Spider-Man - Far From Home

Get Parker

Spider-Man - Far From Home
USA 2019 Directed by Jon Watts
UK cinema release print

Warning: Slight spoilers.

Well, Spider-Man - Far From Home is an okay follow up to the various Tom Holland starring Spider-Man movies of recent years. It’s not without its problems though and while various critics have claimed that this film is the first of what many people are calling ‘superhero fatigue’ at the box office... I think we have a while to go before that sets in yet. I think the somewhat muted response to this film is possibly because of the stealth approach to the title character but I’ll get onto that in a minute.

Of the superhero movies released by Marvel so far this year, I’d say this runs second place behind X-Men - Dark Phoenix (reviewed here) but way in front of the ‘so-so but not terrible’ Captain Marvel (reviewed here) and the terribly disappointing Avengers - Endgame (reviewed here)... so I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that, for this year at least, DC wins the best superhero movie prize with their inappropriately unfaithful (to the original comics) but immensely fun SHAZAM! movie (which I reviewed here).

So... the new Spider-Man has a lot of the stuff which worked from Spider-Man Homecoming (reviewed by me here) tossed in with some excellent performances from Tom Holland as Peter Parker, Jacob Batalon as Ned Leeds and the truly wonderful Zendaya as MJ. There are a lot of old Spider-Man character references in these movies but they’re so changed from the versions of them found in the original source material that, once again, characters are given the names of their comic counterparts only and have nothing of the look and feel of them. It’s a shame but it kinda works if you can forget these were comic book characters.

It looks spectacular but it kinda drags a lot, to be honest and I think the real problem with this for me is that you never really get to see Spider-Man in one of his regular costumes until near the end of the movie. He’s either winging it with a stolen half mask or wearing a ridiculous ‘Night Monkey’ costume and none of it really gives you that Spider-Man vibe that fans of the character may want. This is not to say there’s not a lot of action but it just doesn’t feel like anything great and I also think the lack of human, villanous henchmen during the fight scenes, instead of fighting big monsters which, anyone who knows who Mysterio is from the comics anyway, will know are just smoke and mirrors, just takes things away from having any stake in the characters.

Some good stuff though... Jake Gyllenhaal is great as Mysterio and when you see him finally from a different viewpoint, he switches into Spidey nemesis mode subtly and it’s very well played. Also, bringing back Happy played by Jon Favreau and having him dating Marisa Tomei’s Aunt May is great. Samuel L. Jackson and Cobie Smulders are back too and they do some nice stuff between them.

The main meat of the story though, for my money, is the blossoming relationship between Petey and MJ, which really is what this film is all about as far as I’m concerned, along with MJ ‘discovering’ Peter’s secret identity. Alas, once more this doesn’t happen in the same way as the comics, where it turns out that Mary Jane knew he was Spider-Man even before they’d first met... but they at least let MJ figure it out for herself here so, that’s kind of cool.

Now then, there are two post credits scenes here and, unusually for a Marvel Cinematic Universe film, they’re both kinda important in terms of story beats. The first one sees a famous Spider-Man character from a previous version of the franchise (the Sam Raimi series of films) return. Interestingly, since the person playing this character was so good doing it before, they’ve got the same actor back from that earlier franchise. Now, I did kinda thought this was going to happen with the same actor actually... but I thought they might take another couple of films to do it so everybody could forget this person was in it before. Nope, they’ve really gone for it here although, it has to be said, the revelations of this mid-credits cameo may mean that he really can’t be in it a lot in future movies (although he’ll have to be in the next one, for sure). Also, they cut out a nicely done scene which was shown in the trailer for this movie and, with the consequences implied by this first post-credits scene on the future direction of the franchise, it would have made a lot of sense to keep it.

The second and final post credits scene is also something of an eye opener although, it has to be said, I was a little disappointed in the direction Marvel chose to take this. All I’ll say about this one is... you really need to have seen Captain Marvel to really understand what’s going on here.

And... that’s me more or less done on Spider-Man - Far From Home, I think. It’s an okay movie with a nice score by Michael Giacchino which does ‘more of the same’ as the previous Spiderman - Homecoming although, sadly it doesn’t use the old cartoon series music this time around. There are some cleverly thought out, retrofitting link-ins with the various sub-villains here too, with flashbacks to previous MCU movies like Iron Man and Captain America - Civil War. Ultimately, though, this is not enough to elevate it to being a ‘great’ superhero movie... it’s just a nice addition which has its problems but I suspect it will still do some box office (although possibly not as much on repeat performance as the company might be expecting from it... I certainly have no desire to rush back and see it again). I do look forward to seeing how they go about dealing with the challenge they’ve set themselves here in any sequel, though but... I also feel like Marvel really need to raise their game to continue with the unprecedented box office dominance which they’ve managed to hold for over ten years now. Great writing would surely fix this issue. This movie feels like the franchise is getting a little lethargic and, while I had fun, I was certainly underwhelmed too. It’s still worth a watch though... especially if you’re not too hung up on the comic book versions of the characters who are, mostly, not in evidence here.

