Spider-Man: Far From Home is a failure of a good superhero, Spider-Man, or movie in general. It does no justice to the character of Spider-Man, belittling him and erasing his identity in favor of molding a replacement Tony Stark. It similarly damages and pushes aside the character of Fury solely for an irrelevant twist.
The villain’s origin story casts a darker light on Tony than the writers likely intended, and is in general a poorly schemed and executed reasoning.
And, most concernedly, the movie introduces ethically corrupt concepts that are ignored or even tastelessly manipulated for humor.
* * *
FFH is not about Spider-Man. It’s about replacing Iron Man in the Avengers lineup. Fury keeps pushing Peter to be a replacement for Iron Man specifically, and Tony left Peter EDITH with a note that said “for the next Tony Stark.” You can’t really get more blatant than that. At the end, the parallel of Peter building his suit just like Tony did back in the first Iron Man is meant to be a symbolic representation of how Peter is becoming like Tony.
Why does Spider-Man need to become more like Iron Man? He’s a hero in his own right. He doesn’t need the bolstering of a billionaire (and has historically been juxtaposed against one as an enemy). Tony could have offered Peter support and encouragement; but Peter should have been allowed to become Spider-Man, not Iron Man Jr. The world of the Avengers didn’t need another Iron Man—it needed a compassionate, responsible, and relatable hero.
* * *
As much as everyone clamored throughout FFH for Peter to swoop into the role of an experienced hero, Peter was very much painted as incompetent, especially for how long he’d been fighting crime.
He first emerged on the scene several months before Tony found him in Civil War, continued on throughout Homecoming, Infinity War, and Endgame (which included a 2-year time jump between HC and IW), then finished with the eight-month span between Beck’s first staged attack with an elemental and FFH (assuming the attack had occurred just after the snap had been reversed). So he’s had at least two, probably closer to three years of experience being Spider-Man.
But in Venice, the entire battle between Peter and the water elemental is marred with comic incompetency. Peter fumbles to acquire a makeshift mask (since he was too stupid to bring his suit with him on his excursion), repeatedly nearly hurts himself in his sudden inability to fight, and ultimately knocks himself out on a bell tower.
On the bus after the stealth suit harassment incident (which we’ll get to later), Peter almost kills Brad with a drone and accidentally knocks out Flash. Aside from EDITH’s glaring lack of safeguards against drone strikes (no confirmation of the user’s intent, and an unclear explanation as to what EDITH is attempting to do until the drone’s been called), this scene once again paints Peter in the light of an irresponsible idiot.
Peter giving the glasses to Beck is supposed to be a dramatic moment followed by the twist of Beck’s betrayal; but it puts the weight of yet another unintelligent decision on Peter’s shoulders. The shock of the reveal is only possible at the expense of Peter’s judgment-making.
Peter doesn’t know that Beck has bad intentions. Beck has been the only one consoling him (approaching him after Fury scolds him for the drone incident, sticking up for Peter’s ideas, taking Peter’s suggestion for his hero name). Let’s not forget that Peter has been stranded in a series of foreign countries with no adults to offer him any support. Ned is a kind person who’s consistently stuck by Peter’s side; but he’s young and doesn’t really understand what Peter’s going through. Peter’s not close enough to Fury or his teachers for any of them to offer support. And May is still in New York, conveniently out of the way for Peter’s emotional issues to rage unchecked.
Everyone around Peter, except for Beck, wants him to fill the shoes of an absent hero and solve all their problems (despite him being seventeen and having suffered a loss of his own). Peter is a child under impossible pressure to be what he never should’ve been expected to be—and yet, the movie only portrays him as having made yet another mistake he needs to “man up” and fix.
* * *
Which leads us into our next issue—the bullying of Peter and the disregard of his emotional needs.
Here, we’re going to contrast FFH with two other movies: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and Moana.
Peter, Miles, and Moana have all been burdened with a task. For Peter, it’s helping Fury and Mysterio destroy the elementals. For Miles, it’s returning the Spider-people to their original dimensions and destroying Kingpin’s collider. For Moana, it’s finding Maui and returning the heart of the goddess Te Fiti. All encounter obstacles on their journeys, testing their abilities and their self-worth.
