Spider-Man: No Way Home, which features characters from both previous versions of the franchise, picks up after the events of its predecessor, Spider-Man: Far From Home. A film that deals directly with the dilemma between power and responsibility — a theme ever since Spider-Man’s first comic appearance nearly 60 years ago — the 2019 sequel is poised as a perfect examination of how Marvel Studios’ Peter Parker (Tom Holland) does and does not work within that larger Spider-Man legacy.
In addition to continuing Peter’s story, the film is also tasked with continuing Marvel’s Cinematic Universe as the first entry after Avengers: Endgame, which saw the world restored after the “blip,” and saw the death of Peter’s mentor and father figure, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.). While the world at large is mostly sidestepped, and the “blip” treated in jest, Stark’s death hangs over Peter and informs his tale of responsibility, but in a manner that perpetuates an unfortunate tradition plaguing the live-action Spider-Man films at least since the 2012 reboot: Jon Watts’ second entry has an awkward and noncommittal relationship to grief, despite it being a central theme.
In our final look back at Peter Parker on film before the character’s alternate-universe blowout, we examine the hits and near-misses of Spider-Man: Far From Home, and the many places it falls apart.
In a scene midway through the film, Peter confesses to his supposed ally Mysterio/Quentin Beck (Jake Gyllenhaal) that he feels burdened by “too much of a responsibility.” The teen hero is referring, in this moment, to the drone-controlling A.I. “E.D.I.T.H.” left to him by Stark, but it also speaks to the way his character is positioned in the sequel: as someone who readily cedes power. The problem, however, lies in the fact that this element of his arc is over before it begins. Much like in the film’s predecessor, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Peter’s central dilemmas here are between overlapping choices that are often one and the same.
In a micro sense, his actions are often linear. The set-pieces in Venice, Prague and London offer him singular obstacles despite their multitude of unfolding events, wherein saving one set of characters (like his friends and classmates) is usually a convenient ripple effect of stopping danger or destruction elsewhere. The film rarely affords him the option of agonizing over difficult choices, like those presented to Tobey Maguire’s Peter in previous films — for instance, when the Green Goblin stacks the odds against him by making him choose between catching Mary Jane and saving a cable car full of children. Holland’s Peter, on the other hand, is thrust into scenes where the likes of Ned (Jacob Batalon) and Betty (Angourie Rice), seated atop a flaming ferris wheel, are reduced to incidental cutaway gags, since saving them is contingent upon Peter following his mission exactly as he otherwise would if they weren’t in the picture.
The film rarely affords Peter the option of agonizing over difficult choices, like those presented to Tobey Maguire’s Peter in previous films.
Not only does this approach suck potential drama from the action, but it becomes compounded when viewed from the top-down, in the context of Peter wrestling with the great power passed down to him by Tony Stark. After accidentally using Stark’s drones and nearly killing his classmates, he makes the ostensibly correct decision to give up this power less than halfway through the film. The contrast between this early midpoint, in which he hands E.D.I.T.H. over to Beck, and the plot’s conclusion, in which he decides to destroy the drones, is nominal from a character standpoint. The former is rooted partially in a loss of self-esteem, which he regains by the end, but like his choices in Homecoming, it’s a distinction without a difference. Both decisions ultimately have the same result, vis-à-vis the character’s famous mantra: Peter doesn’t want the power of a legion of deadly drones, and so he makes what he believes is the more responsible decision instead.
It works in isolation, as a reflection of his morality, but it stumbles when viewed within the film’s larger framework. His story from the beginning of the film is about the way he bristles at this distinctly Iron Man-esque burden being thrust upon him, and both decisions have the same dramatic function for Peter himself. The only thing truly separating them is that in the first instance, Peter is manipulated and punished for making the morally correct choice, and then he isn’t when he makes it again, leading to over an hour’s worth of plot where this aspect of his internal journey is at a complete standstill.
The superficial difference, between these two instances of ceding power, stems from an incomplete reckoning with the power in question, thanks to the way the film deals (or rather, doesn’t deal) with the specter of Tony Stark.
Peter’s climactic choice is preceded by a brief moment in which an illusion of Beck tries to hand E.D.I.T.H. over to him as a distraction, but the scene’s rushed pacing prevents this beat from playing to any emotional conclusion involving Peter being tempted by, or rejecting, Beck’s offer of power. It very quickly switches focus to Peter stopping the real Beck from gunning him down, thus circumventing the need for Peter to question the power that Stark left behind, and whether it’s too great for any one person to wield.
