By Anthony Riley —
The Floyd Theater commonly features free movies with your Cardinal Card and last week they showed “Spiderman: Far From Home.”
Opening with “I Will Always Love You” by Whitney Houston, the first half of the movie takes the tone of a late 90s teen rom-com. “Spiderman: Far From Home” uses a warm and vivid color profile with strong earth and blue tones which evoke a warm fuzzy feeling – for the first half, that is.
Tom Holland plays the iconic Peter Parker who is going on an educational trip to Europe with his class during the summer. He plans to buy Zendaya’s character MJ a necklace and tell her how he feels atop the Eiffel Tower. As expected, there are all sorts of obstacles in Parker’s way like competing classmates and his best friend/wing-man being suddenly romantically preoccupied with another classmate.
However, a new threat arises. Supernatural creatures from another dimension are back to destroy Earth, and it’s up to Nick Fury, Spiderman and newcomer Quentin Beck “Mysterio” (Jake Gyllenhall) to save the planet. However, after all the creatures are ‘defeated’, Peter decides to gift Stark’s entire defense system to Beck because he trusts him. The system is controlled by sunglasses with the name Edith. This is a mistake, as Mysterio is quite the disgruntled, former Stark employee. Beck’s illusion technology was taken by Stark and marketed as a recreational toy, not the world-changing hologram tech Beck had originally intended.
There are two parallel stories here. Parker is trying to have fun with his friends on a school trip, and impending doom as Mysterio tries to take over the planet as the ultimate superhero. All the while, Parker is trying to get MJ to understand how he feels while trying to keep himself and his friends alive. It’s a refreshingly trivial take on a superhero movie because the heroes are real people too, and in this case, Spiderman is but an insecure high-schooler with small goals of having fun and protecting his family and friends.
Overall, it’s unexpected, and overly cheesy at a few points. However, you really do end up caring about the characters, and Gylenhall makes for an irresistible villain. Pretty good, 7.5/10.
Graphic by Alexis Simon // The Louisville Cardinal
