Before we see anything, “Spider-Man: Far from Home” begins with a sound cue of a famous pop song. The audience I saw it with immediately began to convulse in laughter – as the filmmakers intended. The song itself is not amusing, and its use within the narrative of the film is not meant to be amusing either. But the moment, which has some semblance of emotional resonance for the characters, is not meant to be taken seriously for us watching. It’s a striking dissonance between the narrative developments and the film’s own schematic indifference to the way things play, lending this story of our friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man a sheen of meaninglessness that ends up failing itself over and over.
Eight months after resurrection of those who were lost in Thanos’ Snap, Peter Parker and his classmates embark on two-week field-trip in Europe. Peter, who is still mourning the death of his mentor Tony Stark, plans to spend the vacation ignoring any superheroic duties and taking advantage of this chance to be a teenager. Unfortunately for him, Nick Fury feels it’s time for Parker’s Spider-Man to decide on his future in a Stark-less world, especially with a new super-hero, Quentin Beck, on their radar. So, “Far from Home” splits itself between three narratives – Beck’s arc as a hero from another dimension, Peter’s attempts to fan the flames of his teen romance, and Spider-Man’s attempt to prove himself the hero worthy of Tony Stark and Fury. All of this while trying to clean up the emotional and logistical mess left after the “Avengers: Endgame” battle in a potentially Avengers-less world. It’s a lot for a film, and it’s especially a lot for a Spider-Man film, as he’s a hero whose best asset has always been his relative smallness in the face of the more chaotic “end-of-world” battles of other superheroes.
“Far from Home” is not sincerely concerned with a need to grapple with the fallout from “Endgame.” Like that sound cue that opens the film, director Jon Watts opts to meet every potential for sincere examination of the events with a dismissive shrug or an irreverent joke. It helps that the film solves any potential for dramatic depth by having all the main characters from “Spider-Man: Homecoming” disappear and resurrect at the same time, preventing any need for anything close to emotional introspection from these characters. The one thing about “Endgame” that does loom over the film is not the characters’ concern about the dangers of their world, or even Peter’s uncertainty about himself, but the ghost of Tony Stark, who emerges as a more important character than Spider-Man. Stark’s presence is so potent that a mid-film reveal from the not-really-a-surprise-villain centres on Stark’s role in creating this new evil. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has always had something of a villain problem. And so does “Far from Home.” Jake Gyllenhaal, to be fair, is giving the closest thing to an energetic performance in the film. He’s essentially playing two characters, and the one that dominates the second film feels like a character who walked off the set of another, messier movie. Not necessarily a better one, but one with more energy than the one we’re in. “Far from Home” repeats a troublesome trend of having the villain of the Marvel Universe be a slighted low-level worker who emerges as a villain to get back at the 1% (it was the same idea in “Homecoming”) and amidst the current geopolitical issues of the world it seems particularly tone-deaf as the film seems to argue for equilibrium with disgruntled workers needing to know their place in the grand scheme of things.
But, like everything in “Far from Home”, it makes less sense the more you think about it. The closest thing Peter has to an arc that gives him some agency is his romance with Mary Jane, which feels to be missing a central ingredient. It’s not so much that Tom Holland and Zendaya don’t have chemistry, but the films seems to be satiated by our knowledge that Peter Parker must fall in love with a character named MJ and forgets to actually inject their relationship with something to argue for why the two should be romantically linked. The film, also, can’t commit to their rapport with sincerity, so the high-school euro-trip plot feels incongruous when matched with Nick Fury’s fury and Quentin Beck’s superhero onslaught.
One thing the film does get right is the use of media and holograms by the villain, which makes for a final battle that does some interesting things with light and darkness. It’s also a fitting metaphor for the film itself ,which is all projection and illusion but with little depth. By the end of “Far from Home,” I just felt exhausted. The undertone running throughout the entire thing, no matter how dangerous, unwieldly, or improbably things get, is that none of this really matters. We keep waiting for the inevitable de-escalation of major plot points because it’s the way the film has trained us to respond to it. And, so, the only thing of true significance that happens in the film does not come until the end-credits, justifying another instalment without ever really ensuring that this one is satisfyingly fixed. “Far from Home” is so dismal it almost extinguishes Tom Holland’s natural charm.
“Far from Home” is the natural next step of this content-based film culture, where films are products and not really artistic representations. It feels particularly galling because of the way it betrays the very things that make Spider-Man such an appealing hero, and it feels especially striking when measured against the animated “Into the Spider-Verse” just half a year ago. But, you can’t un-ring a bell. Peter Parker cannot go back to his simple world of community crime fighting anymore after being an Avenger. But his story also cannot work in this seismic monstrosity that Watts and company are putting on. So, what we’re left with is this bland, exhausting product moonlighting as a movie. It doesn’t work.
“Spider-Man: Far from Home” is currently playing at local theatres
