“Spider-Man: Far From Home” Review – NO SPOILERS!

This movie is such an intricate web (get it? It’s a spider joke…moving along) of plot twists, it requires me to think very hard and carefully about literally ever word I’m using – I don’t want to spoil a single thing in this movie. There are twists within twists, and there are all sorts of tricks and little shockers, plus two of the most incredible post-credits scenes ever, scenes that will be talked about for months to come. And, for this review, we can’t discuss any of them. Not a one. My lips are sealed.

But…uh, if you haven’t seen Avengers: Endgame yet, you might want to go? Because this movie is very closely linked to what happened in Endgame.

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I feel it’s within my right to tell you a little of what to expect, in terms of atmosphere and tone: the film is very much high-school melodrama meets psychological horror – and if you think those two things probably don’t flow together very well, you’d be about partially right. Far From Home does sometimes have a little difficulty with that issue, at least with its supporting cast: specifically Ned (Jacob Batalon), MJ (Zendaya), and Betty (Angourie Rice). These three characters each have pretty sizable roles in the movie, and they often come across as a little…nonchalant? Yes, they’re teenage protagonists, and as such they have all the usual angst and over-the-top cringeworthy awkwardness that we’ve come to expect from teenage protagonists in movies, but it often gets in the way of, and subsequently diminishes the threat of the possibly world-ending catastrophic events happening around them. MJ, at the very least, has a little more dramatic material (and morbid humor) to work with in her role, and she even gets to play detective for, like, five or ten seconds, but she’s mostly here because this movie is truly a teen romance story at its heart, and her romance with Peter Parker (Tom Holland) is sweet enough and cute enough that it works. It’s not the best love story, and it’s a little dumb, but it’s there and I kind of like it, for what it is. It gives Peter an emotional anchor throughout the story.

One of two such anchors, in fact: the other being his attachment to the legacy of the late Tony Stark. Tony’s huge, larger-than-life status as an icon, a hero, a great man, is constantly reiterated through the film – from a heartbreaking opening-credits sequence up until the film’s finale. We are reminded over and over just how much Tony meant to Peter, and to the world. And we can sympathize with Peter’s pain and grief at losing him, and his quest to be the next Iron Man, a superhero that people can believe in. At times it becomes unbearable, and Peter is swallowed up by a claustrophobic panic as people constantly bombard him with questions about whether he’s leading the Avengers now, or what he plans to do if aliens attack again. If you’re a fan of Peter Parker, which I assume you are if you’re planning to go see Far From Home, just prepare for a lot of emotional trauma: because let’s just say…people are going after Peter in this movie in a way we haven’t seen before, kicking him when he’s down, tearing him apart (metaphorically speaking), and he takes a serious beating from it, physically and mentally. There are multiple scenes in this film where I felt like crying on Peter’s behalf, because he is tortured here. So many times, and in so many ways.

I am not kidding when I say there is psychological horror in this movie – in fact, there are multiple instances of it, and it makes the entire second and third acts feel nightmarish. One sequence, in particular, seems to go on and on, as Peter is lured in different directions like a puppet on strings, manipulated and mocked, unable to do anything to prevent all the awful things he’s forced to witness. He is far from home in so many ways.

And home seems particularly appealing now – the dread and gloom of Endgame has mostly passed, and families have been reunited: though, as Peter’s Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) points out early in the film, there have been some humorous consequences to the Snap, when half of the universe was disintegrated, and the subsequent moment when half of the universe suddenly reappeared. The name of that moment is itself pretty humorous, so I won’t spoil it for you. Anyway, the dusted are back, as we knew from Endgame, and people are moving on with their lives, all carefree. Aunt May even has a little flirtatious relationship going on with Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) – that was teased in the trailers, it is not a spoiler. I won’t tell you what ends up happening on that front, though, because it’s funny. There’s a lot of adorable humor in Far From Home, actually – the movie is very cute. Okay, cute might not be the right word, considering all the mental trauma and horrifying imagery, but…um, cute during specific moments that I can’t spoil for you but which I assure you are definitely cute? There’s also a bit of the Disney-Channel factor, at certain points, especially in the third act: it would be difficult to explain what I mean by that without unintentionally spoiling certain moments of tension, but…uh, everybody knows what the Disney-Channel factor is, right? You’ll know it when you see it. It involves the teenage supporting cast, unsurprisingly.

Oh, by the way, there were a bunch of rumors going around that a transgender character and a Muslim character would show up in Far From Home: they do, but their appearances are incredibly brief – though Zoha Rahman did look very stylish in a variety of beautiful hijabs.

Samuel L. Jackson and Cobie Smulders have great chemistry once again, as super spies Nick Fury and Maria Hill. I can’t say too much about them, or their character arcs in this film, because…reasons…but they’re good. Very good.

