Spider-Man: Far From Home
Jul. 16th, 2019 10:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silverflight8I saw Spider-Man: Far From Home last Thursday and it was really good!
Not spoilery - I didn't see Homecoming, but it was fine. I really enjoyed Tom Holland as Spider-Man - believable teenager, endearing, awkward but genuinely trying to be a good person and understandably wanting to still live his life. There's a great vibe between his friend Ned and with MJ. Lots of jokes and I honestly didn't know that what I wanted in my superhero visual fights was acrobatics - but I totally did. Some fight scenes tend to drag on and get uninteresting, but I really liked the change the acrobatics made!
LOVED some of the touches - it opens right with an in memoriam segment, and just as I was thinking "is Marvel unironically using comic sans?!" it turned out to be a student-made presentation and it was hilarious. I did wonder at all the TVs in the hallways for announcements. Did I just go to a poorer school? Am I old? The students are getting announcements from taped segments that are filmed and then shown on big TVs in the halls! We had PA system announcements.
Damn you Marvel for making me sit through so many credits to see end credit scenes (and to also have paranoia about all films I watch - my friend and I google "are there end credits" after credits start to roll for non-MCU movies now), but the two that appeared this time were pretty major. Some of them like Goose coughing up the Tesseract are just interesting (and gross, lol) but - I wonder how they will handle the publicity thing, since movies in the MCU are released in real-time. Once one year elapses in real life, about a year passes in the MCU, and I don't think the next Spider-Man's movie is for a year or more yet. They don't have another movie scheduled for this year, I think. According to this site, there isn't one till 2020, and that's expected to be an X-men spinoff. So...hopefully Peter can get somewhere safe quickly, because he's perched on a lamp-post in his costume in broad daylight.
The second one was also an OHGOD moment. Though - I still have questions. The Skrull show up in Captain Marvel, which is from the 90's. So - that's a good twenty years ago since Carol agreed to help find them a home somewhere else. How did Nick Fury get to where they are, why did Talos agree to help impersonate Fury, how far away is Fury right now?! This is almost immediately post-Endgame - which, now that I think about it - does that mean Endgame is not 2019? It's 2024? I'm so confused.
I did enjoy that they totally committed to the goldfish bowl visual look, and I propose a new rule for heroes vs villains. If I can see your eyes, if the movie goes to pains to show me your expression and eyes, definitely tips towards hero. It is the most humanizing and empathetic feature!
And I also liked the implication of the multiverse. And I, the bewildered and gullible audience member, totally swallowed it. I mean, I could see Marvel wanting to go down this road, because then they could kill off characters for the emotional trauma, but continue to give fans their favourites in a separate show, all about favourite character. I like that it fooled both me and the movie characters. Also makes me wonder if it will come back to bite us.
MJ and Peter's scenes are so great for deadpan. I love that when Peter's about to confess his feelings, MJ jumps in to say he's Spider-Man, which totally throws him. I thought Mysterio's comment saying his chances were 50-50 was a bit harsh, but I guess he is kinda awkward. Aw.
I love that one fight scene in the middle where Peter goes to fight without realizing how much is illusion. The visuals just flickered by at super speed, just long enough to sort of play out the story included by the setting, and then went on to the next one, so it just left me reeling, which was great. I also love the part where Peter sees Fury come to kill Mysterio, and it turns out to be just a fantasy - a fantasy of being rescued, which plays right on Peter's hopes. It's so well done!
Same with Beck's very cleverly edited video, his dead man's switch. Marvel is big, they're part of Disney, which severely limits their ability to actually make, er, cutting political statements. Maybe it's just an indication of how mainstream the idea of the news being constructed is. But I like that even in a huge budget SF blockbuster, it's still pulling in these issues.
I also think it's interesting that 10 years on from Iron Man (the first) the question about arms dealing, of creating weaponry, still hasn't been fully resolved. The scene where E.D.I.T.H. is introduced, and then it cuts to the weapons satellite orbiting with a huge STARK INDUSTRIES painted on the side - it is so much an echo of that missile that lands next to Tony that literally has his name on it.
Not spoilery - I didn't see Homecoming, but it was fine. I really enjoyed Tom Holland as Spider-Man - believable teenager, endearing, awkward but genuinely trying to be a good person and understandably wanting to still live his life. There's a great vibe between his friend Ned and with MJ. Lots of jokes and I honestly didn't know that what I wanted in my superhero visual fights was acrobatics - but I totally did. Some fight scenes tend to drag on and get uninteresting, but I really liked the change the acrobatics made!
LOVED some of the touches - it opens right with an in memoriam segment, and just as I was thinking "is Marvel unironically using comic sans?!" it turned out to be a student-made presentation and it was hilarious. I did wonder at all the TVs in the hallways for announcements. Did I just go to a poorer school? Am I old? The students are getting announcements from taped segments that are filmed and then shown on big TVs in the halls! We had PA system announcements.
