Alas.
It didn't excite me the way Peter's previous appearances did, and perhaps that's because there's so much more focus on Peter than there has been until now. This is the first full-blown MCU Spider-Man movie. Homecoming had Michael Keaton's Vulture and Iron Man propping up the Peter Parker platform, and lots of supporting cast nods to the larger Spider-Man world (nascent versions of Shocker, Prowler, the Tinkerer, Scorpion), plus it got to liberate itself from the origin story and the Osbornes for the first time in 6 movies, so it felt like a fresh new path, a very distinct Peter Parker/Spider-Man from previous iterations.
Far From Home feels more like a traditional Spider-Man story, one where Peter makes a pile of mistakes, messes up his civilian life, and struggles with both his heroism and selfishness. These are the familiar notes of Spider-Man and part of the reason I never glommed onto the character...he just keeps doing this shit to himself over an over again as if he never learns. I think they're meant to highlight that Peter is still just a kid and hammer home that the "with great power..." adage is a hard thing for a hormonal teen to cope with, but I've always had problems with characters who make decisions (not mistakes) when they should know better, and have little sense of self reflection or self-awareness.
The film first has to deal with the fallout of Endgame where some people blipped out of existence for 5 years only to suddenly reappear. I should say that it *should* deal with the blip, but it's more a passing mention and it doesn't truly factor into the lives of the characters in this film at all. I would think that disappearing for five years would have a monumental impact on people's lives but it's almost as if nothing happened at all. The bigger fallout from Endgame is the death of Tony Stark.
As established in Homecoming (and Infinity War and Endgame) there was sort of a mentor situation happening between Peter and Tony, so just as Peter's dusting affected Tony in Endgame so to does Tony's death affect Peter here. Yet, the loss doesn't feel personal so much as it feels like there's a void. The world's lost Iron Man and now it's utterly vulnerable, and it needs a new Iron Man or everything will descend into chaos. Perhaps this is a failing of both Endgame and Far From Home establishing that maybe Tony has done something/many things incredible for the world during the blip and it truly cannot cope without him, or perhaps it's just my disinterest in Iron Man that still sees him as a B-list superhero.
As much as this is an old school Spider-Man story, the shadow of Tony Stark looms far too large. Even the origin of Mysterio has its roots in Iron Man, and so much of Peter's life as a superhero is now tied to him being Iron Man's benefactor. Hell, he now has Happy Hogan as support staff, and access to all of Tony's suit-constructing technology... this isn't Peter making it on his own, or becoming his own hero. The thrust of this film is all about whether Peter can become the next Iron Man, so when he wins, it's kind of like "yeah, sure he can".
That all said, this is still a pretty fun romp of a movie. The "European Vacation" class trip is a goofy, classic 80's comedy set-up and leads to the requisite amount of shenanigans as Peter tries his hand at courting MJ. Meanwhile he keeps trying to dodge Nick Fury, but manages to get wrangled into saving the world from alternate-dimensional beings called the Elementals. He partners with Mysterio, a hero from another world (part Thor, part Iron Man, part Doctor Strange) with a tragic tale, and finds perhaps another mentor, and a more suitable replacement for Iron Man.
Of course anyone who has read a Spider-Man comic or watched a Spider-Man cartoon knows that Mysterio is a villain, so there's a sense of waiting for the other shoe to drop. The movie does a great job in getting you to buy into Mysterio as a hero. Jake Gyllenhaal fills the air with a fine mist of charisma... it's everywhere. He's very, very charming, and he sells everything he's asked to do here.
The film takes off in its second act. There's a spectacularly Ditko-esque Mysterio sequence late in the second act that rivals, perhaps even surpasses the Ditko-esqueness of Doctor Strange and seeing Peter step up to be the hero others believe in him to be is really the money shot we're all looking for (of course it would be Spider-Man if he didn't take his many many lumps along the way).
But for all the film does, its comedy, action, romance, MCU-building and special effects, it's all overshadowed by two post credits sequences which are more surprising and exciting than anything in the main feature. But that's the allure of the unknown, to spark the imagination on where this can go. The first post credits sequence, in my mind, sets up either a Spider-Man vs. the Sinister Six or Kraven's Last Hunt story (or an amalgam of both) while the second post credits sequence is just a larger MCU tease with no set destination (and perhaps retroactively changes things we've already seen). Often these teases are just that, but I remain more excited by what I just watched, with a very strong desire to see it again (and maybe again and again), but in this case I'm more excited for the future, and my desire to see Far From Home a second time was almost nil. (I did anyway, at the behest of my daughter...it was her birthday...)
I have updated my "all superhero films ranked" list and Far From home ranks just behind "Ant-Man and the Wasp", which still puts it in the upper echelon of superhero movies, but in the bottom third of MCU films. It's quite enjoyable, but also kind of inessential.
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