Far From Home Ends the Saga

We’re twenty-three films deep into the Marvel universe now, and we’ve officially reached the end of Phase 3. Comic-Con just announced the movies coming to the line-up, as well as the TV shows coming to the new Disney Streaming Service (which I kind of hate myself for wanting to get). So, when Spider-Man: Far From Home hit theaters, it needed to be the perfect closer; we said goodbye to the original six Avengers (at least in the way that we knew them), and now it was time for us to say goodbye to the MCU as we knew it, because it’s all going to change from here. Because of that change, Far From Home not only had to outperform its Homecoming predecessor; it had to be one of the MCU’s best (while being helmed by Sony). And, though sometimes it’s connection to the last MCU film is a little shaky (honestly there needed to be a short or something about the effects of what happened in Avengers: Endgame because no movie was going to satisfactorily explain how things changed), but as an overall film, it’s a great time. It’s fun, it’s fresh, it’s completely different from the first film, and it’s a great way to not only deal with the changing of a universe we know and love, but to enjoy the fact that it’s changing. It’s not the same, but if Far From Home is any indication, that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

Into the Spider-Verse Dives Into the Comic World

You know what we are used to these days? Adaptations. As much as Marvel tells us they are trying to create a world as expansive as the comics on which they are based, it doesn’t change the fact that no matter how good the movies are, they are adapted for an art form that is very different from the original material. All superhero movies do it – Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy turned Batman’s villains into more modern and authentic threats; DC’s cinematic universe has been playing with the consequences of superheros’ actions in the real world; the MCU has taken many plotlines and combined them for maximum effect in the theater. While these movies are usually enjoyable, sometimes they don’t have quite the same magic as a comic book because they’re different media. However, Sony’s animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse not only uses a comic book story, it is inspired by the elements that make comic books fun to read. It’s more than an adaptation – it is a fully immersive comic book experience.

Venom Works Hard, But Falls Short

Part of a movie doing well is knowing what your audience wants and giving it to them. When Venom was announced, part of its appeal was because this was to be the opposite of a superhero film. The tagline was “The World Has Enough Superheroes”, and Venom as a character is known to be one of the scariest anti-heroes in the comic book world. Sure, he sometimes does good things, but mostly he is a force of darkness. The trouble with this film is that no one seemed to know how to play Venom as a villain without making him a hero by the end. The movie itself had some fun moments, some great visual effects, and nice fight scenes. But there still had to be someone worse than Venom, even if he was subpar, and Venom still had to save the world, even though he’s not a “superhero.” Overall, it feels like the studios promised audiences something they couldn’t quite deliver on, and the end effect made the movie fall flat and end up a lot less inspired than it really wanted to be. A lot of people seem to be griping about how a Venom movie doesn’t work without Spider-Man, his opposing force, but that’s not the problem with the movie, at least not really. It’s okay for Venom not to have a Spider-Man – as long as he has something else to make his movie his own.