Spider-Man: Far From Home

1 TACKLING THE BLIP

James Dyer: How do you make a film about high school when half the students have been dead for five years? Coming hot on the heels of Avengers: Endgame, Far From Home was always going to have to do some narrative heavy lifting. Peter Parker’s mentor is dead, Earth was invaded by aliens (again), and 50 per cent of the population has spent the past half decade snapped out of existence. Rather than opting for clunksome dialogue, though, FFH’s solution is a simple as it is elegant: a student TV broadcast outlining the timeline’s existential hiccup — ‘the blip’.

That said broadcast includes a my-firstiMovie eulogy composition for Tony, Cap and Natasha set to the strains of Whitney Houston’s ‘I Will Always Love You’ is simply the icing on a very tongue-in-cheek cake. Clear, concise and emotionally resonant without being cloying, its an inspired device that navigates the tricky exposition while never having to stray from Spidey’s more upbeat, irreverent tone.

The blip’s ramifications are handled equally deftly. Handily, all of the film’s major players fell foul of Thanos’ snap, so Peter’s nascent romance with