Spider-Man: Far From Home

Picking up the gauntlet (pun very much intended) from the incredible Infinity War/Endgame double header and tasked with properly closing Phase 3 falls to our friendly, neighbourhood Spider-Man: Far From Home.

The web slinger always stood more chance of bearing this heavy load than poor Ant-Man And The Wasp, which fell victim to its placement in the saga, and this is a fun and light breath of fresh air with which to leave proceedings until next year.

Sure, Peter Parker taking a vacation to Europe on a science field trip is going to feel lightweight after the cataclysmic events of Endgame, but this is the perfect way to deal with Tony Stark’s legacy, establish the current state of the Avengers and deal with that lingering ‘blip’ plot hole.

Deal with that it, just about, does with an opening scene that does enough to satiate fears that this film would ignore that huge five year gap between people disappearing and reappearing. Sure, it leaves some threads dangling but in the wider context of the MCU it’ll do for now.

After this things get off to a fairly inauspicious start, as some threats are easily dealt with by Spidey and new addition Mysterio, an excellent Jake Gyllenhaal. You may see some reveals coming a mile off but this is an actor who can swallow this. It also doesn’t matter a jot because as soon as this moment comes the film catapults into its second half and never looks back, morphing from small scale picture to proper-Phase-3-entry in one eye-searingly intense, Doctor Strange-topping, genuinely creepy and threatening scene.

Like Homecoming before it, Far From Home’s threat comes from something borne logically from the MCU franchise itself, which keeps this Peter Parker separate from his previous big screen iterations. Sure, it leads to a slightly shoehorned, preposterous plan when you think too much about it, but the action scenes are so good and the CGI so strong you won’t mind a bit.

Marvel have also nailed Spider-Man's place in the MCU, their most famous character but not the most important piece, just a kid trying to figure things out.

Like Homecoming, it's just a joy to spend time with Peter Parker, Ned, MJ, hell even the whole of his class. The double act between Parker and Ned isn’t used to its full effect here, but his blossoming relationship with Zendaya’s MJ is spot on: awkward, cute and believable.

It breezes by when you’re just hanging out with these characters, enough to make you forget about its action origins but then those action sequences hit and it blows you away all over again.

Two genuinely essential post-credits scenes anchor this film into Phase 3 and caps one hell of a year for Marvel.

Marvel have great power, but know their responsibility is to make great films. Once again, they knock it out of the park.

4 stars ****