While we’re treading the fine line between spoilers and nonspoilers, I will give as vague a description of Jake Gyllenhaal’s Mysterio, as is humanly possible. He is very interesting, he’s got a lot of charisma, and he made an impact. That’s it. Gyllenhaal does a really good job, except for one scene where – nope, not saying anything. But it’s just not a great scene. No spoilers!

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And, um, yeah, so there are also these two post-credits scenes that are, like, really important: don’t miss them, because they set up the next phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in a really cool way, and…yeah. That’s pretty much all I can say. This movie is a web, a tightly-knit web of secrets that demand to be talked about in a spoiler review – so go watch the movie! Go watch it, so you can get back here and read my spoiler review, which will be up in no time (well, give me a little time to write it)!

Movie Rating: 9/10

“Spider-Man: Far From Home” Plot Twist?

With the release of Avengers: Endgame, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has settled into a deceptively calm lull – a quiet before the storm. Many expect the upcoming Spider-man: Far From Home to deal with the huge aftermath of Endgame, specifically the world-changing effects of Thanos’ Snap, and the…

Oh, hold on a moment. SPOILER WARNING! If you haven’t seen Avengers: Endgame, look away, stay back, get you gone.

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Still here? Good, let’s talk about Tony Stark’s tragic sacrifice, which saved the world but robbed the young and impressionable Peter Parker of his father-figure, mentor and friend. Tony was one of the key elements of Peter’s first MCU outing, Spider-man: Homecoming, and is expected to play just as important a role in Far From Home, even if he is…you know, dead. The trailers have shown Peter mourning Tony’s death, even as the rest of the world is busy painting murals of Stark on walls and dedicating shrines to him. Peter’s life seems to have taken a downhill turn, as we see him sleepless and bleary-eyed, putting away the Stark-tech suit he proudly wore in Avengers: Infinity War, trying to live a normal life: when he’s approached by Nick Fury to help with a supernatural threat, we even see him trying to push his responsibilities onto other heroes – who, conveniently, happen to be off-world. (But, no, seriously, all the other heroes are busy? What about Ant-Man and the Wasp? They’re not doing anything).

But Peter Parker isn’t in the clear yet, and a new reveal from actor Tom Holland suggests that the storm might be about to break in epic fashion, shaking things up in Peter’s life, and at the same time initiating the fourth phase of the MCU.

Holland said “There’s a scene in this film where audiences will feel like they were punched in the face….it’s very tense, and it sorts of rips the rug from underneath your feet. It’s pretty awesome.”

“Awesome” certainly is one way to put it. Far From Home director Jon Watts apparently believes that the scene in question will be controversial, and that some fans will “hate it”. This keeps getting better and better. The big question now, of course, is what could possibly be so shocking, so unexpected, that it could potentially divide the fanbase and leave us dumbfounded?

Unfortunately, there’s plenty of possibilities. Let’s discuss.

We’ve already known for some time that the Multiverse is actually a thing – the Far From Home trailers have revealed that there are alternate realities running parallel to the main MCU timeline, some of which were apparently fractured by Thanos’ Snap, releasing creatures from other dimensions into our world. Quentin Beck, a.k.a “Mysterio”, is seen teaming up with Peter Parker to hunt down these intruders and herd them back into their own reality. Fans have basically just taken for granted that, since Mysterio is a villain in the Spider-man comics, he might not have the most noble intentions in the MCU: he could be playing on Peter’s emotions; he might be lying about the Multiverse, using it as a cover for something else; with his powers of deception and illusion, he might have trapped Peter in an alternate reality of his own. Any of those could be twists, but they would be small ones – probably resolved by the end of the movie, without any major ramifications. It’s just that almost everybody has already guessed that Mysterio isn’t what he claims to be, so this would hardly be a satisfying shocker.

Mysterio might have something to do with the twist, though. According to producer Eric Carroll, the maybe-villain/maybe-hero will star in many more Marvel films to come, which means we might not see him die in Far From Home, even if he does turn out to be evil. He might slink back into the Multiverse whence he came, and wait for another, better opportunity to conquer the world. Or, you know, he might be good. I mean, that possibility is still technically on the table. It would probably be a bigger twist if he turned out to be good, than if he turned out to be the villain – but then again, Captain Marvel just did the same thing by revealing that the alien Skrulls were actually good guys.

It’s also very possible the twist is aiming for our heartstrings, and that it might have something to do with the recently-deceased Tony Stark. Maybe Mysterio conjures up an illusion of Stark, and uses it to deceive and manipulate Peter? AI Tony is something that Marvel fans have been eagerly raving about since he died, and it would be cruel and heartless to introduce the concept – only to then reveal it as a sham, and rip it away. Or what if Mysterio is AI Tony?

