Without warning, it arrives like a thunderbolt: it’s the first official teaser trailer for the new Sony Pictures and Marvel movie Spiderman: Far From Home.
I’ll save all the bla-bla for after the trailer. We’re sure you want to just skip ahead and watch that first anyway. Pause the SCIFI.radio stream using the handy controller at the upper right before hitting the play button on the video.
Oh, and watch it full screen, and turn up the sound. And check this out, it’s Sandman and Mysterio duking it out over exotic Venice skylines!
Starring Tom Holland as Peter Parker, this film is the sequel to Spiderman: Homecoming, but from the trailer it’s hard to determine whether it’s set before or after the events of Avengers: Infinity War and the upcoming Avengers: End Game. At the moment, I’m leaning towards “after”.
Here’s the first poster art for the film as well, tweeted by Sony Pictures about an hour ago. That would have been at about five AM our time, and as I write this it’s only 6:45 now.
The film follows Peter Parker/Spider-Man on a summer vacation to Europe with his friends. Returning from Homecoming are Marisa Tomei as Aunt May, Zendayaas Michelle as Mary Jane Watson, Jacob Batalonas Peter’s best friend and sidekick Ned, Tony Revolori as school jock Flash, and Angourie Riceas Peter’s classmate Betty Brant.
The eyebrow raiser for me was the appearance of Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury. Then I spotted Jon Favreau (Happy Hogan). There is some serious studio crossover magic happening here. The lawyers must have been burning the midnight oil over this one.
And then there’s Mysterio, played by the remarkable Jake Gyllenhaal as the the villainous Quentin Beck/Mysterio. Homecoming villain Adrian Toomes/Vulture, played by Michael Keaton, is also returning, so there won’t be any shortage of action. The challenge of any film like this is the ensemble cast. With so many characters, no one character will be getting tons of face time. On the other hand, we all know who we’re here to see.
Director Jon Watts is back after his most excellent work on Homecoming. This is his major studio debut after directing the small indie film Cop Car, which relatively few people saw. Still, he earned rave reviews not just for his action scenes but also for making Peter Parker’s world real for us. Nothing says teenage angst like having to deal with high school, and Watts handled those scenes in true John Hughes Breakfast Club style.
Holland’s Spider-Man is meant to head up a trilogy of films, which means this is the middle one. Being closely tied to the Marvel Studios cinematic universe is giving the movie franchise considerable new mojo at the box office. Sony has been doing its best to capitalize on it by making new films like Venom and the two spinoff movies Silver Sable and Black Cat (originally they were going to be one film, but they were split into two projects sometime around last August), as well as the fresh new animated feature Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which could kick off a Miles Morales franchise of its own.
Spider-Man: Far From Home stars Tom Holland, swings into theaters on July 5th, 2019.
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President of Krypton Media Group, Inc., radio personality and station manager of SCIFI.radio. Part writer, part animator, part musician, part illustrator, part programmer, part entrepreneur – all geek.