Miles may be willing to take on the mantle of Spider-Man; but he suffers from a lack of self-confidence. Peter B. Parker sees the boy’s potential—after all, he was once in the same shoes, young and uncertain of his abilities. Miles struggles to prove himself to the other Spider-people, but he encounters a crisis when Peter confesses he doesn’t think Miles is ready yet.
Miles’ issue isn’t necessarily that the others don’t trust him, but that he doesn’t think he’s good enough. Peter B. tells him it’s not about external validation, but taking a leap of faith when Miles is ready to trust that he has what it takes. This is reinforced by Jefferson’s speech to his son, where he expresses his hopes that Miles can one day see how talented he is. After that, Miles has the spark he needs to kindle his confidence and do what needs to be done.
In Moana, Moana and Maui reach Te Fiti and attempt to get to the island to return the goddess’s heart, but Te Ka almost destroys Maui’s hook, and the demigod chooses to retreat rather than lose his most prized possession. Moana almost gives up after Maui abandons her. She assumes she’s not good enough, and pleads with the ocean to choose someone else to fulfill the task.
Moana’s grandmother, having died and been reincarnated in the spirit of a ray, comes to her granddaughter for comfort. She does what no other mentor ever does for a hero—tells Moana it’s okay if the journey is too much responsibility. She apologizes for putting the weight of the world on her granddaughter’s shoulders, and tells the girl it’s okay if she wants to go home. She reminds Moana of how strong she is, and how proud she is of her anyway.
Moana then realizes she wanted to be on the sea all along, and she doesn’t need the excuse of the journey or Maui’s involvement to do so. She has the ability to return the heart all on her own. She reaches this conclusion thanks to her grandmother’s kindness, sympathy, and understanding.
In sharp contrast to both movies, no one attempts to understand what MCU Peter is going through. Fury doesn’t care so long as Peter is doing what he wants; Ned and MJ, while they care greatly for their friend, don’t know what it’s like to be a teenage superhero; and Beck offers some condolences, but he ultimately desires for Peter to give up. May, as already stated, isn’t even around in the first place.
Before Peter confronts Beck for the last time, Happy flies over and rescues the boy from the tiny town in which he’s stranded after being hit by a train. Peter cries briefly, expressing his concerns that he’s not good enough. All Happy can offer is that Tony wasn’t good enough either, and he reminds Peter he pretty much has no choice but to go after Beck, since it’s been established no one else is available or cares.
Peter B. knows that Miles’ issue is his self-confidence, not that anyone else is pushing him prematurely into responsibility. He knows Miles needs to hear he already has what he needs. Jefferson also realizes his son just needs some encouragement; the knowledge of how proud his father is of him.
Moana’s grandmother puts her at ease, acknowledging her feelings, soothing the hurt, and reminding her granddaughter there’s no real reason to feel guilty. She urges Moana into the right state of mind to make a decision. Whether or not she knew Moana would choose to continue, she knew what Moana needed—an easing of her guilt and a shot of encouragement.
No one does as much for MCU Peter. Happy makes a decent point by conceding Tony wasn’t that great of a hero, acknowledging that the expectations upon Peter are enormous. But that’s all Peter gets. He doesn’t even get to really cry—he’s only allowed to sputter a few words with a reddened face and teary eyes. He just got hit by a train, betrayed by the sole adult who offered him any sympathy, then learned all his friends are in danger—but apparently, a good cry would be a tad too unrealistic for him to experience. (I suppose the “men can’t be victims of sexual assault” mentality I will discuss later is translating here into “men can’t express their feelings”?)
Peter doesn’t get a choice; just repeated bullying that he’s the only person who can fix the situation. Even if we later learned Fury wasn’t actually the intelligent and competent SHIELD director we’re used to, Talos still could’ve thought to look Beck up. Not-Maria’s throwaway line about having harbored her distrust is cute, but it ultimately means nothing, since neither of them seemed to care enough to actually look into the matter.