Death rarely sticks in the Marvel Cinematic Universe — practically every character in Far From Home has died and been resurrected, though no one comments on the experience — but the one seemingly permanent death is that of a character the MCU can’t help but deify. Stark made plenty of mistakes throughout his film appearances, but despite his decisions leading directly to near-catastrophe (by handing killer drones and HYDRA-like spy tech to a teenager), the film skirts entirely around the questions posed by this technology, thus making the path laid out in front of Peter — the lofty expectations of becoming “the next Iron Man” — easier than it ought to be, and far less engaging.
In a wonderful dramatic irony, Peter is first given the “next Iron Man” moniker while being hounded by the press, resulting in what appears to be a panic attack, the way Stark was similarly hounded in Iron Man 3. However, being Iron Man’s successor is only ever contextualized as a shimmering gold-standard from which Peter’s fears and anxieties emanate. Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) makes mention of Stark’s flaws without going into detail, but the film fails to connect the vital dots that would have made Stark’s legacy a central focal point, and would have perhaps offered Peter a more complex and emotionally challenging journey as he strived to live up to a man whose complicated ideas now take dangerous physical form.
Those dots are Peter and Beck’s warring feelings towards Stark — which, quite bizarrely, never come into contact.
The film specifically draws parallels between Stark and the Avenging identity Beck creates. When Peter charges towards Mysterio in Prague, believing him to be gravely injured (or worse), he refers to him as “Mr. Beck,” a touching parallel to the scene in Avengers: Endgame when he last saw “Mr. Stark” alive. This makes Beck’s betrayal cut even deeper. However, while Peter eventually realizes Beck is a fraud, the film never allows him to learn anything about Beck’s true motivations; that he’s driven by a personal grudge against Stark is a revelation meant for the audience alone. It has no bearing on Peter’s story, despite both characters being driven by Stark’s long shadow. Peter being betrayed by a Stark-like mentor, the way Beck himself felt betrayed by Stark, offers our hero no second thoughts on Stark himself.
Peter being betrayed by a Stark-like mentor, the way Beck himself felt betrayed by Stark, offers our hero no second thoughts on Stark himself.
By never bringing these ideas to the fore, Far From Home prevents Peter from confronting the complicated truth about Stark, and thus, wrestling with the thornier parts of his grief. Not only does the film have an awkward relationship to Stark’s death, it also feels disconnected from the very notions of the truth, lies and mistrust to which its characters keep referring — Beck in particular, who cites the world’s relationship to truth several times throughout the film, even though it’s a world we hardly see or experience.
The malformed dynamic between Peter and Beck exists in a world that feels just as flimsy, from the film’s environment to its supporting characters, which are expressed mostly through dialogue.
On one hand, the major cities to which Peter and his classmates travel have little realistic local texture. They lack real people — their handful of extras are a nondescript mass, far off in the background — and so they lack both a sense of identity and a sense of perspective on Spider-Man and the ongoing events (in contrast to most New Yorkers in the Sam Raimi films, or even Far From Home’s own brief detour into a tranquil Dutch town). On the other hand, key characters like love interest Michelle a.k.a. MJ (Zendaya), a focal point of Peter’s dual identity, aren’t offered much perspective either — How does MJ feel about being lied to? Does she care? — despite the film circling ideas about truth and manipulation, to say nothing of the near-total absence of Aunt May (Marissa Tomei), whose discovery of Peter’s secret in Homecoming has neither impact nor consequences.
The actors each bring a lively energy to their characters, but their work often feels squandered by a film that depends so heavily on words, rather than images, to tell its story. Gyllenhaal hams up a storm as the fiery Beck, whose megalomaniacal rants center the way people can be easily manipulated and told exactly what to think in a post-Endgame world. However, the world of which he speaks only ever appears in the form of brief, monotone news snippets, rather than real reactions or interactions. Peter’s googly-eyed fawning over MJ involves discussions with Ned about her dark sense of humor, a facet of the character which Zendaya is seldom, if ever, allowed to display. Instead, she and Holland — two otherwise adept performers — are forced into a completely dry on-screen dynamic, whose nominal, Disney Channel “awkwardness,” acted out through little more than incomplete and overlapping lines of dialogue, lacks any semblance of actual chemistry. Were it not for the characters mentioning their mutual romantic interest, they would come off as little more than anxious strangers; they’re given almost nothing to build on, physically or conversationally.
