Spider-Man: Far From Homecoming.

The recently revived Wall-Crawler wrestles with responsibility in another engaging, yet empty entry in the MCU canon.

It’s tough to envy the folks responsible for writing the movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. On the one hand, there’s an easy case to be made for how fun it must be to play in that particular IP sandbox — it can’t be anything other than a total blast to mess around with power sets, chart courses for future storylines, and work within such a deeply-established lore. On the other hand, though, sits the very distinct problem that plagues a number of these films: How do you tell a decent story, with well-formed characters who go on legitimate emotional journeys, when it’s all but mandated that at least 45 minutes of that story must consist of just…out-and-out action?

By now the MCU contains enough entires that it’s almost a statistical guarantee that at least a few of them will have figured out how to solve this particular equation. And yet the ones that have done so have clearly done it with an intentionality that goes well beyond a simple numbers game. The MCU’s talent pool has successfully integrated action and emotion enough times to make it sort of apparent that these movies fall into to two camps: the Serious Ones and the Fun Ones. Spider-Man: Far From Home sits firmly in the latter camp, but in a way that leaves it feeling unfortunately airless upon any real reflection. Make no mistake: Holland is operating at peak charm capacity, the supporting cast is delightful, and it’s one of the more decidedly engaging entries in terms of its action and visuals. But, not unlike Homecoming, it wraps up in a way that fails to really have anything to say about, or provide any emotional connection to the actual story it so busily tells.

Spidey’s second solo outing is mostly set during Peter’s class trip to Europe, giving the film an excuse to bounce between foreign locales just about any time there’s a new plot beat, which keeps things fresh even if the changes in location amounts to little more than repeated splashes of new window-dressing. Having been brought back into existence, along with most of his classmates, relatively recently (and having gone into deep space to fight an intergalactic despot just before that), Peter understandably just wants to take a break and hang out with his friends. Given that he’s Peter Parker, though, he’s stuck between wanting to be a kid and that whole power/responsibility thing. This time around, that responsibility takes the form of four inter-dimensional Elementals that have recently crossed over into our reality thanks to Thanos’ Snap. Some dude named Quentin Beck made his way into our dimension along with these Elementals, and (given that this movie seems to forget that the MCU now has like, 50 different powered individuals running around in it) Nick Fury absolutely needs Spider-Man to team up with him so they can put an end to the threat together. Alongside all of this, Peter wrestles with the weight of being the heir apparent to Iron Man’s legacy, while also wanting little more than to try and establish an emotional connection with MJ.

Herein lies one of the main problems: This movie is so desperately strapped for time that it literally has to open with Peter explaining, in dialogue, that he likes MJ now, apparently relying on noting more than the audience’s understanding of these two characters to make this offscreen development believable. It’s incredibly lucky that both Holland and Zendaya (who’s given criminally little to do in this) are talented enough to really make this work, but it’s also tough not to recoil when Peter basically looks into the camera and shouts “OH YEAH, BY THE WAY I LIKE MJ NOW INSTEAD OF LIZ.” This film, crucially, tells when it needs to be showing, its dramatic wings having very obviously been clipped by what feels like studio-mandated action. And while much of it is as about as visually-engaging as it gets, the film ends with a conspicuous lack of emotional engagement that should have come along with it.

Moments that feel ripe for emotional development are unfortunately sidelined in favor of previz-borne antics, with one specific mid-film moment that feels like it’s a perfect place for Peter to wrestle with his difficult combination of grief and duty instead veering sharply left, and into a slapstick action beat that really could have been completely excised from the final film without impacting its plot in the slightest. In a movie where characters are reduced to simply stating their emotional developments out loud, stuff like this feels particularly egregious.

Still: It should be stressed that these are what we’ll call Post-Movie Problems. This is the bullshit that bugs you after you’ve left the theater and started to really pull things apart, because while it’s running? Spider-Man: Far From Home is a goddamn delight. It’s a bummer that Ned, MJ, and the rest of Peter’s classmates are reduced to little more than running gags, but it’s also hard to stay bummed when these running gags are so relentlessly entertaining. Sure, it’s annoying that Ned gets a movie-long recurring joke instead of any kind of actual characterization, but it’s worth noting that this particular recurring joke culminates in a truly hilarious payoff that is almost good enough to justify the trade.

All this being the case, it still wouldn’t have killed this movie to give us at least one single other character for Peter to work with. Everybody who doesn’t own a Spider-Man costume is very much just reduced to a list of traits and behaviors (in another of the film’s more egregious moments, a key player’s entire deal is spewed out in an info-dump monologue delivered to a room that is literally only populated by people who already know all of this information), and the result is that Peter winds up feeling like someone who just has things happen to him, even though he…wishes they wouldn’t?

Despite boasting some of the most visually-engaging action sequences this side of Doctor Strange, Far From Home winds up feeling disappointingly weightless. It’s all empty calories, but sweetened by an absolutely undeniable charm thanks to a cleverly witty script and the towering talents of its onscreen performers (Bitchy Gyllenhaal is a total treasure). Far From Home may be little more than candy, but it’s a tasty enough treat I’ll probably snack on again and again.

Oh, and also…

• Lots of supporting characters “get more to do” in the sense that they’re just given more jokes…but this works like gangbusters, especially for Martin Starr.
• I genuinely don’t know how I feel about either of those end-credits scenes.
• PLEASE GIVE ZENDAYA/MJ AN ACTUAL CHARACTER ARC TO PLAY OUT, SHE IS FAR TOO TALENTED FOR THIS WEIGHTLESS NONSENSE.