I’ve seen all the Marvel Movies, including Avengers: Endgame. No.

What did I watch despite not seeing Avengers: Endgame? Spider-Man Far From Home

And was it confusing because I did not see Avengers: Endgame? I’ve read comic books before.

Spider-Man Far From Home picks up where Avengers: Endgame ends its game, I guess, in that I’ve seen Avengers Infinity War but I know that they were making this movie so I wasn’t going to miss much if I forgot to go out and see it. I don’t know how to address this without spoilers so I’ll just say that time had moved on for everyone who survived Infinity War but for people like Peter Parker and the cast of his previous movie, they were affected by that event and thus didn’t age after Endgame so they just continue on. Peter and his amazing friends go on a class trip to Europe and there’s shenanigans with Mysterio, one of the classic comic foes who is reimagined here as someone who tricks everyone into thinking he’s a superhero from another world blah blah blah I don’t know, he’s still Mysterio, up to no good with his visual tricks.

I think the theme is that the rest of the world grew up in a dark way and Peter doesn’t want to, even though he’s being handed the keys to whatever the next Avengers is because the main cast had ended their contracts with the studio. Not to mention everyone getting in a tizzy because Disney & Sony couldn’t settle their differences and publicly blamed each other for not wanting this series to continue. Yeah, give us ANOTHER reboot, Sony. We have too much invested with the powers that own the characters and what they will do with them.

As for the movie itself, I laughed very hard at some things, mostly with the asides from the supporting cast – and the comics over the years were a Springfield size group of goofballs involved in Peter’s drama and humor long before the Simpsons – but otherwise, this movie was kind of blah, in the face of movies that all feel alike and can only be So Good. It didn’t help that I watched this on a giant HD TV screen, so everything looks clear and fake, like an 80s afternoon soap opera shot on video. So all the special effects look even MORE like things that aren’t actually there. There’s a few bits where Mysterio creates some nightmare scenarios, but they’re rather brisk. I was too bored by the perpetual hero vs monster sequences to worry why no one asks Mysterio how exactly his powers counter the supposedly indestructible monsters – there’s a lot of generic dialog in these bits that don’t display any thought from even Spidey himself on how he’s using his smarts to help the situation. He’s just there, spinning webs, not asking questions, barely cracking jokes. Unlike Deadpool, did they forget their characters are wearing masks & they can just overdub modern reference quips?

I can’t even get into the heaviness of the situation that Peter finds himself in – why bother being a regular kid after high school? Jump into the Avengers with Happy Hogan and help lead them with your brains and Tony’s blessing. I like the idea of Happy moving from the Iron Man story into Spidey’s. The movie characters will HAVE to age, unlike the comics (a point of debate between creators going back as far as the comic’s early days), because the actors age, so Peter & friends can’t be high schoolers forever.

I probably should have seen this in the theater, where the HD wouldn’t have been such a jarring experience. But there were also few moments of the film worth not being taken out of as a viewer. As a Marvel movie, stand alone or part of the continuation of the MCU, it was just “okay.” Had they ended here, even with a cliffhanger that likely would have been resolved in the next big ensemble movie that couldn’t happen had Sony & Disney turned their backs on the continuation, I don’t think anyone would have missed anything.

Into The Spider-Verse was much better, is what I’m saying.