And none of this scant encouragement is focused in any way on how Peter is good enough as a hero on his own. Happy’s reassurances are immediately followed by Peter’s copycat scene of the first Iron Man, solidifying that Spider-Man isn’t good enough to exist in the MCU as he is.
* * *
Nick Fury is a badass, not an asshole. Throughout the MCU, he has been characterized as someone who will do what needs to be done; though he’s never deliberately mean, nor does he lack any care for his companions. In FFH, he’s become a complete jerk, fulfilling every stereotype of a hard-shelled, uncaring government agent who doesn’t give a damn about anybody but himself.
All of Fury’s actions in the first Avengers are to encourage the Avengers to work together to protect the billions of innocent people on Earth. He wants to avoid using mass weaponry to avoid the risk of triggering a bloody intergalactic war, so he has to convince the Avengers to do the job instead. Even if he seems frustrated with them or relentless in his methods, it’s all to prevent a worse outcome.
At the end of the movie, against SHIELD orders, Fury shoots down a jet that would’ve attempted to nuke New York. In Age of Ultron, even though SHIELD has been dismantled, Fury doesn’t let that stop him from scraping up a helicarrier and flying over to assist in the evacuation of Sokovia.
In the first Avengers, Fury exhibits grief over the death of his colleague Phil Coulson. In Winter Soldier, he rushes to Natasha’s side after she electrocutes herself to foil Pierce’s plan. In Captain Marvel, he forms a healthy friendship with Carol Danvers, who he’s able to call on years later to earn her unquestioned assistance.
In FFH, Fury hounds and harasses Peter, deliberately disregarding the boy’s wishes and privacy. Peter wants to take some time to recuperate after everything he’s been through (getting blipped, losing Tony, and adjusting to the changed world). After Peter keeps refusing his phone calls, Fury seems to think the next logical course of action is to break into Peter’s hotel room in Italy, tranquilize Ned, and coerce Peter into joining his efforts to defeat the elementals.
The only other time Fury shows up unannounced in someone’s private space is when he appears in Steve Rogers’ apartment in TWS, when he’s sure SHIELD has been infiltrated and he can trust no one else.
Even after Peter has rebuked Fury’s offer in person, the man continues to trail him through Europe, going so far as to hijack and reroute the boy’s field trip. Eventually, it becomes clear the only way for Peter to get Fury off his back is to concede to the man’s demands.
Instead of acknowledging Peter is a child who needs support, not the pressure of added responsibility, Fury continually berates the boy for failing his expectations. Peter doesn’t lack a willingness to help innocent people—he just wants a chance to be a regular high-schooler. The real Fury, with his full range of emotional capability, would undoubtedly have understood this and worked with it.
I’m not saying Peter shouldn’t have been involved in any heroics (although they really should’ve addressed where more of the Avengers were)—just that, if Fury truly had felt like Peter was his only shot, then he wouldn’t have handled the situation as callously and sloppily as he had.
When Fury was trying to bring the Avengers together in their first film, he was dealing with adults who, while they carried their own baggage, possessed the experience and maturity required to put aside their differences and get the job done. He wanted them to see the bigger picture so they could save innocent people. They were also the only people Fury could find at the moment to do the job. He had no choice, and he knew the Avengers wanted to help—they were all caring people who had saved lives in the past. (Even Tony, I guess, to some degree.)
Let’s not forget that Fury didn’t specifically need to recruit Peter. Peter was far from the only Avenger around. The film insists for plot convenience that neither Thor, Dr. Strange, nor Captain Marvel are available; but oddly enough, these are the only Avengers Peter knows about, despite having lived his entire life in this universe. There’s also, of course, Ant-Man, Wasp, Black Panther, the Winter Soldier, Falcon, and Scarlet Witch, just to name a few.
Even though we later learned some of these heroes were occupied with other endeavors, the audience didn’t know that at the time of FFH’s release. (And it isn’t like Marvel couldn’t have easily adjusted the timelines so alternate heroes were available for FFH.)
