Noah Thompson’s review published on Letterboxd:
I think Nick Fury just hijacked our summer vacation.
Doing a CliffsNotes review because it’s just turned into one of those busier days:
- Very surprised by how much I liked this. It’s a hodgepodge of things other Marvel movies have done, and most of them are done better here.
- It’s a better Ant-Man and the Wasp because it succeeds at bringing the audience back down from an Avengers extravaganza to the smaller scale misadventures of your favorite web-slinger.
- Though Thor: Ragnarok is likely the king of comedy in the MCU, Far from Home does a great job of balancing the more humorous bits with the more dramatic elements. Not all of the jokes hit, but there are at least two lines that are going to get hearty belly laughs from an audience.
- Even more than Homecoming, this is Peter learning how he can come into his own as a distinct superhero, and this time, the overlooming shadow of Tony Stark is more than a business decision and adds personal stakes to Peter’s journey.
- Jake Gyllenhaal hot.
- Jake Gyllenhaal is also great as Mysterio. I can’t go into full details about his character because of spoilers, but if you know anything about him in the comics, you have a good idea of where his trajectory goes. The chemistry between him and Holland especially is stellar.
- I really love Jacob Batalon. The reason he works so well as a best friend character is because I personally would want to be best friends with him.
- MJ is now a character instead of a plot device. Her chemistry with Peter is off at first, but by the second/third act, I bought them together completely. Zendaya haters be damned.
- Samuel L. Jackson’s here too. He’s Samuel L. Jackson, you know the gist.
- There are some plot holes/things that don’t make sense that are noticeable, but not bad enough to pull you out of the movie. The explanation for the age gaps after The Decimation is kinda one of these, but the way it’s presented is super fun, so I don’t mind.
- The final act and all of the action sequences in it between Spidey and the villain are some of the coolest set pieces I’ve ever seen in a superhero movie, and the very final one might be one of my favorite Spidey moments ever. I’ll elaborate on that in a spoiler review if I see this again.
- Besides just being a very good superhero flick, this is especially a very good Spider-Man movie. It has a strong grip of the mythos behind the character and what makes Peter such a standout superhero among the masses.
- Other than Into the Spider-Verse, this is the best Spider-Man movie since Spider-Man 2 by a country mile. It’s getting better the more I think about it.
- Stay for both end credits scenes. They’re, like its lead character, amazing.
- TL;DR: No bullshit, one of the best of the MCU.
8/10