Director Jon Watts is able, on occasion, to briefly imbue their scenes with hints of tension (like when the camera slowly swings around MJ as she peeks at Peter changing), but some of the characters’ interactions are reduced to standing around and discussing beautiful European locales, which the camera rarely captures, and which the teenagers are neither allowed to luxuriate in nor absorb. Whether scenes are shot on sound stages or on real European streets, the actors rarely feel as if they’re walking through real places with real people and histories. There’s no romance in the air, despite romance being a primary driving force behind Peter’s desire for normalcy, and his tug-of-war with power and responsibility. (The one time the camera effectively pushes in to enhance a spark of excitement is during a shot of Ned and Betty on a plane, the couple whose romance is meant to be a punchline).
Peter’s disconnect from nearly every theme, character and setting results in a lopsided story that simply goes through the motions, and rarely connects emotionally. Even in a tale involving paranoia and manipulation, his Spider-Sense — an ability to discern truth from his environment — is paid mere lip-service. He uses it only once, but unlike in prior films (including Avengers: Infinity War, in which Peter’s arm hairs stand at attention), it’s given no weight and no physical manifestation, despite him becoming briefly paranoid about his reality, and who he can or cannot trust. Maguire’s Peter had a slow-motion hyper-awareness, Garfield’s was given piercing flashes of stimuli, and the animated Spider-Men in Into the Spider-Verse experienced changes in visual palette, but Holland’s “Peter tingle” plays out at a distance, with him mentioning the ability in words, and supposedly sensing a group of invisible drones in a manner the audience doesn’t experience.
In tandem with its half-baked themes, Spider-Man: Far From Home’s excessive reliance on dialogue over aesthetics results in an inability to make Peter, his experiences and his relationships feel tangible and relatable — arguably, the film’s biggest failing. It’s a Spider-Man story where the world doesn’t feel real to Spider-Man, Spider-Man doesn’t feel real to the world, and neither feel real to the audience, so little that Peter does or says surrounding power and responsibility feels like it matters.
Perhaps there are some lessons Marvel’s Spider-Man movies could learn from previous iterations, should they soon come into contact.
Continue reading...
In addition to continuing Peter’s story, the film is also tasked with continuing Marvel’s Cinematic Universe as the first entry after Avengers: Endgame, which saw the world restored after the “blip,” and saw the death of Peter’s mentor and father figure, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.). While the world at large is mostly sidestepped, and the “blip” treated in jest, Stark’s death hangs over Peter and informs his tale of responsibility, but in a manner that perpetuates an unfortunate tradition plaguing the live-action Spider-Man films at least since the 2012 reboot: Jon Watts’ second entry has an awkward and noncommittal relationship to grief, despite it being a central theme.
In our final look back at Peter Parker on film before the character’s alternate-universe blowout, we examine the hits and near-misses of Spider-Man: Far From Home, and the many places it falls apart.
Peter Parker: Too Much Responsibility
In a scene midway through the film, Peter confesses to his supposed ally Mysterio/Quentin Beck (Jake Gyllenhaal) that he feels burdened by “too much of a responsibility.” The teen hero is referring, in this moment, to the drone-controlling A.I. “E.D.I.T.H.” left to him by Stark, but it also speaks to the way his character is positioned in the sequel: as someone who readily cedes power. The problem, however, lies in the fact that this element of his arc is over before it begins. Much like in the film’s predecessor, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Peter’s central dilemmas here are between overlapping choices that are often one and the same.
More From The Spidey Saga
- Day 1: Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man and Choosing Responsibility
- Day 2: Spider-Man 2 and Choosing a Suit
- Day 3: Spider-Man 3 Is Both Better and Messier Than You Remember
- Day 4: The Amazing Spider-Man Goes Through the Origin Story Motions
- Day 5: The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and the Spider-Man Who Ran Out of Time
- Day 6: Spider-Man: Homecoming Lives in the Moment, For Better and For Worse
- Day 7: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Explores the Meaning Behind the Mask
- Day 8: Spider-Man: Far From Home Fumbles Its Tale of Power and Responsibility
In a micro sense, his actions are often linear. The set-pieces in Venice, Prague and London offer him singular obstacles despite their multitude of unfolding events, wherein saving one set of characters (like his friends and classmates) is usually a convenient ripple effect of stopping danger or destruction elsewhere. The film rarely affords him the option of agonizing over difficult choices, like those presented to Tobey Maguire’s Peter in previous films — for instance, when the Green Goblin stacks the odds against him by making him choose between catching Mary Jane and saving a cable car full of children. Holland’s Peter, on the other hand, is thrust into scenes where the likes of Ned (Jacob Batalon) and Betty (Angourie Rice), seated atop a flaming ferris wheel, are reduced to incidental cutaway gags, since saving them is contingent upon Peter following his mission exactly as he otherwise would if they weren’t in the picture.
