because it sounds SO MUCH like him. I can't remember the voice actor's name right now, but it isn't J.K. Simmons.
posted by cooker girl at 1:17 PM on July 16, 2019


So I saw this finally (in the most deluxe movie theater with gourmet chicken tendys and such) and uh

I agree the MCU Peter Parker is too set up as Mini-Stark. The most important thing about Peter is that he;s a working class superhero. He has to make rent! the very concept of Stark ruins that - as mentioned they can just give him the Tony Stark Award For Outstanding Achievement In The Field Of Excellence. It cuts his unique personal conflicts down too much!

On the other hand, this is a great Spider-Man movie? They keep it realistically teenage and his internal drama small scale while also having his major villian be basically Fake News (and also uh the concept of superhero movies) and once they let Jake G off the leash to go nuts he became my favorite Marvel villain - He's a director who'e really annoyed he has to work in a superhero idiom. Just a lot of raw weird theater kid energy.

Also his hair is amazing it never once moves, just a pristine leonine mane. His scenes with Peter are very ...infused. This the probably the most queer non-Cap MCU movie without say Carol Danvers' SUPER CLOSE FRIENDSHIP (wink)
posted by The Whelk at 10:23 PM on July 16, 2019 [5 favorites]


Like I said about Mysterio : Halfway through you think he’s playing a stern, square jaw type and then the curtain drops and He’s basically a bug-eyed Monsieur Thénardier in full werid theatre kid mode. It’s like a minor chart of his actual career.
posted by The Whelk at 10:29 PM on July 16, 2019 [5 favorites]


Between stuff like that, getting picked up in his Night Monkey costume by the Netherlands police, and the whole room full of Team Mysterio knowing about Parker, it kinda seemed like his identity going public was becoming inevitable.

the MCU really dislikes secret identities, even Natasha had to give her's up when she testified before congress in Winter Soldier.

which leads to my bigger problem, drones are the big bad in WS and they're the big bad int this one and yet no one thinks WOW WE REALLY REALLY SHOULD NOT HAVE A DRONE PROGRAM.
posted by The Whelk at 10:46 PM on July 16, 2019


I liked MJ more in the first movie, she was this interesting social justice individual, but this time it's a given that she just really really likes the protagonist, from the very first scene in the classroom. I think both Peter Parker and MJ could have used more characterization and development. For example we are repeatedly told Peter's object of desire was a romantic Europe travel moment with MJ, and showing and developing that more would have helped.

Also the tour bus drone fight scene, with Peter distracting the class and then jumping up through the hatch, I don't think the theater audience I was with bought it? Total silence there.

Also the Peter Tingle I think the walkway/corridor fight scene had too much CGI cutting. If there was some way of depicting the Peter Tingle from Spiderman's perspective, that would have helped too.

I think those were the main issues I had after viewing, but I enjoyed the movie a lot, especially the plot twists, and both end scenes.
posted by polymodus at 11:10 PM on July 16, 2019


I think that Tom Holland is adorable and I love the multicultural classmates vibe (though sad that almost all of the characters just have the actors name because that's how little interest the MCU has in developing any of them beyond "hapless bystanders on the trip"), but I agree that with as often as he takes his mask off it's ridiculous he wasn't outed before Box of Scraps set him up.

The other thing that made me inordinately angry was that Happy destroyed an entire tulip field when he brought the jet to pick up Peter and then HOVERED OVER THE FIELD FOR FIFTEEN MINUTES while Peter had his breakdown. Like, that is someone's business! That's not just scenery!

Overall I was pretty underwhelmed with this. Everyone did a great job in their roles, but the story was totally predictable and I agree that giving a teenager EDITH without any direction was totally irresponsible.
posted by TwoStride at 7:37 AM on July 17, 2019 [4 favorites]


No doubt that the tulip field owner will be a guest on Jameson's podcast very soon.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 12:02 PM on July 17, 2019 [2 favorites]


I recently rewatched Age of Ultron for some dumb reason, and it did a great job of reminding me of how much I hate Tony Stark and why. I'm glad the character's dead, and I wish the MCU would stop writing love letters to the memory of his creepy, boundary-violating, rape-joking self.

When Endgame came out, there were complaints that it didn't deal seriously enough with the everyday human effects of half the world disappearing for five years. Some suggested that Far from Home would likely explore this in much greater depth, allowing a closer and more intimately focused look at how ordinary people were affected. That sounded pretty great to me. But instead the movie spends its time lionizing Tony Stark and putting Peter Parker firmly in his shadow (again, as though we hadn't already gotten plenty of that), and the effects of the snap are relegated to some jokes and a shitty new love triangle that no one wanted.

