After Homecoming paved the way for a modern, punchier telling of the wall-crawler’s story, Spiderman: Far from Home follows up as a much worthy successor. Dynamic twists turn every moment between Peter’s student and superhero life, leading to a spectrum of greatly executed colourful action through his school trip in Europe and possibly Marvel’s best scripted villain to date.
As an essential element to Spiderman old and new, the naturally awkward high school drama tropes with Peter’s crush MJ and his other friends are mostly handled well and intertwine neatly with his stuffed-away high-tech superhero life, albeit some forced humour here and there, which is thankfully spared in the more intense third act. It is, however, given a neat emotional twist as Peter tries to live with the burden weight left by (blaring car horn) who died in Endgame. His character development is clearly great in this film, with constant colourful plays with themes of trust and living to expectations being brilliantly done, not to mention Tom Holland once again proving to be the definitive Peter Parker actor. He captures that teenage awkwardness just right, as well as the film’s fast pacing between high-stake hero action and high school Europe trip creating marvellous chemistry for Peter and his increasingly suspicious friends.
But where the film truly digs up its holy grail is the immaculate execution of Mysterio, my favourite Spiderman villain since childhood and one I’ve always wanted to see on the big screen, and it exceeded my expectations tenfold. Jake Gyllenhaal puts in enough energy into his role to shock Electro and nails the mentally-deranged control freak character that gleefully manipulates our protagonists.
But performance aside, what nails Mysterio’s character is the stylish execution of his infamous illusion tactics and how he’s essentially Marvel’s first self-aware villain. When he feigns as a parody of a stereotypical vengeance-seeking hero fighting an obscure threat, he even has us fooled because those are the narrative structures we’re so used to seeing in modern superhero cinema, and to see someone manipulating those tropes is a nice breath of narrative fresh air. His character is fantastically wrought and deceiving, stealing the literal spotlight, and making him my favourite MCU villain thus far.
But the film’s most outstanding moments are easily when he uses his mesmerising illusion powers on Spidey and the film’s imagination and surrealist skill is best played. The colourful and engaging cgi work is spectacular and even plays with the viewer’s sense of perspective as well as Spiderman’s, making it gripping and a marvel to witness. Every second of these creative illusion world fights could be screenshot and make quite the artsy wall pinup.
Spiderman Homecoming is a triumph as far as Marvel goes, sporting electrifying pacing, a greatly unique plot and some of the punchiest superhero drama modern cinema has to offer. Even some humorous stereotyping of each country Peter’s class visits is played to the fullest, with a glorified London Bridge, red coat guards and colourful Netherland fields, making it like a little American travel log with its take on foreign culture. Go watch it and find its greatness to be no illusion!