Spider-Man: Far From Home was directed by Jon Watts and stars Tom Holland, Samuel L Jackson, Zendaya, Cobie Smulders, Jon Favreau, Marisa Tomei and Jake Gyllenhaal.
The plot of this film revolves around Peter Parker and his friends as they take a trip around Europe, which is interrupted when Nick Fury shows up to request Parker's help with a new threat that has emerged. He teams up with a man named Mysterio, and on the side has to figure out how to fully take on his superhero duties, while also making time for his real life.
The performances have good but varying results. Tom Holland once again demonstrates how well he can play Peter Parker/Spider-Man by taking the awkward nerdy aspects of the character and using them to great comedic effect, and when he has to portray the character in a more serious light, he doesn't overplay it, or do it in a way that ruins the film's relatively light-hearted tone.
Zendaya as MJ was quite amusing, her scenes with Holland are definitely a highlight of the film and she proves herself to be a worthy addition to the cast. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Mysterio with a lot of charisma, and he does have some genuine chemistry with Holland; and Samuel L Jackson plays Nick Fury with the signature likeability that he always brings to his roles.
The film was written by Chris McKenna and Eric Sommers, and while their script has been written with the same emphasis on high-school life and humour as the previous instalment, what stood out to me was how the script was able to take almost anything and find a way to make it entertaining - it could be a small situation someone has to get out, or a big battle scene, or even something as simple as teenage drama. All of this was very engaging, consistently enjoyable, and rarely felt like it dragged.
The film was shot by Matthew J Lloyd and he does have some noteworthy work in the film. There's a very hallucinogenic sequence which I found interesting to look at as it felt like an old idea was being tried in a different way in a superhero film. Some of the action and stunts are shot from some unusual, if tired, angles.
The score was composed by Michael Giacchino it appears to be some kind of tribute to the other Spider-Man scores. I felt he maybe achieved his aim once, and for the rest of the film the score thinks it's something it's not; and the music rarely shines because of that. The only other notable moment that is music-related is when Parker is in a bar and a song is playing in the background and the lyrics are (perhaps) alluding to something that has been said many times in the film. If it was intentional, well done. If not, then it was just a happy accident that worked in the music's favour.
There are actually several disappointments in this film for me, one being the villain's motivations - they just seem petty and although I could understand where he was coming from with them, when your motives are that bad, you're going to be hard to feel sympathy for. Next we have the villain's plan: this is a film that to some extent knows how silly it is, and has fun with that most of the time, but the villain's plan and how it gets carried out just eventually becomes over-complicated and too frustrating to follow. And lastly, the film gets far too overindulgent with the fact that many key characters die in a film set in the same cinematic universe as this one. Especially during the first 20 minutes when we just can't escape the face of one of the characters who died, it goes from being an interesting cross-reference to being annoyingly overindulgent.
The conclusions I draw from this are that: Spider-Man: Far From Home has enjoyable performances, a consistently entertaining script, some interesting visuals and angles in the cinematography, and a score that achieves its aim then proceeds to be something it is not. It has a villain with petty motivations, a too-complicated plan, and overindulges in areas that are best left alone.
Having taken all my pros and cons into account, I'm going to give Spider-Man: Far From Home...
B-
Thank you for reading.
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