This was not a terrible movie, and there were parts of it I enjoyed, and I am genuinely happy for those of you who enjoyed it more than I did. But it could have been so much better.
posted by Syllepsis at 8:27 PM on July 17, 2019 [1 favorite]


Also the tour bus drone fight scene, with Peter distracting the class and then jumping up through the hatch, I don't think the theater audience I was with bought it? Total silence there.

I'm not surprised. It didn't work for me; It was lazy on so many levels. EDITH has this nuanced conversation with Peter earlier but here she suddenly turns into an Alexa device that jumps right to drone killing with overwhelming firepower based on "target." The level of firepower is large enough to likely harm Peter, never mind innocent bystanders. Peter, this genius level intellect who can use Starktech to make super suits and invent web shooters, suddenly is less competent at cancelling an order than my six year old is with Alexa. It all felt like a pointless setup to a visual of him jumping up through the hatch.

The whole EDITH thing doesn't survive much scrutiny but it needs to hang together in the moment and I don't think it did there.
posted by phearlez at 7:20 AM on July 18, 2019 [5 favorites]


If they had only been a bit more up in their multiverse theory they would have realised Mysterio gave himself away as soon as he mentioned Earth 616.
posted by biffa at 2:47 PM on July 20, 2019 [1 favorite]


I went to see the first Iron Man movie in the theaters, like, five times? Maybe six? And I've seen it on DVD and streaming maybe another 10 times after that, and add another 15-20 times if you count all the time I spent watching terrible cam versions while making fanvids. And I legit got teary when they started playing Back in Black in a way that I didn't during Tony's death scene in Endgame -- like it was such a nice touch of HEY WE KNOW YOU WERE HERE FOR THAT to match up with Obadiah Stane yelling about boxes of scraps.

Tom Holland also does a great devastated-face. For selfish reasons, I'm hoping his career hasn't taken off so much that he can't come back for the second season of Wolf Hall.

(Put me down for being very charmed by Tom Holland and Zendaya. The movie basically runs off their charisma, because in a lot of ways, this was a proud member of the tradition of me watchign Marvel movies, and thinking that the villain actually had a point. Like, I remember being in the movie theater and facepalming when Tony used a super-cool holographic system to re-enact a therapy session at a shareholder meeting.)
posted by joyceanmachine at 12:04 PM on July 26, 2019 [5 favorites]


(it wasn't a shareholder meeting, it was a keynote speech at his alma mater to introduce the September Grant Foundation, wherein the Foundation fully granted every audience member's ongoing projects)
posted by cooker girl at 8:46 AM on July 29, 2019 [1 favorite]


I wish to register a complaint that despite luring me into the movie with the promise of the return of the Bodega Kitty (0:28 in the teaser trailer), Bodega Kitty did not make an appearance in the film.

But we got Orange Creamsicle Tabby Venice Hotel Kitty instead, which might I suggest is a fair exchange.

As for the Drone Satellites and why we didn't see them during Infinity War/Endgame is that Tony knew if he used them, it'd spark off Civil War II with Steve, because they're EXACTLY the same thing HYDRA was trying to do with the Hellicarrrier fleet and Zola's Algorithm: holding a gun at everyone on Earth and calling it protection. Except this time, there's a whole hell of a lot more of them. One can only hope that OldSteve is just senile enough to not realize this.
posted by radwolf76 at 10:32 AM on July 30, 2019


Okay, now I actually want to see another Captain America movie with Evans as old Steve Rogers who looks around one day and is like, "oh god damn it!" and suits up to clean house, grumbling all the time about how he thought he didn't have to deal with this shit anymore.
posted by Naberius at 9:49 AM on August 1, 2019 [2 favorites]


Steve Rogers who looks around one day and is like, "oh god damn it!"

Language!
posted by Fleebnork at 10:20 AM on August 1, 2019 [3 favorites]


I finally saw it. The holograph tech didn’t work for me in a lot of ways, but it didn’t stop me from absolutely loving the movie. (I couldn’t parse the rules/boundaries of what was solid, what was inside/outside, and so on. Or what had to be pre-programmed vs what could be done on the fly. But it’s marvel, so I didn’t really care)

I also don’t dig Peter being a successor to Tony Stark. Partly because he’s a *neighborhood* Spider-Man, and partly because I strongly care about the divide between peter being a powers-hero and tony being a suit/gadgets (money) hero.