It does make sense that Beck would’ve wanted to target Peter. But how could he have convinced Fury to waste his time hunting down a child who didn’t even want to be involved in the first place? Why would Fury not have looked up any other available Avengers? And why wouldn’t he have questioned why Beck was pushing for that scenario? (Even though we’re never actually shown that’s what Beck was doing; we just have to assume, because honestly, nothing else makes that much sense.)
In addition to lacking empathy, Fury in FFH is not nearly as intelligent or wary as he’s proven to be in the past. It never occurs to him to investigate Beck. He takes the man’s story completely at face value, not bothering to perform so much as one simple Internet search to see if there’s ever been a Quentin Beck on Earth before (which would have immediately clued him in to Beck’s malicious intentions, seeing as the man was stupid enough to use his legal name). Fury never warns Peter that they just met this man, and they have little proof they should trust him, outside of his fighting against the elementals (who also suspiciously showed up when he did).
In TWS, Fury figures out that SHIELD has been infiltrated by HYDRA and enacts a plan to confirm his theory—a clever, dangerous plan that gains him the information he needs to prove his hunch correct and take down HYDRA. He doesn’t even let Steve, Sam, or Natasha in on his fake death scheme until he’s sure he can trust them. He’s known Natasha for years, and has worked with Steve numerous times up until this point, knowing full well they wouldn’t be involved with HYDRA’s schemes—and still, he plays it safe.
While it was revealed that Fury in FFH was indeed not Fury, audiences watching for the first time would not have known that, and attributed the coarse, uncaring attitude and extreme ineptitude to Fury’s actual characterization.
The reveal itself added nothing to the movie—and instead, as illustrated in the many points outlined above, destroyed Fury’s previous characterization at the expense of one small nugget of information that the Skrulls would be involved in future MCU projects.
Why couldn’t only Maria have been a Skrull? That way, we could’ve kept the reveal, while not having had to assassinate Fury’s character.
* * *
Beck’s motivation as a villain is immensely troubling.
Beck’s life’s work was taken from him, used for Tony’s pet “therapy” project (even though Tony had enough money to go to actual therapy), renamed something humiliating, and stripped of any mention of its original creator. This in itself shows incredibly callous behavior on Tony’s part, and extremely justified anger on Beck’s.
The only flimsy counterargument to this problem is when people point out that Stark Industries can do whatever it wants with its employees’ work. While true, this still doesn’t excuse that it’s a selfish and backhanded thing to do. Not to mention, this is a company that’s supposed to be run by an Avenger—an alleged “selfless and empathetic” guardian of the Earth. But Tony is not nearly selfless or self-aware enough to actually behave like a decent human being.
The reason Stark Industries fired Beck is some vague claim that he’s “unstable.” It’s lazy language that relies on an undefined “mental illness” to explain why Beck would be able to do the horrible things he does.
At the very least, it makes sense that Beck would be upset—Tony stole his life’s work, after all. Obviously, he shouldn’t have gone to the lengths of harming innocent civilians—but if the film wanted to use the justification that Beck overstepped his anger into violence, then why didn’t they establish that as the reason he’d been fired?
They should’ve indicated Beck hurt someone when he learned what Tony did with his work. Or suggested he hurled threats at his fellow employees, and maybe even acted on them.
But they shouldn’t have only claimed he was “unstable.” It doesn’t acknowledge any of the very real anger someone would feel if their invention was taken from them, used for a non-consequential purpose, and then renamed something ridiculous without giving them any credit.
And it doesn’t explain at all why exactly the company thought Beck was unstable. Why was it so hard to just say what he’d done?
Beck’s framing of Peter and revealing of the boy’s identity also makes no sense. His issue was with Tony, not Peter. He even said he liked Peter, and he didn’t want to have to hurt the boy—he was only doing so because Peter was actively obstructing his efforts. Peter was just trying to protect innocent civilians and stop someone who was clearly committing violent crimes. He didn’t steal Beck’s invention or tarnish his name.
