Review | Spider-Man: Far from Home film review – Marvel takes a fun European holiday after Avengers: Endgame
- Still mourning the death of his mentor, Iron Man, Spider-Man’s teen alter-ego Peter Parker takes a much-needed school trip to Europe
- Unfortunately, Nick Fury has other plans for Spider-Man after the arrival of a superhero from an alternate-reality
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4/5 stars
Spider-Man: Far from Home’s storyline directly follows on from Avengers: Endgame . So if you haven’t seen that, stop reading here.
Set eight months on, like the rest of the world, our friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man (Tom Holland) is still mourning the demise of his mentor Iron Man, aka Tony Stark. He needs to step back. Thankfully, his teenage alter-ego Peter Parker has a “plan” for the summer. Travel with his classmates to Europe for the school trip and tell MJ (Zendaya) how he feels.
Unfortunately, Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) has other plans after the arrival of a superhero, soon to be dubbed Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal), from an alternate-reality.
Billowing out clouds of green smoke, he’s come to fight with four destructive monsters made from the elements – earth, wind, water and fire. And it just so happens that the water creature will be rearing its head in Venice, where Peter and his friends are heading.
Fury wants Spider-Man on the team, even giving him a pair of glasses bequeathed by Stark (titled EDITH – Even Dead I’m The Hero) that allow him control of billions of dollars worth of tech. But Parker, still just a boy at heart, is really the reluctant hero in this second Holland-led solo outing for the Stan Lee-created superhero.
Like EuroTrip and National Lampoon’s European Vacation, the script also gently mocks the image of obnoxious American citizens abroad (“Europeans love Americans!” exclaims Peter’s naive friend Ned, in one of the film’s funnier lines).
Like just about every other Hollywood film, it does a whistle-stop tour of all the famous sites – the Charles Bridge when the story moves to Prague, Tower Bridge in London – but the tourist clichés aren’t enough to derail the fun here.
There’s a neat parallel subplot to the Peter/MJ romance, as Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) – Tony Stark’s long-time friend – has his own on-off affair with someone very close to Peter. If there’s a disappointment, it’s that Gyllenhaal’s character is rather underwritten, with so much of the plot hingeing on him.
But with more Nick Fury than usual – and it’s really worth sitting through all the credits for this – there’s enough pure joy here to keep Marvel fans happy for the rest of the summer.
