If yet another Marvel movie is a little self-conscious about being yet another Marvel movie, does that excuse it from being, well, yet another Marvel movie? That’s the tricky territory that Spider-Man: Far From Home (co-released by Sony on July 2) finds itself in, barely two months after Avengers: Endgame swept across the globe, taking some major heroes with it. Watching the trailer for Far From Home, I found myself thinking, this? Again? Already??
In response, Jon Watts’s film seems to nod its head and say, “I know, know,” a little sheepish about its mere existence. But then it ups and does all the old Marvel stuff anyway, seeming more and more earnest and ardent about this factory-cult as it goes.
To be fair, I’m not not a part of that cult myself. I quite liked Endgame, just as I liked the first installment in this latest Spider-Man saga, 2017’s Homecoming. So it’s not as if I went into Far From Home held-nosed and full of dread. I was looking forward to it—and indeed much of the movie proves fun, in the way all these slick and amiable features are. But it is a little annoying how the film smirks and winks as if it’s in on the fatigue, offering an illusion of cool when at heart it’s as slavishly on-message as everything else.
Far From Home concerns its own kind of illusion, making ironic commentary about the hollow spectacle of superherodom, offering an intriguing view of what a world so celebratory—and newly mourning—of the Avengers might look like, the fantastical having become the expected. We begin post-un-Snappening, with the people who died in Endgame dead, and young Peter Parker (Tom Holland) trying to move on with his life. Specifically, he’s looking forward to a school trip to Europe, where he hopes to tell his classmate, M.J. (Zendaya), that he has a crush on her. Of course, those awkwardly laid plans are soon blown to hell by the arrival of new enemies and perhaps a new savior, the latter in the form of a bearded wonder-man played by Jake Gyllenhaal.
On the off chance that anyone fussed about spoilers made it this far into any Marvel review, they should turn away now. Without getting into too many details, I’ll say that the film makes good, if not quite enough, use of Gyllenhaal, who breezes into this intricately built, 11-year-old cinematic universe to, in some ways, point out its artifice.
Plenty of big stars have shown up to play roles in various Avengers movies, but something about Gyllenhaal’s specific presence brings a dark meta tinge to the whole thing—this fallen Prince of Persia here to warn us about the dangers of franchise worship. Sort of, anyway. His cause is lost in the end, announcing a new phase of MCU hegemony, one so high on its omnipotence—so emboldened by it—that it assumes, maybe correctly, that its domination is total. This is the world we live in now. Or, the one those people on screen live in. The thing is, there’s hardly a difference between the two anymore.
All that flexing doesn’t always sync up well with Peter’s milder social and romantic concerns. Holland is as charming as ever, bright and sincere. But what, really, does one person’s story mean when existence is so constantly threatened? Far From Home tries to make a case for the littler things, deftly employing Holland and Zendaya’s fumbling chemistry and giving side characters goofy, winning business to play. (I want a whole movie about Marisa Tomei’s Aunt May buying her fabulous wardrobe.) In reality, though, that scrappier stuff is a smokescreen meant to cover up all the familiar brand-advancing mechanics.
Which isn’t a new insight, to be sure; I’m certainly not the first person to point out these movies’ synergistic creep, to call us all Marvel-hypnotized sheeple, man. It’s just that when you have a film that, at its best, taps into the sweet and simple adventure of youth, the human-sized hurtle into the future, it’s a shame not so much to watch it swallowed up by the juggernaut, but to snap out of the delusion and remember that you’ve been inside the belly of the beast all along.
Far From Home is a movie about attempted escape that carefully reminds us, like a benevolent dictator, that there’s no such thing to be had. Sure, now that we’re post-Avengers we may get smaller, lighter, more personal Marvel movies. But they’ll still all be in rote service to the grand design. Peter Parker might fall in love. He might graduate. He might grow up and leave Queens behind. But he’ll remain trapped in the same simulation. The great treadmill built by Marvel catches all in the end—even those allowed to swing, seemingly free, so high above it.