If anything, Beck should have realized Peter was another victim of Tony’s selfishness—a hapless protégé dragged into a web of anger and overwhelming responsibility.
* * *
Perhaps one of the most damning mistakes FFH commits is its branding of male sexual harassment as comedy.
At a rest stop between destinations, a SHIELD agent approaches Peter to present him with a stealth suit (one of Fury’s tactics to get Peter to join him, since Peter had expressed concern about fighting openly as Spider-Man). The agent coerces Peter to undress in front of her in order to try the suit on.
Peter hesitates, demonstrating a clear discomfort about the situation. But he doesn’t think he has a choice. He’s attempted to dodge SHIELD both in New York and across Europe, only for his wishes and privacy to repeatedly be ignored. Fury has proven he can and will track Peter everywhere, and that Peter’s wishes and privacy mean nothing to him. He will bully Peter into doing whatever he wants, to the point where Peter assumes it’s just easier to cooperate.
It wouldn’t be morally acceptable if Peter were an adult; but Peter is a minor, too. If he were a teenage girl and the agent a grown man, then everyone would see the issue. But since Peter’s a boy, he would obviously just relish the opportunity to have a hot older woman checking him out.
To make matters worse, Brad then walks in on Peter. Instead of recognizing the inappropriateness of ogling Peter in his underwear, Brad takes a picture of his classmate. Presumably, he’s going to use it as blackmail to show MJ that Peter was attempting to be intimate with an older woman. (Though there’s really no motive here that would paint Brad as anything other than an opportunistic pervert.)
If you don’t see anything wrong with this scenario, then you possess as scant judgment as the MCU Spider-Man creative team. It’s wrong for Brad to have stuck around while Peter was exposed. It’s wrong for him to have taken a compromising picture without Peter’s consent (and if Peter were a girl, we all would have recognized this as illegal harassment). It’s disturbing for Brad to have assumed that nothing was wrong with an adult engaging in intimate activities with a minor.
Also, in case anyone tries to use this as a defense, it would still be coercion and harassment if Peter were 18/19/20+. Let’s not pretend sexual harassment of anybody at any age is ever okay.
Brad gets some comeuppance at the end, when his teachers and classmates berate him for having taken the photo. But he suffers no actual consequences. And, at any rate, the better time and place to illustrate the inappropriate, selfish, and perverted nature of his actions would’ve been in the middle of the original scene, instead of presenting said scene as comedic in the first place.
And even though Brad is called out on his actions, that moment is also passed off as humorous. We’re supposed to laugh at how Brad gets accused of being a pervert—as if his actions weren’t actually callous at best, and absolutely perverted at worst.
* * *
EDITH is an extremely problematic concept. The technology is capable of invading the privacy of anybody the user chooses. It’s also hooked up to a series of weaponized drones scattered in satellites across the earth’s orbit. (Makes you wonder what the hell Tony had planned if he’d lived longer than Endgame…)
There’s no authorization required to use EDITH, as Beck demonstrates—no passwords, optical or thumbprint or face-scan ID. So long as the current owner authorizes somebody else’s use, then that person can access all of the software’s capabilities. And there’s no safety system in place should someone initiate an attack in error.
Tony always harped about his “suit of armor around the world”—his Project Insight-esque plan to construct technology that could preemptively protect the Earth. Putting aside the debate on whether or not that would actually work, it’s troubling that such a plan involves the mass violation of billions of people’s privacy, as well as the concentration of such a power in the hands of a single person. It’s not up to one person to decide who is and isn’t a threat to public safety. And it’s not right for a single person to have the ability to end someone’s life on a whim.
To make things even better, this bundle of ethical violations and unchecked power is dropped into the hands of a teenager.
Peter isn’t ready for and shouldn’t be expected to shoulder that kind of responsibility—no one should—yet he’s expected to immediately know how to use it, both in the technical and moral sense.
* * *
In conclusion, don’t bother watching Far From Home. Just put on…well, any other Spider-man movie, I guess.
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