The film rarely affords Peter the option of agonizing over difficult choices, like those presented to Tobey Maguire’s Peter in previous films.
Not only does this approach suck potential drama from the action, but it becomes compounded when viewed from the top-down, in the context of Peter wrestling with the great power passed down to him by Tony Stark. After accidentally using Stark’s drones and nearly killing his classmates, he makes the ostensibly correct decision to give up this power less than halfway through the film. The contrast between this early midpoint, in which he hands E.D.I.T.H. over to Beck, and the plot’s conclusion, in which he decides to destroy the drones, is nominal from a character standpoint. The former is rooted partially in a loss of self-esteem, which he regains by the end, but like his choices in Homecoming, it’s a distinction without a difference. Both decisions ultimately have the same result, vis-à-vis the character’s famous mantra: Peter doesn’t want the power of a legion of deadly drones, and so he makes what he believes is the more responsible decision instead.
It works in isolation, as a reflection of his morality, but it stumbles when viewed within the film’s larger framework. His story from the beginning of the film is about the way he bristles at this distinctly Iron Man-esque burden being thrust upon him, and both decisions have the same dramatic function for Peter himself. The only thing truly separating them is that in the first instance, Peter is manipulated and punished for making the morally correct choice, and then he isn’t when he makes it again, leading to over an hour’s worth of plot where this aspect of his internal journey is at a complete standstill.
The superficial difference, between these two instances of ceding power, stems from an incomplete reckoning with the power in question, thanks to the way the film deals (or rather, doesn’t deal) with the specter of Tony Stark.
Tony Stark: Too Much Power
Peter’s climactic choice is preceded by a brief moment in which an illusion of Beck tries to hand E.D.I.T.H. over to him as a distraction, but the scene’s rushed pacing prevents this beat from playing to any emotional conclusion involving Peter being tempted by, or rejecting, Beck’s offer of power. It very quickly switches focus to Peter stopping the real Beck from gunning him down, thus circumventing the need for Peter to question the power that Stark left behind, and whether it’s too great for any one person to wield.
Death rarely sticks in the Marvel Cinematic Universe — practically every character in Far From Home has died and been resurrected, though no one comments on the experience — but the one seemingly permanent death is that of a character the MCU can’t help but deify. Stark made plenty of mistakes throughout his film appearances, but despite his decisions leading directly to near-catastrophe (by handing killer drones and HYDRA-like spy tech to a teenager), the film skirts entirely around the questions posed by this technology, thus making the path laid out in front of Peter — the lofty expectations of becoming “the next Iron Man” — easier than it ought to be, and far less engaging.
In a wonderful dramatic irony, Peter is first given the “next Iron Man” moniker while being hounded by the press, resulting in what appears to be a panic attack, the way Stark was similarly hounded in Iron Man 3. However, being Iron Man’s successor is only ever contextualized as a shimmering gold-standard from which Peter’s fears and anxieties emanate. Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) makes mention of Stark’s flaws without going into detail, but the film fails to connect the vital dots that would have made Stark’s legacy a central focal point, and would have perhaps offered Peter a more complex and emotionally challenging journey as he strived to live up to a man whose complicated ideas now take dangerous physical form.
Those dots are Peter and Beck’s warring feelings towards Stark — which, quite bizarrely, never come into contact.
The film specifically draws parallels between Stark and the Avenging identity Beck creates. When Peter charges towards Mysterio in Prague, believing him to be gravely injured (or worse), he refers to him as “Mr. Beck,” a touching parallel to the scene in Avengers: Endgame when he last saw “Mr. Stark” alive. This makes Beck’s betrayal cut even deeper. However, while Peter eventually realizes Beck is a fraud, the film never allows him to learn anything about Beck’s true motivations; that he’s driven by a personal grudge against Stark is a revelation meant for the audience alone. It has no bearing on Peter’s story, despite both characters being driven by Stark’s long shadow. Peter being betrayed by a Stark-like mentor, the way Beck himself felt betrayed by Stark, offers our hero no second thoughts on Stark himself.
Peter being betrayed by a Stark-like mentor, the way Beck himself felt betrayed by Stark, offers our hero no second thoughts on Stark himself.
