- UK release: July 2019
- Director: Jon Watts · Writers: Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers
- Studio / distributor: Columbia Pictures; Marvel Studios; Pascal Pictures
- Genre: Superhero coming-of-age adventure · Runtime: 129 minutes (BBFC 12A)
- Main cast: Tom Holland (The Impossible, Spider-Man: Homecoming) as Peter Parker / Spider-Man; Jake Gyllenhaal (Nightcrawler, Source Code) as Quentin Beck / Mysterio; Zendaya (Spider-Man: Homecoming) as MJ; Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction, The Avengers) as Nick Fury
- IMDb: 7.4 / 10 · Rotten Tomatoes: 91% critics / 95% audience · My rating: 8 / 10
Marvel has a tricky job this summer. Avengers: Endgame closed a decade of films with the sort of finality that usually ends a franchise rather than continues it, and the studio now has to follow that emotional full stop with a teenager on a school trip. Far From Home is the film handed that unenviable transition, and the surprise is how lightly it carries the weight. Jon Watts, back after Homecoming, treats the comedown not as a problem to solve but as the comedy and the grief the film is actually about: what happens to the small people once the giants have left the stage.
The setup
Peter Parker (Tom Holland) wants a holiday. After everything, he plans to spend a European school trip telling MJ (Zendaya) how he feels and leaving the costume in a suitcase. Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) has other ideas, commandeering the trip to enlist Spider-Man against the Elementals, vast creatures of water, fire and earth tearing through one picturesque city after another. Standing against them is Quentin Beck (Jake Gyllenhaal), a caped newcomer the press christen Mysterio, who seems to know what he is doing in a way the grieving, jet-lagged teenager very much does not. Peter wants to be a normal kid; the world keeps insisting he be the next Iron Man. I will leave Beck’s hand exactly as the film deals it, because how this one plays out is half the pleasure.
The cast
Holland remains the most convincing screen Spider-Man yet on the simple grounds that he looks and behaves like an actual sixteen-year-old, all nervous energy and bad decisions made for sweet reasons. The film leans into that, and he carries the loss of a mentor without ever tipping into self-pity. Gyllenhaal is the reason to buy a ticket. He plays Beck with a warmth that feels like relief to Peter and to us, a grown-up who has things in hand, and he calibrates the performance so precisely that you keep watching his eyes for the seams. After Nightcrawler and Source Code he knows exactly how to hold an audience’s trust and weigh whether to keep it. Zendaya’s MJ is dry, watchful and funny, a deadpan foil rather than a prize, and Jackson gives Fury a tired exasperation that lands more jokes than the script probably expected.
The craft
Watts directs this as a travelogue caper, and the change of scenery does it good: Venice, Prague and London give the action a postcard brightness that the Queens-bound Homecoming could not. The Elemental set pieces are loud and a little anonymous on their own, but the film has a trick up its sleeve, and once it deploys it the visual language turns genuinely inventive, bending perspective and reality in a way that suits a story about not trusting what you are shown. Michael Giacchino’s score keeps things buoyant. The pacing is brisk, the comedy mostly earns its place rather than puncturing the stakes, and a mid-film turn re-frames everything that came before it cleanly enough that you want to rewind. It is not flawless. The school-trip supporting cast is broad to the point of cartoon, and the threat occasionally feels like weather rather than menace.
How it stacks up
Set against Homecoming, this is the bigger, glossier, slightly less grounded film. The first picture’s charm was its smallness, a friendly neighbourhood hero worrying about a dance; this one swaps that for spectacle and globe-trotting, and gives up a little intimacy in the trade. Where it scores is in the Beck plot, which owes more to a Mission: Impossible-style spy caper, all misdirection and stagecraft, than to the usual punch-up. The film is, underneath the web-slinging, about illusion and the ease with which a confident performer can sell a frightened public a story it wants to hear. That theme of manufactured spectacle is sharper and more current than a teen Spider-Man film strictly needs to be, and it is the thread I came out turning over.
Critics versus the rest of us
The reception is warm. Critics are running around 91%, audiences higher still at 95%, and the consensus singles out the lighter tone, Holland and Gyllenhaal, and the deft handling of the post-Endgame hangover. The main grumble is that it feels less grounded than Homecoming, which is true and which I do not hold against it; the bigger canvas is the point of a sequel. There is no great gap between critics and audiences here, and not much between them and me. This is a crowd-pleaser doing precisely what it sets out to do.
Verdict
Far From Home had every excuse to be a tired victory lap and is instead nimble, funny and rather cleverer than its holiday-movie surface suggests. Gyllenhaal gives it a centre of gravity, Holland keeps it human, and the central conceit about who controls the story is the sort of idea I always warm to. It loses a half-step to its enormous predecessor’s shadow and to a supporting cast played too broadly, but it is hugely rewatchable and ends on two stings that left the cinema buzzing. A confident, charming bridge between Marvel eras. 8⁄10.
Availability: On general release in UK cinemas now, in 2D and 3D.
Update
Added since this review first appeared: the film’s cliffhanger paid off in Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), which made good on the closing reveal and turned this entry’s final minutes into the hinge of the whole arc. Far From Home has settled into its place as the lighter, breezier middle chapter of Holland’s trilogy, and the Beck illusion plot has aged well as its themes have only grown more topical. It is now available on disc and digital, and streams on Disney+ in most regions.
BBFC content advice
Rated 12A by the BBFC for moderate fantasy violence, threat, sex references, language. The notes below may contain spoilers.
Violence: There are intense scenes of action violence in which superheroes use their powers against one another. During fight scenes, punches are thrown and people are shot at.
Threat and horror: There is an intense scene of threat in which a young man becomes trapped in a frightening world of hallucinations.
Language: There is bleeped language, as well as a use of the term ‘dickwad’ and a clear use of the rude ‘middle finger’ gesture. Other language is mild and includes terms such as ‘shit’, ‘ass’, ‘jerk’, ‘God’, ‘damn’ and ‘hell’.
Sex: There is a passing reference to a young man watching an ‘adult’ film. There is a comic scene in which a young man removes his trousers in the presence of a woman, only for his intentions to be misconstrued by another person who accidentally witnesses the events.
Source: British Board of Film Classification (bbfc.co.uk).
