It's a chilly gray Saturday and it doesn't feel like summer at all. This morning, I read my purchase from our school comic con last month:
I bought the Spidey Treasury Edition exactly three years ago, so I'd read some of this material before.
But Robbie Thompson re-tells the Lee/Ditko stories with a freshness and humour that reminds me more of the CW Flash and Supergirl series than Byrne's Chapter One from the late 90s.
While it would be hard to beat the charming Into the Spider-Verse, Tom Holland's fourth outing as Peter Parker is a success for the friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man. Coming out of Stark's shadow is not Peter Parker's story but it's a relief not to revisit the death of Uncle Ben or the Goblin tragedy of the Osborns yet again. I saw it in the second, smaller of the Moray Playhouse's three cinemas on Wednesday evening.
Working in Secondary Education, I think Holland makes a far more believable 15-year-old than gangling hipster Andrew Garfield and this is a perfect film for teenagers. Spider-Man: Far From Home captures the snarky, media-savvy tone of Youtubers from its opening shots with a Whitney Houston tribute to Tony Stark- puncturing the sombre, funereal mood of Endgame. We're immediately introduced to sassy student Betty Brant and the age issues of The Blip are addressed.
Awkward romances are the order of the day, even among the adults (May and Happy) and there's a Trip Advisor brevity to visits to scenic Venice, Prague and London, like a PoMo Summer Holiday. The broad comedy of the Netherlands sequence stereotypes the Dutch, just as Peter's teachers are stereotyped as embarrassing dorks.
Jake Gyllenhaal's Quentin Beck with his Cool Mentor role and tragic multiversal backstory is an ironic comment on the preposterousness of superheroes themselves. I felt that Peter's Insta panic on the bus using Stark's EDITH technology was a little too Bat- camp, however (reminiscent of Amazing Spider-Man 2 which, in turn, made me think of the Richard Pryor vehicle Superman III). The European scenes are punctuated with 60s Ye-Ye or whatever the Italian equivalent is and the USA is soundtracked by the Ramones, of course. The titles even have that Diary of a Wimpy Kid look that Shazam had. My S2 ( aged 13-14) love those books.
The final showdown at Tower Bridge sees a return to the apocalyptic tone of all MCU final battles. Mysterio is a very contemporary menace, attacking perception and the nature of reality. Messing with Spidey's mind was what I first saw Mysterio do, in the Sixties. His technological media manipulation in the mid-credits scene is wonderfully of the moment: having the last laugh by doxxing your nemesis. Mysterio has faked his death in comics before and I liked this twist on that trope.
I think the rumoured Fantastic Four secret message can't really be parsed in that post-credits scene but I was perplexed by the post-credits Skrulls and Fury in space. Was it a set-up for Secret Invasion or just a gag reel?
I had already completely forgotten the Skrull refugees from Captain Marvel in April. Are super-hero movies too frequent and too self-referential? Too cutesy and dependent upon multiple viewings? I've never watched Thor: Ragnarok or Black Panther a second time: MCU movies come too thick and fast, never mind the DCU efforts. And already lined up for the next twelve months, there's Joker, Birds of Prey/ Harley Quinn, New Mutants, Wonder Woman 1984, Morbius...
In many senses this is the Golden Age of super-hero movies. But am I developing MCU-fatigue?
Coming soon: Bona Time Travel
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