By never bringing these ideas to the fore, Far From Home prevents Peter from confronting the complicated truth about Stark, and thus, wrestling with the thornier parts of his grief. Not only does the film have an awkward relationship to Stark’s death, it also feels disconnected from the very notions of the truth, lies and mistrust to which its characters keep referring — Beck in particular, who cites the world’s relationship to truth several times throughout the film, even though it’s a world we hardly see or experience.
A World of Words
The malformed dynamic between Peter and Beck exists in a world that feels just as flimsy, from the film’s environment to its supporting characters, which are expressed mostly through dialogue.
On one hand, the major cities to which Peter and his classmates travel have little realistic local texture. They lack real people — their handful of extras are a nondescript mass, far off in the background — and so they lack both a sense of identity and a sense of perspective on Spider-Man and the ongoing events (in contrast to most New Yorkers in the Sam Raimi films, or even Far From Home’s own brief detour into a tranquil Dutch town). On the other hand, key characters like love interest Michelle a.k.a. MJ (Zendaya), a focal point of Peter’s dual identity, aren’t offered much perspective either — How does MJ feel about being lied to? Does she care? — despite the film circling ideas about truth and manipulation, to say nothing of the near-total absence of Aunt May (Marissa Tomei), whose discovery of Peter’s secret in Homecoming has neither impact nor consequences.
The actors each bring a lively energy to their characters, but their work often feels squandered by a film that depends so heavily on words, rather than images, to tell its story. Gyllenhaal hams up a storm as the fiery Beck, whose megalomaniacal rants center the way people can be easily manipulated and told exactly what to think in a post-Endgame world. However, the world of which he speaks only ever appears in the form of brief, monotone news snippets, rather than real reactions or interactions. Peter’s googly-eyed fawning over MJ involves discussions with Ned about her dark sense of humor, a facet of the character which Zendaya is seldom, if ever, allowed to display. Instead, she and Holland — two otherwise adept performers — are forced into a completely dry on-screen dynamic, whose nominal, Disney Channel “awkwardness,” acted out through little more than incomplete and overlapping lines of dialogue, lacks any semblance of actual chemistry. Were it not for the characters mentioning their mutual romantic interest, they would come off as little more than anxious strangers; they’re given almost nothing to build on, physically or conversationally.
Director Jon Watts is able, on occasion, to briefly imbue their scenes with hints of tension (like when the camera slowly swings around MJ as she peeks at Peter changing), but some of the characters’ interactions are reduced to standing around and discussing beautiful European locales, which the camera rarely captures, and which the teenagers are neither allowed to luxuriate in nor absorb. Whether scenes are shot on sound stages or on real European streets, the actors rarely feel as if they’re walking through real places with real people and histories. There’s no romance in the air, despite romance being a primary driving force behind Peter’s desire for normalcy, and his tug-of-war with power and responsibility. (The one time the camera effectively pushes in to enhance a spark of excitement is during a shot of Ned and Betty on a plane, the couple whose romance is meant to be a punchline).
Peter’s disconnect from nearly every theme, character and setting results in a lopsided story that simply goes through the motions, and rarely connects emotionally. Even in a tale involving paranoia and manipulation, his Spider-Sense — an ability to discern truth from his environment — is paid mere lip-service. He uses it only once, but unlike in prior films (including Avengers: Infinity War, in which Peter’s arm hairs stand at attention), it’s given no weight and no physical manifestation, despite him becoming briefly paranoid about his reality, and who he can or cannot trust. Maguire’s Peter had a slow-motion hyper-awareness, Garfield’s was given piercing flashes of stimuli, and the animated Spider-Men in Into the Spider-Verse experienced changes in visual palette, but Holland’s “Peter tingle” plays out at a distance, with him mentioning the ability in words, and supposedly sensing a group of invisible drones in a manner the audience doesn’t experience.
In tandem with its half-baked themes, Spider-Man: Far From Home’s excessive reliance on dialogue over aesthetics results in an inability to make Peter, his experiences and his relationships feel tangible and relatable — arguably, the film’s biggest failing. It’s a Spider-Man story where the world doesn’t feel real to Spider-Man, Spider-Man doesn’t feel real to the world, and neither feel real to the audience, so little that Peter does or says surrounding power and responsibility feels like it matters.
Perhaps there are some lessons Marvel’s Spider-Man movies could learn from previous iterations, should they soon come into contact.
Continue reading...