Spider-Man: Far From Home

Our Review

The European vacation follow up, and the better for its smallness after Endgame. Peter Parker just wants to tell MJ how he feels on a class trip across the continent, and the universe keeps assigning him homework: a grief stricken world wanting a new Iron Man, a handsy Nick Fury, and a hovering new hero in a fishbowl helmet who wants Spider-Man’s help fighting monsters made of sand and fire.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s Quentin Beck is a gift. The Mysterio illusion sequence, Peter trapped inside a kaleidoscope of falling corpses, crumbling cities, and his own cloned face, is the most frightening and visually inventive set piece Sony or Marvel ever put in a Spider-Man movie, and it reframes the entire film’s first act on rewatch. The reveal, a disgruntled Stark employee weaponizing the tech left behind, keeps the series’ best theme: the wreckage Tony’s legacy keeps producing.

The comedy mostly works, the Opera scene with the secret reveal interrupted mid serenade, the happy accidents of a class trip where Ned keeps getting a romantic subplot. The drone finale over London is a step down from the illusion high that preceded it.

Then the credits scene detonates the whole status quo, and the cliffhanger is still the most shocking button any of these films ever pushed. Our score: 7/10.