Finally got around to watching Spider-Man: Far From Home (terrible title btw with really no connection to the film).
It’s pretty good. The concept of the villain, the execution of how their powers work, their visual design, those are all really good. The movie is fun, moves at a good pace, doesn’t have any unfortunate lulls, and has a lot of laughs though nothing, y’know, hysterical (it’s no Deadpool). The SFX are pretty good even for a Marvel movie, too (albeit the spider-suit is the weakest part, when it’s red and blue). The performances are generally good, with the stand-outs being Zendaya as Mary Jane and Jake Gyllenhall as Mysterio, both of whom actually seem really committed to their roles, and tend to steal the scenes they’re in. I was surprised with Zendaya because in the previous movie she didn’t seem that great, but here she’s committed to a gawky, almost aspergers-ish version of Mary Jane, and it’s actually unfortunate because she’s doing a much better job than Tom Holland, who it is increasingly clear, isn’t that great as Spider-Man, indeed, he’s definitely quite a bit worse than Tobey Maguire, and possibly even than Andrew Garfield.
Despite the extremely good concept and execution of the villain, they do have some issues. In particular, they don’t have any clear motivation at all. There’s an excellent scene where they talk to their helpers, which almost gives them a motivation, but actually raises more questions than it answers. Specifically (spoilers), Quentin Beck wants to have the control of EDITH, but he criticises Stark (this makes two movies in a row where the villain raises totally legitimate and serious criticisms of Stark, which both movies totally fail to address - it’s like why bring it up if you’re going to ignore it?) and he then goes on about there needing to be something for people to believe in, but like why? What’s the endgame? What’s going on here? He’s really mad or concerned about something, and willing to kill a lot of people (hundreds at least, maybe thousands or more), but why? There’s a sting at the end where he frames Spider-Man, but again why? And the lack of any reasoning or really anything you can extrapolate from just seems lame, or like maybe they didn’t think it through.
There’s also really weird plot-hole in that, despite the villain not ever telling him, Spider-Man knows the villain is “going to destroy half of Europe” (not “could” - “is going to”). There’s literally no way Spider-Man could know this (unless I missed a single line or something, I don’t think I did), and it’s not a reasonable extrapolation of the situation, because the destruction has been really small-scale. Further later in the movie Spider-Man expresses surprise at the scale of what’s going on, despite having said this. I guess it’s just a script-writing error, perhaps from an earlier draft where things went differently, but it’s kind of surprising that it made it all the way to the final cut.
Overall it’s in the middle for Marvel movies, quality-wise, with a lot of small things going for it, but overall a bit incoherent.
It is also slightly interesting in that it’s set after the events of Endgame, and takes those events into account somewhat, though a bit less than you’d expect (I’d think the world would be a little more apocalyptic after half the population vanished for 5 years, then re-appeared at the same age, but all it notes are housing problems).
Also can we just get rid of Happy? I get that Jon Favreau has some influence on this whole thing and is an established character, but he’s not adding anything, and his whole presence in the movie is a bit “How do you do, fellow kids?” (which they kinda sorta mock once but it’s not enough).
EDIT - Okay so then I watched a movie which was actually good - Sorry to bother you.
I say good but it’s actually amazing. It may be in my top ten movies ever, it’s certainly in the top twenty. This is an actual movie. It’s not like, a long cutscene like most Marvel movies kind of are. I mean, I can appreciate that, they’re fun, but it’s like, this, as an experience, as a way to spend your time, is like 10x better, for me anyway. This is a movie I’ll actually remember, not like, just an extension of canon or something.
I don’t want to say too much about it, because it’s like partly reliant on how weird it is, but it’s a sort of magical-realist (but not the bad way) very near future (like, less than a decade away, potentially) dystopia (which to be fair, shows we clearly live in a dystopia already, because it’s really not that different), about a guy who goes to work from a telesales company. And it goes from there. It really doesn’t go where it seems like it’s going. Like, at all. It’s awesome.
