Spider-Man: Far From Home is the second movie in a trilogy starting with Spider-Man: Homecoming, to be concluded with Spider-Man: Home Alone. It is also the first Marvel Cinematic Universe movie after Avengers: Endgame, and it actually does address the question I had after seeing that movie, namely, if Peter Parker was destroyed by Thanos but was brought back five years later, why are he and his friends all still in the same high school? (Not that the answer is any less awkward.)
An underlying theme of the movie is that appearances are deceptive. While Peter Parker and his friends are on a school tour of Europe, he is recruited in Venice by Nick Fury to assist the hero Quentin Beck, referred to by the Venetians as “Mysterio”, to fight a cross-dimensional threat from beings resembling the four elements. It is not much of a spoiler to anyone who knows Spider-Man comics that Beck isn’t really a hero, but the script does a pretty good job of presenting Mysterio’s character concept, using special effects and trickery to threaten and manipulate Spider-Man, at one point going into a nightmare scenario that may not reach the psychedelic visual heights of Into the Spider-Verse but comes close.
This movie also has a pretty strong “rom-com” element, which one of my friends who saw the movie didn’t care for. But if you like the obvious chemistry between Tom Holland as Peter and Zendaya as MJ, it’s another feature. And while Spider-Man: Far From Home isn’t the heaviest or best Marvel movie, I think overall it’s just straightforward fun that doesn’t need to be much else, even though it isn’t too hard to look for a current-events subtext in Mysterio’s agenda.
The movie also brings back the Marvel mid-credits scene, which is important because the first (of two) foreshadows the return of Spider-Man’s greatest enemy.
No, not Mysterio.
I’ll give you a hint, he looks like the guy in the Farmers Insurance commercials.