Damn you Marvel for making me sit through so many credits to see end credit scenes (and to also have paranoia about all films I watch - my friend and I google "are there end credits" after credits start to roll for non-MCU movies now), but the two that appeared this time were pretty major. Some of them like Goose coughing up the Tesseract are just interesting (and gross, lol) but - I wonder how they will handle the publicity thing, since movies in the MCU are released in real-time. Once one year elapses in real life, about a year passes in the MCU, and I don't think the next Spider-Man's movie is for a year or more yet. They don't have another movie scheduled for this year, I think. According to this site, there isn't one till 2020, and that's expected to be an X-men spinoff. So...hopefully Peter can get somewhere safe quickly, because he's perched on a lamp-post in his costume in broad daylight.
The second one was also an OHGOD moment. Though - I still have questions. The Skrull show up in Captain Marvel, which is from the 90's. So - that's a good twenty years ago since Carol agreed to help find them a home somewhere else. How did Nick Fury get to where they are, why did Talos agree to help impersonate Fury, how far away is Fury right now?! This is almost immediately post-Endgame - which, now that I think about it - does that mean Endgame is not 2019? It's 2024? I'm so confused.
I did enjoy that they totally committed to the goldfish bowl visual look, and I propose a new rule for heroes vs villains. If I can see your eyes, if the movie goes to pains to show me your expression and eyes, definitely tips towards hero. It is the most humanizing and empathetic feature!
And I also liked the implication of the multiverse. And I, the bewildered and gullible audience member, totally swallowed it. I mean, I could see Marvel wanting to go down this road, because then they could kill off characters for the emotional trauma, but continue to give fans their favourites in a separate show, all about favourite character. I like that it fooled both me and the movie characters. Also makes me wonder if it will come back to bite us.
MJ and Peter's scenes are so great for deadpan. I love that when Peter's about to confess his feelings, MJ jumps in to say he's Spider-Man, which totally throws him. I thought Mysterio's comment saying his chances were 50-50 was a bit harsh, but I guess he is kinda awkward. Aw.
I love that one fight scene in the middle where Peter goes to fight without realizing how much is illusion. The visuals just flickered by at super speed, just long enough to sort of play out the story included by the setting, and then went on to the next one, so it just left me reeling, which was great. I also love the part where Peter sees Fury come to kill Mysterio, and it turns out to be just a fantasy - a fantasy of being rescued, which plays right on Peter's hopes. It's so well done!
Same with Beck's very cleverly edited video, his dead man's switch. Marvel is big, they're part of Disney, which severely limits their ability to actually make, er, cutting political statements. Maybe it's just an indication of how mainstream the idea of the news being constructed is. But I like that even in a huge budget SF blockbuster, it's still pulling in these issues.
I also think it's interesting that 10 years on from Iron Man (the first) the question about arms dealing, of creating weaponry, still hasn't been fully resolved. The scene where E.D.I.T.H. is introduced, and then it cuts to the weapons satellite orbiting with a huge STARK INDUSTRIES painted on the side - it is so much an echo of that missile that lands next to Tony that literally has his name on it.
no subject
Date: Jul. 17th, 2019 09:51 pm (UTC)I loved this movie; it just did so many things really well and they are absolutely not resting on their laurels now Endgame's done.
I got the feeling that Carol probably took Fury off with her right after the events of Endgame: after the whole Thanos thing, I could see him being concerned about potential threats from space, and Carol going, "Well, how about I introduce you around?"
no subject
Date: Jul. 18th, 2019 02:52 am (UTC)But I did like that the trailers made it seem like it was going to be all multiverse, post-Endgame. (ditto IM3's re: the Mandarin).
Yeah. The core characters and interactions were really well done, and they did a great job with the plot and the villain. Beck is a good villain. Marvel's weaknesses really include villains, but he ranks pretty high. I think he had some really good points - Peter is a KID, Beck's intentions are obviously malicious but still, it's a lot to put on a kid's shoulders.
I like your Carol theory. And it helps explain one of my problems. Fury is very focused on protecting the Earth, so it was a bit surprising he'd be off-world. But he's obviously concerned about extra-terrestrial threats (forget when he is like "the world is bigger than you think, Thor just fell to the ground etc, we need heroes to protect the planet") but I could see him agreeing to go off-planet to make sure Earth has help.
no subject
Date: Jul. 17th, 2019 10:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Jul. 18th, 2019 02:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Jul. 18th, 2019 01:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Jul. 18th, 2019 02:47 am (UTC)I like IM1 all right, but I would not watch IM2 again - it's only any good for the introduction of Black Widow, some Tony and Pepper interactions.
Marvel has done a really good job of making sure the baseline of their movies is generally very good. Are they individually all groundbreaking? Lol no. Do they play it really safe? Yes. Do they only really scratch the surface of their themes? Yes. But I'm impressed that a 10 year series has pretty much had zero duds. Most franchises have incredibly crappy sequels.