Spider-Man: Homecoming vs Far From Home

Alyson Gad, Reporter

The Tom Holland era of Spider-Man has been extremely popular among Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) fans, as well as profitable for the Marvel franchise. Popularity may spew mainly from teenage girls’ love for Tom Holland, but nonetheless the series has been an astounding favorite amongst everyone.

In the past two years, Marvel released two box office hits, “Spider-Man: Homecoming”, in 2017, and “Spider-Man: Far From Home”, this July. The first in the Tom Holland generation of Spider-Man movies, grossed over $880 million worldwide, and became the sixth highest grossing movie of 2017.

With the bar set as high as it was, fans became undecided about the sequel when the news of its release got dropped earlier this calendar year. Justifiably so, “Homecoming” was groundbreaking and an important debut for Tom Holland in the MCU. The success of “Homecoming” had a lot to do with Peter Parker’s new relationship with Tony Stark, which fans immediately deemed a father-son relationship that both characters desperately needed.

“Far From Home” was given the attention it deserved after “Avengers: Endgame” more explicitly displayed the relationship between the two. Tony Stark finally decided he would help the Avengers instead of turning up his nose at the world’s demise, all because he saw a picture of Peter in his kitchen. Then worse comes to worst and Peter loses the only dad figure he had in his life at the end of “Endgame”, which set the perfect stage for personal attacks by the new villain in “Spider-Man: Far From Home”, Mysterio.

Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) was what really made the sequel great. His whole concept, his technology, his character design, it’s all so intriguing. Admittedly, anyone who attempted to avoid spoilers, got a good chunk into “Far From Home” before fully realizing what Mysterio was up to. For most, it didn’t take long to predict he was up to no good, but a good plot twist never fails to make a movie great. Mysterio is not just, well, mysterious, his villain backstory is unique and really stands out against the rest of the Marvel villains. Where a majority of them have super human qualities, or powers. Mysterio, being rather boring and average, relies on a henchman type figure–or the brains of the operation–to pull of such a façade with the drones.

Besides the plot or characters, the CGI in “Far From Home” was astounding. There are many quality movies that are made to trip you out, or use massive amounts of CGI, but “Far From Home” has an outstanding wow factor to it, that the rest didn’t show.

Mysterio had penetrated Peter’s mind and altered his reality with these drones, Mysterio barely even touched him the whole time, yet Peter left that battle disoriented, shaken, and more hurt than if he were physically fought. The verbal and mental abuse that Peter went through in that scene was also more relatable. Not everyone battles Thanos in their lifetime, but sadly mental manipulation is something a lot of people can watch and say, “me too.”

The debate over who wins this cinema battle is tricky. It comes down to personal preference, and which villain was more appealing. Inarguably, the script and CGI in “Far from Home” knocked the first movie out of the park. The third movie in this series has a lot to live up to, assuming Sony and Disney can get it together.