Afterthoughts on Spiderman: Far From Home

Finally caught the new Spidey flick the other day. I'm never that person who relies on reviews especially when it comes to superhero movies. Sometimes/most of the time you're influenced by these random strangers' perspectives so much so you subliminally go into the cinemas with pre-loaded negative impression of the movie beforehand.....and that spoils your whole experience even before the opening sequence is over. 

Remember, those who cannot do (be movie actors or directors), teach...and those who cannot teach, become movie critics! So at least go and watch the movie yourself  first and keep those pesky reviews outta your head till after the movie finishes.

So let's now talk about Spiderman: Far From Home. 

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First of all, what a nice tribute from Whitney Houston and the rest of Peter Parker's high school buddies to honor the fallen heroes from Avengers: Endgame. Thanos' 'The Snap' is now officially known as 'The Blip'. The opening scene provide some nice explanation on how those who were temporarily gone did not age at all as opposed to those who survived it and aged 5 years since. And we got some pretty nice confirmation that the world not only lost Iron Man, but Black Widow and (supposedly) Captain America too.

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And what's with Happy Hogan and Aunt May?! Did Happy voluntarily stepped into his late boss' shoes and continue the good work Tony laid out with Pete's aunty?

Aunt May is now handling some sort of AA support group for those who came back from The Blip and somehow she fits the bill perfectly. I'm assuming that she herself was away for 5 years in The Blip too because she doesn't seem to age a bit since that last Spidey movie. It's kinda a relief to see Aunt May knowing Peter's secret and all. 

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From the onset I've always expected that Far From Home (FFH) was gonna be about Peter Parker dealing about the loss of Tony Stark. It turns out that Tony had made his succession plan way beforehand and this was in the form of giving Peter Parker his ....err.....sunglasses.

While on a school trip to Europe with his high school buddies, Peter discovered that Tony's sunglasses is actually a weapon of mass destruction capable to search and obliterate whoever he wants to. Happy Hogan gladly passed the WMD over to Pete's hand, hoping that he'd fill in the great Stark's big shoes.

All this happen while Peter refused to answer Nick Fury's call, which is something Peter learnt later that it is something that no one can possibly escape from.

Eventually Nick Fury confronted Peter and explained that a dimensional rip had opened up and brought in several elemental monsters into our known universe or Earth 616 as we know it. Together with the elementals from Earth 815 (or something) comes along a mysterious dude by the name of Quentin Beck who appears to be battling these malevolent group of monsters in Europe. Beck later willingly adopted the name 'Mysterio' as dubbed by Peter's high school buddies. 

As SHIELD itself had fully trusted Beck, Peter saw no reason to NOT believe the man himself, especially after witnessing Beck's impressive show against an elemental monster in Venice, Italy. 

In the comics, Quentin Beck is a special effects wizard plying his trade in Hollywood and later tried to become and actor himself. When his foray into acting failed, he tried to frame Spidey during a museum robbery but that too didn't pan out well. Naturally he put the blame on poor ol' Spidey and eventually dedicated his life to become a villain by putting his special effects/illusion skills at the forefront of his newfound career.

In FFH however, audiences were later mind blown to discover that Beck was actually a former employee of Tony Stark who got dissed off and whose creation was made fun of on-stage by Tony himself. Together with him is a band of disgruntled ex-Stark Industries' employees (including that guy Obi Stane got mad at during the 1st Iron Man movie in '08) who desperately wanted revenge against the world (or rather Tony Stark himself but since he's dead and all..) to repair their wounded pride.

I gotta be the first to admit that this ain't my Mysterio that I know from my childhood. Nope, not from the comic pages, but this:

Spiderman and his Amazing Friends is by far STILL one of the best cartoon shows that has ever graced our televisions. Anyone care to refute this fact?

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And certainly not the one I know from the comic pages:

But yeah, there were some similarities with the comic version of Mysterio because the MCU Beck got to do some serious acting to fool Fury and co. and possibly the rest of the world before he was accidently exposed by MJ to be a sham. Although Beck didn't use his illusion skills to commit crimes, he utilized them to fool the world into thinking that he is a superhero.

All this just to get Peter to hand him over that WMD sunglasses.

At one point in the movie, Peter can't even tell which is real and which is not. I bet most of us got fooled too especially during that Munich scene.

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There was a glimpse of the Black Spidey Suit albeit a totally different version altogether than the one we expect. It kinda looked like a SWAT tactical suit instead of a Spiderman suit per se. It didn't really rocked my world so I'm just gonna say it was just 'meh'. It did its job of protecting Spiderman's identity in Europe and that's that.

Night Monkey's apparently very popular in Europe!

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There was of course that tear-jerker moment in the movie when Happy watched Peter in action on-board that Stark jet, designing his special Spidey suit while Happy turned on a very familiar AC/DC tune akin to the one Tony used to blast to while working in his lab. It took me a while to grasp things but when I finally come around, I realised that Tony wanted Peter Parker to lead the Avengers in his absence! Quite a departure from the comics but hey, it's the MCU and anything can or has/had happened before.

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Mid and post credit scenes were of course the highlights of every Marvel Cinematic Universe movies since we first saw Iron Man way back in '08. Only Endgame didn't have such scenes thus far because it is supposedly marking the end of MCU's Phase 3. 

Here's when it gets a bit suspicious. Isn't FFH supposed to be the last movie in Phase 3?

The mid-credit scene provided us with that much anticipated cameo from the one and only person that could truly play the part of J Jonah Jameson i.e. JK Simmons. I've always like Simmon's interpretation of JJ Jameson in Sam Raimi's Spiderman trilogy films and I am a happy camper to him back in the role in MCU. JJ Jameson appeared in a big screen in New York announcing that Spiderman is a menace to society (what else could he be doing anyway?) before a carefully manipulated video made by Quentin Beck made it on air to expose Spiderman's identity. What an expose by the Daily Bugle!

The post-credit scene saw Nick Fury and Maria Hill chatting away in an SUV all feeling relieved that the Mysterio saga was over when we were again blown out of the water to see that both of them were actually Talos and Soren aka the two Skrulls we've last seen in the Captain Marvel movie. Talos then proceeded to call Nick Fury on his transmitter and it was revealed that he is on a space vessel somewhere in space just enjoying his time off from earth when he unwillingly stood up and asked the Skrulls around him to resume work.

Whoah! That just brings me to the next set of questions....just how long ago was Talos and Soren first impersonated Fury and Hill? Were they impersonated way before the events of Infinity War/Endgame? All the way back since the events in Captain Marvel perhaps? Did The Blip take the 'real' Nick Fury and Maria Hill.....or were they Talos and Soren all along?......SO MANY QUESTIONS! 

Contrary to popular beliefs, FFH isn't the ending of MCU's Phase 3, but in my opinion it served as a teaser for Phase 4 itself.

Thank you Marvel Studios. I'm now ready for Phase 4 please.

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Lastly, I'm a bit sour about not seeing a cameo from Stan Lee in the movie. Not even a tribute scene ala that wall grafitti in Deadpool 2 nor any hints of The Man of any kind. Totally bummed out about this.