Felicity Banks

Marvel-ous Day 5: Part 4

June 29, 2020 at 2:51 am (Reviews, TV/movie review, With a list)

One film to go!

SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME (2019) Amazon Prime

One-sentence summary: Spider-Man gives a potent weapon to a baddie then gets it back again.

This takes place in the post-Snap (aka post-Blip) world. The movie reminds us of all the tragedy of Infinity War and Endgame, yet has us laughing virtually immediately.

The romance here is a suitably dorky teen romance full of awkwardness and hesitation. It is exactly as it should be. And so is May’s enthusiastic support of Spider-Man. And the awkwardness of his aunt heading into a romance of her own.

Our sweet innocent child has a few good normal things in his life, thank goodness. Like a school trip, yay!

But he’s grieving for Stark, and feeling like everyone expects him to take over as, effectively, Iron Man. It does NOT help that Stark has bequeathed him a set of Iron Man sunnies that double as a weapon of mass destruction. Classic Stark, though. Stark and Peter both make a lot of dumb life choices. Sure enough, Peter gives his sunnies away to the villain. (Way later in the film.)

Elemental visuals are cool.

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I love that MJ figures out Peter’s secret identity—and also plays a part in discovering the truth about Mysterio.

Zendaya is trending on twitter right now, as she’s getting attacked by some fools and worshipped by many others. That’s life as a woman of colour, unfortunately. Here’s some real quick google images of her wonderfulness to brighten your day:

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Mysterio does what all the best Spider-Man villains do, and messes with Peter’s head.

He is just a kid, after all.

So Mysterio beats him up both literally and figuratively, tells him that he’s dumb and that all his friends are going to die, and then runs him over with a train.

Sounds like adolescence to me.

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Haha I’m so tired. Forty-five minutes to go. I really hope TJ lets me sleep in tomorrow.

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Peter breaks down under the stress of not being Iron Man, and of having given a major weapon to a villain.

STOP HURTING THIS SWEET CHILD, YOU GUYS.

Happy points out that Iron Man was a mess too.

And then Peter steadies himself and uses Stark’s magic computer system to design his own new Spidey suit. (And Happy is smart enough to not mention how like Stark Peter is.)

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And so we come to the final showdown in London. It’s a delight to see Zendaya and the other schoolgirl take down a drone using medieval weaponry.

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Peter has fully regained both his mojo and his “Peter tingle” (Aunt May’s term for his Spidey sense). As a result, Mysterio’s tricks, illusions, and gaslighting stops working on him.

Mysterio dies from his own drone strike.

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MJ and Peter finally and beautifully get together. She keeps the mace.

Peter takes her flying…

Post-credits scene: …and she hates it.

And Mysterio (with assistance from J. Jonah Jamison) had set up a death-switch video that exposes Spider-Man’s secret identity. While framing him for the ‘murder’ of Mysterio.

I SPECIFICALLY TOLD YOU TO STOP HURTING PETER YOU GUYS!

Post-credits scene 2: It turns out that two Skrull have been acting as Fury and Maria Hill for this entire movie, while Fury has a holiday in space. (Which explains why Fury was so determined to push the very young Peter into risking his life so much.)

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It is astonishing that any series can be of such consistently high quality for so long. (See Appendix A: Game of Thrones.) The whole saga shares themes and characters in a balancing act of character, style, theme, and even multiple genres (fantasy, comedy, space opera, scifi, action). My cats are super impressed and so am I.

I have a LOT of best-of-the-MCU-so-far lists that I’m compiling for your edification and mine. I’ll probably release one or two a day for a week or so. (The first, top villains, is here.) Everything from ‘best characters for cosplaying’ to ‘best one-liners’.

We all need something to keep us going until we can see the next Marvel movie. And/or all those upcoming TV shows.

Edit: I went to bed an hour ago but did I mention I’m having a manic episode? It takes a while to come down from those. So I’m up again at 4am because I was just getting more and more ideas for blog post lists. Also I got really excited that I reckon I’ve figured out the title of the third Spider-Man movie. So now I have to fill my head with something other than my own creativity, so I’m… watching TV. Specifically, movie reviews.

I like movie reviews. Could you guess that?

I will eventually get to sleep, don’t worry.

The title of the third Spider-Man movie should be Spider-Man: Homeless.

Because the other two both have the word ‘home’ in the title, and because Peter’s just been framed for murder AND outed as Spider-Man, so it’s likely he’ll be on the run for a bit.