Star Trek: Into Darkness

Dark Trek:
Gorn But Not Forgotten

Star Trek: Into Darkness 
(aka Star Trek 12)
USA 2013
Directed by J. J. Abrams
Playing at cinemas now.

Warning: Big, wrathful spoilers will awaken 
in this review and walk over your cold corpses.

There’s an old Vulcan proverb that says that, sometimes, it is possible to have your cake and eat it.

Or at least, if there’s not, there probably should be. I don’t think I mentioned it back in my review of the last Star Trek movie (right here) but this ‘have cake and also eat it’ mentality certainly drove the previous film in terms of skewing off the timeline into a new series of adventures with the same characters without having to worry about any previous Star Trek continuity. And it managed to keep the original Leonard Nimoy version of the Spock character in this new universe too.

Star Trek: Into Darkness also, very much, uses this cake-eating logic because what we’ve got here, and this is something a lot of Star Trek fans guessed from early trailers last year, is a partial remake and homage to the two previous Star Trek stories which featured Ricardo Montalban as the superhuman villain Khan Noonian Singh, namely the original series episode Space Seed and its big screen sequel Star Trek 2: The Wrath Of Kahn. Given that the second film in the series is so beloved by fans and that this is director J. J. Abrams second film for the franchise (but, given the presence of Nimoy as Spock in these films, certainly the 12th in the series and the 8th to feature Leonard Nimoy as the original Spock), I’m guessing the temptation was always there to match the darkness of The Wrath Of Khan and somewhere in that early process the decision was made to... “well, what the heck, let’s just have Khan in it”.

This, is something which, given the pre-publicity hype on the movie, may have been better highlighted in the marketing instead of being kept a mystery because... well frankly it backfires. The film probably works on two levels but most people who are even minor fans of Star Trek are going to figure out what’s going on very early on. When the role played by British actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who appears to demonstrate superhuman combat skills (saving key crew members of the Enterprise from a bunch of klingons) asks how many of the strange, new “super proton torpedos” there are and is told that there are 72, people will probably remember there were 72 left of Khan’s superspecies in the original Space Seed episode and, even if you don’t realise that (and I confess I didn’t)... even I, by that time, had figured out that there were super powered beings being hidden in the torpedos long before any of the characters in the Enterprise crew figure it out.

The story structure does seem to be the biggest weakness of this movie, in all honesty. It’s simplistic and the arcs of the characters are too obviously signposted. When the excellent Simon Pegg, playing Scotty, resigns from Kirk’s command due to a difference of opinion, it’s pretty obvious he’s being left behind to save the day when it looks like the Enterprise crew are about to be destroyed... and I found this kind of set up for a touch of temporary deus ex machina just a little disappointing in the overall scheme of things. And that kind of strategy is pulled out and reused quite a few times in this movie.

A puzzling but major source of enjoyment for the film, though, are the direct quotes and scene remakes from both of the first two films in the franchise. Admiral Pike, for example, is once again seen wearing the outfit that Admiral Kirk wore throughout a lot of Star Trek The Motion Picture, and he even has William Shatner’s “They gave her back to me...” line which, actually, given the context of that line in this movie, kind of hit a bit of a false note with me in all honesty. It was also a bit of a shame to see Pike’s final fate as being so different from the character’s farewell in the original series story The Menagerie.

Of course, the big scene which is going to get a lot of Star Trek fans uptight is the remake of the ‘Spock death scene’ from The Wrath Of Khan, which is plugged in near the end of this film but in reverse, with Kirk dying behind the radiation flooded compartment and the two characters switching and referencing each other’s lines from the original. This all, like a lot of the sequences in this movie, relies on a certain knowledge of the previous versions of the on screen references to tap the audience into feeling anxiety and suspense based on prior versions of the scenes, rather than anything created specifically for this movie... although there are those kinds of moments too, to be sure. The real cheat and ultimate disappointment of the ‘Kirk death scene’ in this one, though, is that even before Kirk is dead, you know exactly how he can be brought back to life again... since the story uses advanced genetics as one of its elements. So this movie is, in no way, as gutsy as when Spock was killed off, possibly for good at the time, back in cinemas in 1982 (although, to be fair, they did build in a little escape door in case they could talk Nimoy back for the third film... one which was used for his return soon after).

