Jon Watts

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has metastasized into an American institution, as sacred as apple pie or the Super Bowl or Beyoncé. Its supremacy is absolute. Still, following the seismic finale of Avengers: Endgame, it was fair to wonder if cinema’s most colossal franchise might have some difficulty regrouping, might fumble to develop a newfound sense of purpose. It takes all of 30 seconds for Spider-Man: Far from Home to obliterate that fear. Following a lightning-quick prologue set in Mexico, this jaunty new adventure opens with a cut-rate “In Memoriam” slideshow paying tribute to our fallen heroes. The crappy presentation of the images—the plastic look, the tacky music, the Getty Images watermark—proves to be intentional, as it’s quickly revealed that we’re watching a student newscast at Midtown High. And with that, in the span of just a few screenshots and some curmudgeonly narration from the immortally sour-faced Betty Brant (Angourie Rice), Far from Home dismisses any supposed continuity concerns—those who vanished in “The Blip” at the end of Avengers: Infinity War have barely aged since their return, those who remained are now five years older, please keep up—and also establishes its light, breezy tone.

This is no small feat, even if it’s one that the director, Jon Watts, also managed with Spider-Man: Homecoming, the prior Spidey installment whose first main scene brilliantly reimagined the famous airport fight from Captain America: Civil War as glimpsed through the chintzy, vertical iPhone camera of an anxious teenager. Liberated from the laborious world-building that encumbers so many comic-book crossovers, Watts and his writers (Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers) prove agile with both atmosphere and exposition. Sure, there are a few scenes where warriors congregate in dimly lit clandestine bases and worriedly chat about the latest catastrophic threat to the human race, but even allowing for these bits of superhero scheming, Far from Home’s primary concern is its characters. Read More

Both Peter Parker and Spider-Man are great movie characters, albeit for different reasons. Peter’s appeal is one of drama and narrative; ignore the whole vigilante crime-fighting thing, and he’s the perfect embodiment of nerdy boyhood angst, a decent kid juggling the all-too-familiar teenage problems of school, work, and girls. But Spider-Man’s allure is distinctly cinematic. His particular abilities—the way he springs from one edifice to the next, the way his sticky webs lend his movements physicality and coherence—are uniquely suited to visualized heroism. When Peter struggles to muster the courage to ask a crush to a dance, you can empathize with how he’s feeling. When Spider-Man strains to yank two halves of a splintering barge back together, you can understand and anticipate what he’s actually doing.

Perhaps this blend of thoughtful characterization and dynamic action explains why Spider-Man: Homecoming is Sony’s sixth title to feature Spidey in the last 15 years. Or maybe the studio just likes making money. In any event, Homecoming cannily capitalizes on its hero’s twofold potential, even if it falls short of genuine triumph on both fronts. The gold standard for Spider-Man movies—and for all superhero movies, for that matter (hell, maybe for all movies, period)—remains Spider-Man 2, Sam Raimi’s transcendent fusion of bold adventure and plaintive desire. This ain’t that. But Homecoming, which was directed by relative newcomer Jon Watts from a script by a bevy of writers, is at least a quality effort, a spirited quasi-reboot that captures its hero’s quintessential pluck and delivers a few moments of exhilarating web-based suspense. Read More