Spider-Man: Far From Home

Did Anyone Here Actually Like Peter Parker?

Superhero/Action ‧ 129 minutes ‧ PG-13 ‧ 2019 ‧ 2 min read

"Nothing is what it seems."

Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019) is directed by Jon Watts and stars Tom Holland, Samuel L. Jackson, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Zendaya. It had the unenviable task of following Avengers: Endgame, a culmination of eleven years of storytelling, and once again shows that the MCU puts Spider-Man before Peter Parker.

The core of the film is simple: in both a meta and in-universe sense, people want Spidey to be the next Iron Man, a hero many will follow. The film tries to showcase this through Peter's naivety and youth, using a school trip to Europe as an excuse for him to run from that responsibility rather than grow into it. Now having to regain confidence, closure, and many elements he had already earned in Homecoming, the character feels so much muddier. Where Homecoming ended with Peter proving he didn't need Stark's tech to be a hero, this film immediately undoes that by handing him a literal Stark-built system.

The villain is once again serviceable, but for a story of this much importance, you'd think they'd put in more effort beyond a few visually impressive set pieces. And once again, Tony Stark acts as a beacon for Peter's moral compass rather than his own sense of self, even after the character has died. The film leans so heavily on Tony's legacy that Peter's own growth becomes secondary to processing someone else's absence.

By the end, this film feels like another piece of plot machinery meant to make him another cog in the MCU machine. It asks a basic question: did the people at Disney even like Peter Parker? Or do they just want Spider-Man? Spider-Man: Far From Home gets a 1.5 out of 5.

(Even after death, Tony Stark still gets top billing over Peter's own arc.)