Spider-Man: Far From Home - July 2

Let us begin July 2019 by stating the obvious: real life sucks. This time I honest-to-goodness missed AoS because we had guests and because someone just has to be a socialite and cannot keep their mouth shut until 11:30 in the evening. Yes, the guests are at fault too – they just had to play along, didn’t they, because of grown-up social obligations or whatever other rot parents shove down their children’s minds and metaphorical throats as they are growing-up – man, but do I hate real live sometimes. …Yes, I got my closure with the garter snakes and the American toads in my park, though the leopard frogs continue to mock me – but their turn will come, believe it!

As for ‘Spider-Man: Far From Home’ the movie… it is everything that ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ was not: it is solid, it has gravity, it has a realistic plot (for a comic-book movie), and even continuity. Its’ characters are well-rounded and three-dimensional, and the story itself takes place in a larger universe and doesn’t feel disconnected as ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ was.

No, really, you know what one of the sins of ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ was? It was disconnected from the rest of its’ world; in ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’ Jean was being set-up as the Phoenix in a very different manner from what we’ve seen in the 2019 film, with very different villains from the D’Bari that we had there. In the comics, Jean the Phoenix went ‘dark’ because of the Hellfire club and their manipulation of it – and something of that place could be seen in the actual 2019 movie, but somehow, for some reason, ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’, scrapped everything of substance from its’ plot, and instead left its’ audience feeling disappointed and empty-hearted. Yes, ‘Venom 2018’ had something similar, but ‘Venom 2018’ itself is the beginning of a new Marvel universe – namely, Earth-TRN688, so the situation is different from ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ after all.

…Right, now, where were we? Ah yes, ‘Spider-Man: Far From Home’. In many ways, this is still a typical MCU movie – there are twists a-plenty, (but unlike, say, AoS, they work), and the villain dies at the end of it, which is what has happened to Mysterio, (but not his crew).

Let us start with Mysterio – by choosing him to be the villain of the current Spider-Man movie, MCU from the start cast doubt on the entire Marvel multiverse appearing in the MCU theory. It is possible that it will appear for real in the future films, but in this movie? Mysterio was blowing smoke up Fury’s ass all along.

Pause. Yes, as the final scene showed, Fury had had some tricks up his own sleeve – he’s that amazing – but until that happened everyone in the audience was wandering just what was going on down in the film, and JG’s Mysterio didn’t fail yet delivered everything that you expected Mysterio from the comics, and the TV cartoons, to be. He is a master of illusion, of deception; he is also a sociopath who does not hesitate to kill children to prevent the truth from coming out, (and yes, this is what a sociopath should be like, AoS! You did a crummy job with Ward and Palamas regardless from what angle you are coming from), and in the end, even if he’s mortally wounded, he still tries to kill Peter first. The douche.

Peter himself, now, is the hero of the movie, and not just because he’s the titular character, (sorry you Miles Morales’ fans, no Kid Arachnid in this movie!), but because the main movie storyline is about him as he is growing into the hero that Tony Stark had set him to be, regardless of all of Fury’s doubts, cough.

…Yeah, that thing with Fury at the end? People already are wondering if we are looking at a Skrull invasion next or what. Considering that MCU has already cast Kree as the wicked aliens here on one hand, and ‘Captain Marvel’ (the movie, though the titular character herself helps too), showed that the Skrulls in this Marvel universe aren’t so evil, so, no invasion?

…Or maybe there will be a Kree invasion instead, who knows? Between Ronan the Accuser, the AoS S5, and everything else in between, Kree have a very bad rep in MCU, so…let us get back to humans and their romance. There is Peter and MJ, there is his aunt and Happy, and there is Ned and Betty. The last are largely a foil to Peter and MJ, and May and Happy seem to be breaking up at the end of the movie…

Just OT: what is up with the Parkers? It’d been noticed for a while now, that aunt May is getting steadily younger in those films, from an old lady in the original trilogy (and the 90s cartoon series), to MCU’s current version; as Peter is calling her by her first name (and what the fuck is up with that), one cannot help but to think that those two act like an elder sister and a younger brother (or like a pair of cousins at most) than an aunt and a nephew; what’s the logic here?

On a more serious note, did anyone notice that Mysterio seemed to be advocating RL fake news in MCU? Yes, his and Spider-Man’s confrontation in this universe seemed to be about truth vs. lies, reality vs. illusion slash appearance, but the point is that remember that ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ got dragged through the metaphorical mud because it supposedly tried to be woke, (i.e. Mystique’s confrontation with Xavier post the space rescue)? How’s SM2’s take on fake news is better, worse, or different from that? Yes, ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ is an inferior film to this one, but ‘woke-ness’ has nothing to do with it, unlike hypocrisy…

Yes, Mysterio seems to be getting the last laugh even though he’s really dead now, (but then again, not only is it hard to tell with him, there’s also the case of Loki, who was also decisively dead in ‘Infinity War’, until he was equally not in ‘Endgame’, so there’s that), by revealing Spider-Man’s true identity to the world, which brought J. Jonah Jameson back into the fold, so fans are ecstatic about that; the movie’s titular hero, not so much. It will be interesting to see how Peter handles Jonah this time around; maybe he will get his friend Miles Morales to stand-in as the ‘real’ Spider-Man? Cough. ‘Spider-Verse’ was an amazing movie in its’ own right, though all the color blips and the fancy depictions of characters, action/fight scenes, etc. sometimes were visually overwhelming in my opinion, but this brings us to ‘Sony’.

…Not only the latest MIB movie borrow the actors of Thor and Valkyrie, and the plot from AoS, but their titular concept is also borrowed from the current Spider-Man movie: International vs. Far From Home. Yeah, no wonder that the current MIB film is getting shuffled into various hellholes and whatever; the relationship between Sony and Disney had never been too easy even before the CA: CW film, when this incarnation of Peter appeared in this Marvel universe, and we can only wonder just what will happen between Sony and Disney next.

Anything else? Michelle remains an original character and not an Afro-American Mary Jane clone – she is not happy swinging with her new boyfriend, (she and Peter did finally hook up in London, England. As opposed to London, Ontario, Canada, for example). Still, hopefully that she and Peter will remain a stable couple, because the two of them work very well together, (though their characters appear to have been reworked, some, since the ‘Homecoming’ movie). Go team PM, I say!

…For now, though, this is it. We are behind on our AoS reviews, and given what my life is right now, odds are that we will remain behind – such is reality in which we live in. MCU’s latest movie, though, is great, because it is not, well, real, but has plenty of everything – parody, drama, teen angst, humor, romance – you name it. Good luck watching this film in movie theatres too.

This is it for now – see you all soon!