Sightlines · reception
How Spider-Man: Far From Home was received
2019 · Jon Watts · Spider-Man: Far From Home on Sightlines
The arc
A crowd-pleaser on release — the palate-cleanser after Endgame that became the first Spider-Man film ever to cross $1 billion — it's since been recast in fan memory mostly as the setup movie, the film whose final five minutes made No Way Home inevitable.
What’s debated
The perennial fight it fuels: is MCU Peter really Spider-Man or just 'Iron Man Jr.' — a kid defined by Stark tech and Tony's shadow rather than his own mythology.
Its footprint
The Mysterio illusion sequence is endlessly clipped and gif'd as one of the MCU's trippiest stretches, 'Night Monkey' became a running joke, and the mid-credits scene produced one of the loudest audience reactions of the era.
Where it stands
Mid-tier MCU in the Letterboxd rankings, but reliably defended for Jake Gyllenhaal's scenery-chewing Mysterio — the part fans cite when arguing the movie is better than its reputation.
Did you know? Jake Gyllenhaal was famously almost Spider-Man himself — he was lined up to replace an injured Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man 2 (2004) — so his casting as Mysterio landed fifteen years later as a delicious in-joke.