What if Peter Parker cracks under the strain of having to live in Tony Stark’s footsteps and ends up joining Mysterio, becoming a villain? A scene like this, at the end of the movie, could be similarly horrific as the infamous Snap at the end of Avengers: Infinity War, where many beloved heroes (including Spider-man) turned to dust and crumbled away before our very eyes. I’ve also seen speculation that Mysterio is actually Peter Parker himself, but an alternate, evil version – one who turned down a path of darkness and villainy after Tony Stark died in his universe. That could illustrate some of the larger themes of the movie, about coping with grief and honoring the legacies of lost loved ones.

Maybe Nick Fury, the man who started the Avengers Initiative, will be one of the victims of Mysterio’s brutality, and his death will officially close the Infinity Saga that he began? Others have suggested that Fury or his co-worker Maria Hill could be another classic Spider-man villain, the Chameleon, in disguise: the appearance of Chameleon has been the subject of many rumors recently. Fury’s death, or a reveal such as this, would definitely anger fans. Maybe (just throwing out the possibility) Peter’s Aunt May is actually the Chameleon? Or even Happy Hogan? Ned? What if Peter Parker is the Chameleon…wait, that doesn’t make sense.

With Mysterio and the Multiverse both confirmed to be large parts of the Far From Home plot, it’s likely that one or both of these things has to do with the twist. Unfortunately, there’s so many possibilities, it’s really difficult to nail down just one. I can’t wait to hear your own thoughts and suggestions in the comments below!

“Spider-Man: Far From Home” Trailer!

The Avengers: Endgame spoiler ban imposed by directors Joe and Anthony Russo lifted today with this trailer for the next installment in the Spider-man franchise, but it’s your choice whether you want to read on. Spoilers for Avengers: Endgame lie ahead!

You’ve been warned.

Spider-man: Far From Home looks like it will pick up right where Endgame left off, with Peter Parker returning to school and trying to rebuild his life after having been snapped out of existence for five years. Needless to say, it won’t be easy. The new Far From Home trailer unveils some huge new concepts that are clearly to impact Phase 4 of the MCU – just as the first Avengers movie introduced us to Thanos and Infinity Stones, Spider-man is paving the way for a Marvel Multiverse.

In other words, anything can happen, from this point on. The Multiverse is a mind-boggling concept that, in hindsight, seems to have been set up in Endgame: there, in order to defeat Thanos, the Avengers were forced to travel back in time and open up branch-realities – realities in which Loki escaped with the Tesseract during the Battle of New York, or Gamora never met the Guardians of the Galaxy, for instance. At the end of Endgame, Captain America was sent back in time to shut down these alternate realities and prevent them from impacting our timeline – but it seems he might have missed a few.

Something big is happening in Far From Home. Elemental demons, seemingly a product of all this reality-bending, time-traveling stuff, are attacking the earth, coming through a “hole in our dimension” as Nick Fury calls it – and the only thing that stands in their way is Spider-man, who will now probably have to do some reality-bending of his own to stop them. The Multiverse has apparently been opened, which means we could see all sorts of weird things from now on: alternate versions of characters, for instance. I doubt that Spidey will be able to stop this, and I also doubt he’ll want to. Throughout the trailer, we see him mourning the death of his mentor and father-figure, Tony Stark (told you this contained spoilers). The Multiverse could easily bring back Tony, or an alternate version of Tony: in fact, the Multiverse makes any number of things possible. That Black Widow movie that’s coming up, even though Black Widow is currently dead? Well, maybe this is alternate Black Widow. The Scarlet Witch streaming show that will be set in the 1950’s, before Scarlet Witch was born? Time travel shenanigans and pocket-dimensions could explain that too.

The Multiverse can make pretty much anything – and everything – a reality. The MCU just got a whole lot bigger, and a whole lot more complicated.

So let’s bring our focus back down to earth: obviously, this trailer is going to be talked about in the coming days and weeks for the Multiverse reveal, but there’s a lot of other stuff happening here that’s also worth mentioning. Nick Fury and Maria Hill are back, as we expected, and Fury has recruited Peter Parker for this mission because apparently every other superhero is currently occupied (that seems…implausible, to say the least, but we’ll roll with it). Another big surprise is seeing Jake Gyllenhaal’s character Mysterio working for Fury – in fact, he seems to be the head of this operation to shut down the Multiverse: which seems a little dangerous, since Mysterio is a Spider-man villain in the comics.

Peter himself is still cheerful and innocent, and seems a little nervous about going into the Multiverse, following in the footsteps of Miles Morales in last year’s animated (and completely unrelated) Spider-man: Into The Spider-Verse. He wears a variety of cool new outfits, but he is obviously still adjusting to his new role as one of Earth’s mightiest heroes – he stills thinks of himself as the friendly neighborhood Spider-man. He has some romantic tension with MJ, but he’s being removed from his friends, pulled away from them by his duties even as he tries to enjoy a European vacation.

