Spiderman: Far From Home is probably the last Marvel movie I will anxiously anticipate. It wasn't bad. It's essentially a pastiche of a lot of previous Marvel films, though. We re-hash the immature boy has to grow up theme of the first movie. We re-hash Ironman 3 in that the villain is somebody that Tony Stark dissed years ago. We still have Tom Holland and Jacob Batalon (Ned) and Tony Revolori (Flash) being dead on perfect for their roles. Zendaya does alright but the script struggles with synthesizing her supposedly fierce and rebellious personality with having actual feelings for Peter. The adults are a mixed bag. Marisa Tomei and Jon Favreau are wonderfully fun as always and actually have a great chemistry. The business with Nick Fury feels tacked on to remind us that there is still a broader Marvel narrative going on, but it's not too intrusive. All in all, mostly good fun.
It falls down on Jake Gyllenhall. He does his best with a difficult role that requires him to be sincere, but not too sincere. When you have a hero that turns out to be a heel, you want to be able to look back on a rewatch and say, I should have seen it coming. But in the end, as I said, it's just Ironman 3 all over again, and quite frankly, Jake Gyllenhal is no Michael Keaton.
Good movie. Glad I watched. Will probably stop flipping when I stumble on it in the future. So where does that leave us with Marvel?
One place it leaves us is with Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola railing against Marvel movies and superhero blockbusters in general. I am not entirely unsympathetic to their views. I admit that if I did not have such powerful childhood memories of the Marvel comics, I would likely be much less enthused about them. I have no delusion that these are among the great works of humanity the species has produced. But then, they are not supposed to be. Scorsese called them "theme parks." Well, that's kind of their goal, isn't it. Did you watch is expecting something like Taxi Driver? Coppola called them "despicable" which is preposterous. However much you may dislike them, they are in no way despicable.
Here's the thing. I would love it if more movies were made about humans. It would be great if there were more movies that match the best of Scorsese and Coppola, even from Scorsese and Coppola. For that matter, it would be great if every TV show was as good as Deadwood. The Marvel movies don't stop that from happening. So why such fervent objections to them? If Scorsese and Coppola want more great movies, they should make them. Or finance them. Doesn't Coppola have his own studio?
Action movies are almost never humanistic art. They are a craft. A skill. I have suggested they are the defining works of the 21st century so far, for better or worse. Appreciate them for what they are. Or would you prefer the level of action movie we back in Scorsese and Coppola's heyday -- say, Tron or Logan's Run?
Another place it leaves us, or at least me, is with no childhood comic book connection to anything that is going on now. There are apparently movies planned about "The Eternals", a thing of which I have no childhood memory or ever heard of before, but it is supposedly the next big enduring theme. Honestly the upcoming TV shows featuring the Avengers characters sound more appealing to me. TV is a writer's medium so we may actually get some character-based, serial story-telling, which would be nice.
It seems obvious to me that the heroic age of superhero movies is over. Perhaps that will make some people very happy. In the spirit of appreciation, I'm just glad I had the opportunity to relive a rare happy slice of my childhood. Going forward I'm sure I'll catch Marvel movies in the normal course of things, when they come to streaming channels I subscribe to.
Maybe the next Spiderman movie should be titled Spiderman: Let's All Move On.
