1. “…in Europe!” is a distinctively unpromising setup for a sequel. No surprises here, taking bland characters and taking them on a European road trip is actually worse than leaving them at home – doing tourist stuff does not generally make for very interesting material, and the setting is probably going to take time/space that otherwise could have been used more effectively.

2. Far From Home is arguably the worst edited MCU movie to date.. There were a lot of moments that stood out here, but I have to call out pretty much every non-action moment in Venice as a total waste of time and the villainous reveal scene is some of the worst exposition I can remember. E.g. “They called me unstable” sounds like a B-film about a mad scientist.

• Some minor plot holes as well. E.g. when Mysterio orders a drone strike on Peter, the system asks Mysterio for confirmation because Mysterio is close enough that he’d be in danger. Somehow Peter Parker didn’t get this warning when accidentally ordering a drone strike on somebody riding in a bus ~15 feet behind him.

3. The movie wastes a notable amount of time:

• Most of what happens before the water elemental fight (e.g. the fundraiser, most of Venice, and maybe the airplane scene).
• Aunt May’s side-romance with Happy.
• Every Flash Thompson line
• The Netherlands scene was funny but Peter Parker desperately needed time/space to be competent. (Also, if we’re pretending that his secret identity is interesting at all, having a character get arrested and demasked without any followup is probably a plot hole).

4. One bright spot: in the post-credits scene a villain took Spider-Man’s secret identity public. Hopefully this will reduce the amount of scenes where other characters have to be mentally damaged to protect the secret identity.

5. Other bright spots: the action is surprisingly competent, definitely better executed than other drone battles in Avengers 2, Iron-Man 2 and Venom. The hallucination powers are quite imaginative. The villain (pre-reveal) is notably more engaging than Spider-Man. Weirdly, he’s more believable as a fake hero than he is as a live villain given how thin his motive/plan is.

6. The fake hero setup creates interesting opportunities for hero-villain interaction. Hey, not EVERY supervillain has a daughter you can date.

7. The plot hinges on Mysterio setting up fake crimes to pump up his own status by beating up holograms. He carefully choreographs everything and pre-tapes footage about how the fight will look before it happens. Spider-Man making an unscripted appearance against the water elemental should have been a bigger deal. This would have been a good opportunity for Mysterio to improvise something to keep Spider-Man from figuring out that the fight was a sham. This would probably have a more satisfying outcome than “Maybe Spider-Man will spend the entire fight trying to keep a tower from collapsing but not even accomplish that.”

8. Have we hit rock bottom yet?

• In a good movie, a protagonist should be able to speak with a love interest and make it interesting. In this movie, Peter concocts a half-assed scheme where his friend pretends that he has an allergy in a scheme to get her to sit next to Peter. Having his friend deliver these lines somehow makes Peter look even more pathetic.
• Peter accidentally calls a drone strike on his own bus.
• Two fights with elementals without realizing that they are holograms.
• “Peter tingle”
• Every conversation between Peter and Mr. Harrington.
• Peter getting fooled by illusions of Nick Fury twice. Peter, you dumbass, what reason could Nick Fury have possibly had to ask who you told about Mysterio’s fraud?
• Jake Gyllenhaal calls him awkward.
• Arrested by the Dutch.
• ”Even Dead [Someone Else] Is The Hero”. Even dead, Tony Stark has more of a pulse than MCU Spider-Man.
• Nick Fury thinks Peter isn’t even worthy to invoke Captain Marvel’s name. That’s rock bottom, isn’t it? Is it possible to be more inadequate?

9. My main knock against the series is that this version of Spider-Man is a useless toolbox who actively avoids doing interesting things, and what he does attempt is usually wimpy and/or incompetent.

10. Unlike most main characters, his choices don’t really matter much. For example, he chooses to leave his supersuit at home (but his aunt sneaks it in anyway) and he tries to choose his school trip over superheroics (itself a red flag) but Nick Fury railroads him into coming to Prague anyway. He has an unusual lack of agency over his story.

11. If your superhero would rather be on a school trip than a superhero, don’t make a superhero movie about him, it’ll probably suck.