My thoughts on "Spider-Man: Homecoming" extend to this noisy if occasionally diverting sequel, "Far From Home" which were, and I quote, "What it does not have is much of an identity - it looks and feels like a Spider-Man tale but our friendly neighborhood arachnid hero appears to be stuck in recycled webbing." Not much has changed since the last picture since we have our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man trying in vain to save his high-school class from a mirage. Yep, a dangerous mirage utilizing drones equipped with cameras and bullets but a mirage nonetheless.
The Spider-Man comic book collector of the 1980's, that is I, forgot the attributes of Mysterio aka Quentin Beck (Jake Gyllenhaal), a former Sinister Six member who was adept at creating illusions with 3-D projectors and, in later incarnations, the use of hypnosis. In "Far From Home," Mysterio pretends to be from a multiverse where his planet was destroyed by the Four Elementals, creatures that represent fire, water and so on. Naturally these Elementals are not real, they are illusions, and you would think that the former director of S.H.I.E.L.D, Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson, wearing that eyepatch well) would see through this fabrication. Or for that matter Maria Hill (Cobey Smulders), who works along side Nick. They need Spider-Man (Tom Holland) to help Mysterio fight the Elementals because, well, the surviving Avengers are busy. Spider-Man would rather rest and hang out with his class group who are going on a vacation to Venice, London and finally Prague. What is of infinite importance is that Peter Parker admit his love to MJ aka Michelle (Zendaya). Easier spun than done.
"Spider-Man: Far From Home" has a fairly thin story because once the gig is up with regards to Mysterio; the rest of the picture could've found time for romance between Parker and MJ and there is precious little of it. Comparing to earlier Tobey Maguire Spidey pictures, there was always time for some measure of intimacy but this movie kickstarts itself into high gear and never lets up (Mysterio and his fake supernatural powers are introduced in the first scene!)
On the plus side, Tom Holland is becoming more convincing as Peter Parker and is just agile enough as the Web Crawler (his penultimate scene with MJ has some honest emotion rather than anything cutesy). I actually found Jake Gyllenhaal more buoyant than grating as Mysterio with his con-artist demeanor, though at times he looks more like an adult bearded Peter Parker. The high-school class students are fun and animated enough including Jacob Batalon as Ned, who is far more engaging than in the last film. Also the women are shown to be smarter than the men at figuring things out, which may annoy macho males but who cares. But even with all the endless special-effects and literal smoke-and-mirrors, this is more Avengers-style destruction than a regular Spider-Man flick and the urgency is, once again, nil. These new Spidey flicks don't have anything as hair-raising as Spider-Man spinning his webs to prevent an elevated train of passengers from falling off the rails as in "Spider-Man 2." At the end of the day, it is Spidey fighting a bunch of armed...drones.