Okay, so far I’ve mostly talked about the negative or slightly disappointing aspects of this movie. What I’ve been leaving out, however, is that some of these same scenes, along with loads of others in the movie, are also bags of fun and make for an all around ‘grade A’ entertaining motion picture experience. People who took to the last film in the franchise certainly shouldn’t be disenchanted with this one and I, despite all the things I’ve been mentioning here, really loved it.

The performances were all great although there was slightly less of an ‘ensemble’ feel to it with Sulu, Chekhov and even McCoy not getting that much chance to shine here... but then again, that would also be in keeping, to some extent, with the way the original series was put together in the 60s which, although it did have a very good ensemble cast, was very much the Kirk and Spock show for a lot of its running time (something some members of the original cast, famously, never seemed to forgive William Shatner for, for some reason).

There’s a lot of action in this one and lots of bright, classic Star Trek colours (intermingled with a touch of dreary colour homage to the look of the first film in the franchise too). There’s even a nice line which relates to the fan pleasing “red shirt” status, when Chekhov is promoted to Mr. Scott’s post and asked to “put on the red shirt”, which immediately causes the fans in the audience to wonder if they are going to be killing Chekhov in this one. Nice references, too, to past Trek races and characters such as the Gorn and Harcourt Fenton Mudd but, I did wonder why there was only one tribble in the film (which is used as a plot device, as it happens). Surely there should have been more of them after a short while?

One big old character reference is the introduction of a young Dr. Carol Marcus, who we only knew as an “old flame” character at a much later stage in her life in Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan. We know in the original version of the timeline she gives birth to Kirk’s son who is also in The Wrath Of Khan, and who is killed by the Klingons in Star Trek III: The Search For Spock... so we already have foreknowledge of where these characters may well be going in future films in the franchise.

It’s a shame that Noel Clarke (companion Mickey from Doctor Who and a successful writer/director in his own right) didn’t get more of a role in this film, however. His scenes are over and done with pretty quickly and his character is just used to establish the threat the Enterprise crew in this film face. That threat, however, is indeed Khan, and although Benedict Cumberbatch obviously plays him in a completely different way to the way Riccardo Montalban used to play him, he is still a very real and dangerous threat and, when you’ve got an actor of Cumberbatch’s calibre in the role... you know you are  not going to be let down. I was very pleased to see that the character, and his superpowered army, have all been preserved in cryogenic sleep and locked away in a warehouse, in the style of the ending of Raiders Of The Lost Ark... Khan with a sinister smile on his face. I hope the director and writers consider bringing this character back for the next installment in the franchise to cause more mayhem... he has, after all, kind of become the Moriarty character to Kirk’s Sherlock in a way (which is kinda ironic, given the role he’s most famous for on British TV screens).

Added into the mix, of course, is Abrams’ regular composer Michael Giachinno, who both repeats and builds on his excellent score from the previous film and, thankfully, remembers to bring back Alexander Courage’s original fanfare and theme tune right where it’s needed. I’ve already got the CD on pre-order from Amazon and am looking forward to wearing it out as soon as possible.

All in all, then, Star Trek: Into Darkness is wildly entertaining and, as far as I’m concerned, very repeat watchable (yeah, I’ll be getting in line for another showing and grabbing the BluRay when it’s out). Certainly it might annoy hardcore fans of the franchise but I think, even if they lighten up a little they will probably enjoy it too. The reliance towards past reference to hit the right notes worries me a little in terms of Abrams being entrusted to direct the next Star Wars movies (we need proper sequels, not a bunch of old character references) but certainly he’s not been too disrespectful to the Star Trek franchise and these particular movies seem to be heading in the right direction I think... although the laws of physics are completely abandoned in these new movies. Don’t get me started.

Either way, it was good to see a movie where the famously mocked and quoted Captain Kirk line/word was switched to Spock to deliver in this one... “Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!”


Star Trek @ NUTS4R2
Star Trek Series 1
Star Trek - The Motion Picture 
Star Trek II - The Wrath Of Khan
Star Trek III - The Search For Spock
Star Trek IV - The Voyage Home 
Star Trek V - The Final Frontier 
Star Trek VI - The Undiscovered Country
Star Trek - Generations (aka Star Trek VII) 
Star Trek - First Contact 
Star Trek - Insurrection 
Star Trek Nemesis 

Star Trek 11

Star Trek: In Darkness (aka Star Trek 12)

Star Trek Beyond