Welcome to The Morning After, where I share with you what movies I’ve seen over the past week. Below, you will find short reviews of those movies along with a star rating. Full length reviews may come at a later date.

So, here is what I watched this past week:

Spider-Man: Far from Home

We are peak superhero saturation and while many of these films have been quite entertaining, the number of high quality entries continues to decline as the formula of how to make a movie becomes overused. Spider-Man: Far from home, for all of its entertaining elements, is the kind of film that exemplifies the issue of the genre rather than recasts them as something more.

The story follows after the events of Avengers: Endgame and spoils everything about that film, so if you haven’t seen it, don’t touch this one until then. After getting its world-setting out of the way, we find Peter Parker (Tom Holland) wanting to live a normal life in spite of his super powers, including dating MJ (Zendaya) and traveling to Europe for a school outing. While in Venice, the young Spider-Man finds himself confronted with his own misgivings as a new hero, Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal), arrives to save the city from a major calamitous event.

Marvel has finally gotten itself to the point where it can laugh and provide a good time for the audience. And although this is a film produced by Sony, the script appears to have been run by Disney for approval first, thus removing anything even remotely creative or original. Then again, there might not have been anything like that in the first draft.

The effects in this film are spectacular and there are a ton of incredibly funny moments. Yet, the similarity between this film and the myriad others of the MCU showcases the limitations of the genre and how it desperately needs to find new ways to be creative. Apart from Black Panther and Thor: Ragnarok, the franchise has been treading water. While they remain incredibly popular, the gentle slide in quality will eventually damage the MCU and Disney will have no one to blame but themselves.