Spider-Man: Far From Home ushers in great new Marvel Phase by cementing Spidey’s own franchise that can finally place the web slinger back as the banner bearer of Marvel, just as Batman and Superman have long been for DC.

Marvel Studios needed to buy back their franchise.

And they did, splitting it with Sony, but creative control going to Marvel Studios where the comic books hold up exceptionally well in their adaptations to the silver screen.

Since the last pair of Avenger’s films and the first two Iron Man flicks, there have not been two consecutive Marvel movies that proved to be exceptional, top 10 or even top 5 Marvel movies, but now with Spider-Man: Far From Home we have just that.

Both Spider-man: Homecoming and Spider-Man: Far From Home are exceptional films.

Both capture the dynamic of Peter Parker, the young awkward nerd and Spider-man whipping wise-cracks, like bullets.

Both had complex antagonists, in Vulture and Mysterio, that made the movies all the more intriguing.
And both had the fantastic, leaping off the pages and comic panels action scenes that emanated the books so well.

Without the cinematic rights to Spidey, Marvel wisely revived Captain America to be the torchbearer, along with his lifelong friend, competitor, and foil in a lot of ways in Iron Man.

Iron Man built the Avengers and Cap led them.

But all of this was to engage fans in Marvel comics while they built up the massive capital it took to buy back their biggest commodity, their local hero from Queens, Spider-man.

It took many years, but now Spider-man has cemented himself as the face of Marvel in as good a way as you could ever have hoped.

Spidey is always in the thick of it, from Secret Wars to the Infinity Guantlet storylines, and he has guest appeared in countless stories of the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, and so many others.

Not to mention, Spider-man brought in the debut of the Punisher, Venom, Carnage, and myriad other heroes, anti-heroes, and villains.

Spider-Man: Far From Home is truly remarkable in that it brings the exact look and feel of the Mysterio battles home to viewers.

The look and feel and humor and scientist nerd tinkering with building a suit all comes straight from the source material, albeit a bit updated in all the right places to make the film relatable and flawless.

It is fun and exciting, dramatic and endearing, and at times painfully poignant.

And this is the second time in a row that these movies have accomplished this feat.

There are so many great Marvel films, and very good ones, but the magical ones are few – the Thor: Ragnarok leaping from Jack Kirby’s pages or Captain America: The Winter Soldier – and yet, like the first two appearances of Tony Stark who cemented the foundation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-man’s first two dedicated movies are possibly the best Marvel has made yet.

Spider-Man: Far From Home is magic, pure and simple.

And as Marvel pivots into the next “Marvel Phase” they can use the web slinger to introduce the Fantastic Four to help rid him of the alien symbiote (black suit), or the Punisher into the movies, or the X-Men.

And like Iron Man did before, he can show up and help to cameo in any other Marvel flick, except maybe the strictly space films.

DC Comics and Warner Bros. never had to sell off the rights to Superman and Batman, and so their two biggest flag bearers have remained front and center in their books and their movies.

What is a shame is that the innovative comic books have not been relied on as heavily for source material for a lot of their films, and so many of the Superman and Batman-involved movies have been good, bad, or ugly, but few have been great.

Superman I, Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut, Man of Steel, Batman, Batman Returns, and Nolan‘s “Dark Knight trilogy” are all incredible, but there are just as many duds.

After Marvel’s “Endgame” highpoint, this is a thrilling new chapter starting in the MCU thanks to the utterly brilliant Spider-Man: Far From Home.

The only thing we have seen from Spider-man onscreen for the MCU so far is greatness.


"Spider-Man: Far From Home Ushers In Great New Marvel Phase" was written by R.J. Huneke.

Though the blockbuster Iron Man 3 has higher expectations than possibly any other Marvel super hero flick, Shane Black’s comic book adaptation thrills and brings new depth to the characters and world.

Because of the tremendous success of the brilliant previous Iron Man films that were directed by Jon Favreau, The Amazing Spider-man reboot, and Joss Whedon’s The Avengers, many are mistakenly trying to compare this newest Iron Man installment to the past projects and not look at it in its own light.

Though Marvel and former Iron Man director Favreau had a dispute that ended his controlling the third movie, Shane Black who co-wrote the Iron Man 3 script stepped in to add more action and more darkness to the story arc.

No one can deny how perfect the first two movies fit the Iron Man comic book character and Favreau emanated the spirit and the great story from the books in two fun, thrilling, witty, and entertaining pieces of art.

What Black has done in the third Iron Man film is completely different and a bit rougher, and this is not a bad thing.

Tony Stark the genius, billionaire scientist turned machine-suit superhero is still depicted brilliantly by Robert Downey, Jr. whose acting prowess continues to wax brightly.

SPOILER ALERT: And Stark is tested throughout with a newly acquired anxiety disorder stemming from certain largely unexplained events from New York, alluding to Loki’s alien invasion of the Big Apple, a terrorist attack leveling his own home and close friend, Happy (played by Favreau), and numerous suit malfunction from his prototype toys.

The major theme of the movie involves the coping with adverse conditions of change that affect everyone, including billionaire playboy philanthropists, and finding the perseverance to endure.

That said, there is a lot of fighting (in every type of way), a few grim and eerie hacking of TV’s that the Mandarin uses to highlight terrorist attacks as his own commercials, and a very human Tony Stark that becomes desperate to keep his new girlfriend Pepper – played by the starkly talented Gwyneth Paltrow – even at the cost of killing people.

Tony Stark as the drunk is referenced by not shown as much as Tony Stark the lost tinkerer who is desperate to avenge and protect what he cares most for in the world but does not know how to accomplish this. This could be foreshadowing a darker and meaner side of Stark that we have not seen before for future movies, as the comic books often delved into his substance abuse and his volatile personal relations, which often caused strife between him and Captain America, amongst others.

This movie is funny, thrilling, surprising and full of great acting; Ben Kingsley is a great Mandarin (I hope for his return in the future, though the story made that unlikely), and Don Cheadle reprises Tony’s friend Col. Rhodes (and the War Machine and/or Iron Patriot) very well once again.

This tale is deliciously dark, full of explosive action, and very funny from start to finish.

Impulsive Review Grade: A-

by R.J. Huneke