The real star here is clearly supposed to be Mysterio, who is shown wearing his iconic fish-bowl helmet and using magic. But there’s another character whose absence is already like a gaping hole in the dimension, and that’s Tony Stark. There’s graffiti of him on walls, and shrines dedicated to him in street-corners: while bringing Tony back might be cheating, it’s at least a possibility now with the introduction of the Multiverse.

Trailer Rating: 8/10

Marvel Phase 4 Timeline!

With Avengers: Endgame out in theaters (and crushing the box-office), Marvel is already looking ahead to the Fourth Phase of their cinematic universe – we’ve already discussed what movies will soon be coming to the big screen in the near future: now let’s talk about when we’ll probably see them.

So, leaving aside Spider-man: Far From Home, which long ago wrapped filming and is set to release on July 5th of this year, the next Marvel film to start production should be the Natasha Romanoff origin story Black Widow, which, according to star David Harbour, should begin in June, possibly in the United Kingdom. Director Cate Shortland is attached, and Jac Schaeffer is the scriptwriter. Scarlett Johansson will be returning to the role of the Russian assassin. We should see Black Widow on May 1st, 2020.

The Eternals, which may star Angelina Jolie and Kumail Nanjiani, is probably next in line, as cameras are expected to start rolling in September, also in England. Chloe Zhao is the director, making her Marvel’s third female director, and their first of Asian heritage. Matthew and Ryan Firpo will be the writing the screenplay for this ambitious project, rumored to have a massive ensemble cast with five female leads and three male leads. The Eternals does not yet have an official release date, but it seems likely that it could make the November 6th, 2020 slot that is currently reserved by Marvel.

Beyond that, things get a little trickier, but it looks like the eagerly-anticipated Black Panther 2, sequel to the 2018 box-office giant, is moving along at a swift pace, with the first film’s director Ryan Coogler and stars such as Chadwick Boseman, Letitia Wright and Danai Gurira – and even Michael B. Jordan, whose character died in Black Panther – all expected to return. Filming will probably begin early next year, and the movie could easily make the February 12th, 2021 release date.

After a strong outing in Avengers: Infinity War, Doctor Strange has also been confirmed for a sequel – Benedict Cumberbatch is expected to reprise the role, though there has been no official announcement. Director Scott Derrickson and screenwriter C. Robert Cargill are likely to return. The release date for this movie has been a matter of contention, with some outlets reporting it could arrive in 2020 – that seems highly improbable, as there has been no word on any production dates yet: though actor Benedict Wong did suggest it might start filming earlier than expected. But it’s a pretty safe bet that Doctor Strange 2 will arrive, at the earliest, in 2021. The only question is what month, exactly. Aside from the February 12th slot, there are just two other confirmed Marvel slots that year – May 7th and November 5th. Considering that the first Doctor Strange came out in November, and some other developments, I’m predicting we’ll next see the Sorcerer Supreme on November 5th, 2021.

So what takes that May 7th date? Well, the aforementioned developments have to do with the fact that Shang-Chi, Marvel’s first Asian-led film, is rumored to begin filming soon after The Eternals wraps. That should place its start date early next year, and could point to Shang-Chi making that May 2021 release date. Destin Daniel Cretton is onboard to direct the film, and David Callaham will write the script, but no casting announcements have been made yet.

Then there’s the whole question of when Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 will get off the ground – director James Gunn was fired and went to work with the DCEU over at Warner Brothers, only to suddenly be rehired by Marvel earlier this year. Now, Gunn has two commitments to the two rival studios, which is rather intriguing: thankfully, he’s decided to do the courteous thing and finish filming Suicide Squad for DC before picking up where he left off with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. But, surprisingly, this sequence of events could start much sooner than anticipated: Suicide Squad is moving at full speed ahead, and Guardians 3 is now rumored to start filming sometime next year. It seems to me that we could see the return of Star-Lord and his band of intergalactic bandits on May 6th, 2022.

Beyond that there’s also a July 29th, 2022 date that could fit a Captain Marvel sequel, something that is likely to start sooner than later, based on the film’s incredible box-office run and astonishing staying power. There is a peculiar February 18th, 2022 release date as well, one that intrigues me: it doesn’t seem well-suited to Guardians of the Galaxy, which has been a Summer franchise, but Shang-Chi looks to be moving too quickly to get pushed back so far. It’s possible this is where Black Panther 2 ends up, or it’s also conceivable that this slot will be changed in the coming months. So far Marvel’s president Kevin Feige has said nothing about when we’ll see any of these films.

And that’s what brings us full-circle, back to Spider-man: Far From Home. Feige is apparently waiting until that film debuts before he will unveil the official Phase 4 timeline: that reveal will probably be made at San Diego Comic Con in July. We don’t have long to wait.