shelidonJuly 20, 20193 Comments on Spiderman and the Guy with a Ball on His Head

Yeah. I know. I am not and I have never been a Spider-man fan. I hate the sucker. Therefore, you know what to expect from this review. But can you, though?

Despite my aversion, we were in withdrawal and this pretty much was the only movie in Original Language we could afford to go and see. It also kind of is an Endgame epilogue, much in the shadow of Tony Stark’s death, so I didn’t mind much. My previous experience with Tom Holland’s web shooter was on a plane: I started watching Homecoming and regretted ever so much the fact that I can’t sleep on planes. I dropped it after thirty minutes of pure agony. Therefore, I was prepared to withstand two hours and a half of high-school Marvel.

My fears, if completely justified, were only partially met, as I have to admit that Far from Home is a neat product.

Sure, the plot is simple: your friendly neighbor is on a field trip with school, with hormone levels you might imagine, alongside other 25-years-old people pretending to be 16. And this is a thing that bothers me a lot, as we’re left with 25-years-old people thinking they are 16 in real life as well. Enter giant beasts, a guy with a ball on his head and Nick Fury no other options.

The movie tries a lot to juggle a balance between the light jokes people expect from a Spider-man movie and some deep stuff about legacies and responsibilities that also people expect from a Spider-man movie. I was not expecting, though, a couple of good things and I’ll list them briefly:

1. the Soundtrack, by Michael Gioacchino, is exceptionally good: a mix of the traditional themes from both Spider-man and the Avengers manages to bring an epic touch to an otherwise rather silly theme and Gioacchino proves himself to be, once again, a guy who can work very well with other people’s stuff and turn it into something original (see the work he did in Rogue One);
2. Jake Gyllenhaal is really convincing, both in terms of acting than in terms of presence: his character is well written and I’ll try not to spoil anything but you’ll see one of the best usages of drones in a movie;
3. I deeply dislike Zendaya as Mary Jane and I fear the fact that you can only have empowered women, as if we’re losing our right to be saved by the hero every once in a while, but I think this movie was still in the balance of portraying her as clever and still leave Spidey the credit for what he does;
4. the whole idea of having villains coming from working place renegades was good and was not too banal, and it’s all I can write without spoilers;
5. what they did with a lighter Nick Fury works even if you might think it doesn’t: give it time;
6. the title is brilliant, as everyone is far from home: Spider-man is on a field trip, sure, but those who are really far from home might not be the most obvious ones;
7. Spiderman embracing his inner nerd… ahem… inventor, and working with Tony’s technology, in the end, managed to convince even me and that’s saying something;
8. Jon Watts does an amazing job in directing: the escape scenes are really good but what surprised me were the scenes inside Mysterio’s illusions. They are good at an Inception level. This guy needs to be given something serious to direct.

Another thing that I liked, and this is a semi-spoiler alert, is the way they played with all the silliness you have to put in a Spider-man movie. He’s ridiculous and his villains are always more ridiculous and still this all makes sense, the multiverse and mention of Earth 616 still makes sense and the fact that we have a guy with a ball on his head, again, makes complete sense in his own very words: people will believe anything and they won’t listen to you if you don’t have lasers shooting out of your hands. The news also plays a marginal but crucial role (as usual, the post-credit scene is fucking important) and this is also something that has always been integral to what we consider to be Spider-man‘s core themes. Well done.

This does not mean that not I’m a Spider-man fan.