Also, the kid is fecking 16. He’s not remotely ready for leadership. He’s got a lot of heart and a lot of smarts, but not a lot of people skills or experience. His brain is still developing. He’s been gaining competence, but overall he’s still awkward and naive with a lot of growing up to do.

I am unfamiliar enough with the comics that I didn’t know mysterio was a villain and easily believed he was a Dr. Strange-alike from another dimension. I wanted him to be good as much as Peter did, and didn’t start getting suspicious till pretty close to the reveal. Yay suspension of disbelief. Plus, if the elementals has been real, I have a hard time seeing how Peter would be effective against a creature made of water or fire.

Even if I had a hard time buying the tech of it, the hallucination scene in Berlin was really impactful and scary for me. The deep-brain “fun”house feel was very well done, but in the back of my head I was thinking “where’s Daredevil when you need him?” In that same sequence, the cinematography was fantastic when, at the false ending, the camerawork and editing went from wild and chaotic to dead-still and at a fairly wide angle. It clearly gave the idea of “ah! It’s over”, but then it wasn’t, and how can you trust anything anymore. So good.

And I loved MJ. She was awkward, but also infested. Neither she nor Peter did all the work of making things happen between them. Yes, MJ did a bunch of initiating, but she also had her own shyness and uncertainty, and Peter was actively invested, not just along for the ride. I liked her being cool enough to pick up a mace and bash armed drones but not to cool to run to Peter to check on him when the drones were gone. I think they’re a good match.
posted by itesser at 1:14 AM on August 9, 2019 [1 favorite]


No one else is going to deal with the fact that Fleebnork said "language?"
posted by Molesome at 9:17 AM on September 6, 2019


Just watched this the other night.

The hallway 'Peter tingle' fight (heck, most of the 'Spidey fights Mysterio' parts) felt like a callback to the final fight in Spiderverse. When I first saw that, I despaired of ever seeing something similar in live action, but Marvel gave it to me. Kudos.

The Stark murals EVERYWHERE made me laugh, a lot, but yeah, Tony's shadow is far too large.
posted by hanov3r at 3:28 PM on September 23, 2019


I skipped this originally (assuming [correctly] that this was YA centric) but found cause to rewatch a bunch of MCU Phase 3 stuff, and needed closure.

This is not-bad YA fare - Zendaya is actually a big deal (?) and I have no idea (she has a mononym - that's Big Deal, right?) and Tom Holland exudes charisma (and he has a hot little bod).

But neither characterizations were gross/ icky. Just a couple of regular repressed N. American teens. I liked the first kiss. Second kiss. Third trying to make out. It was "wholesome."

Feels a whole more wholesome than the Maguire/ Dunst upside down thing in the rain.


Came in cold re: Mysterio. Gyllenhaal's handsomeness gave me Homelander ('The Boys') vibes, but the Earth 881/ 616 (or whatever) fooled me.

Not sold on the Stark --> Parker transition, but I liked the characterization of Parker that "this was too much responsibility for him" ... right now. This being the bookend of MCU Phase 3 is deft. If they want to keep pursuing this path.

I did not buy Parker designing a new suit - sure, he's in a STEM magnet school but he's a journalism nerd right? - too much Stark Industries malarky. BUT, I did like that he's examining the more subtle parts of his power (spidey senses - fuck this "Tingle" shit) and redesigning his suit to let him use it while ensuited.

Since the MCU continues to plow on, I really want a future Spiderman to turn the "Peter Tingle" phrase around somehow and have it be super duper (punk) sexual or something.

This was fun - but I'm not the demographic it was aimed at, but I can still recognize which buttons it's trying (mostly successfully) to push.
posted by porpoise at 7:26 PM on December 27, 2020


So Tony’s “September Foundation” presentation at MIT did influence a future supervillain, just not quite as predicted in the Captain America: Civil War thread.
posted by mbrubeck at 4:24 PM on February 14, 2021 [1 favorite]




I was livid when Mr. Harrington dropped his Leica camera into the water.

I enjoyed the movie but I was more emotionally invested in that scene than anything else in it. "Is that a Leica? Why is he just putting it on that janky railing? Put your arm through the strap before you pick it up! OK, he's holding it now, it'll be fine even if he is looking at the screen upside-down. OMG what just happened?! NOOOOOOOOOOOO! Dive into the water you idiot!"
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 2:57 PM on March 4, 2022 [1 favorite]


« Older Neon Genesis Evangelion: Decis...   |  Six Feet Under: The Plan... Newer »

You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments

poster